Here is the book you’ve been waiting for!
This book is a call to action, providing the tools, strategies and user friendly rubrics to guide you as you unlock the potential of your students, as they embrace their personal ownership of learning.
A practical guide from theory to action in simple steps
This resource is a mix of the theoretical with the practical steps taken from lived experiences from educators, who, like you, desire more for their students in their learning experience.
“This is the book I wished I’d had when I started my new school”
Annette Thompson, School Principal, Arkansas
It is no longer sufficient for schools to design learning to fit yesterday’s standards. Neither is it sufficient to give our learners freedom to learn without being intentional about developing the responsibilities that come with having that freedom. The future world will be characterised by change and uncertainty, Navigating through that will require new solutions be found to new problems as they are identified. This means that our learners and future citizens must be empowered with choices and the ability to act on those choices. This is the essence of what it means to be agentic.
Agency By Design: An Educator’s Playbook has been written to help you design learning environments and experiences that foster agency in your learners and prepare them for this future. The playbook will assist you to…
Understand more about learner agency and why it should be an important focus in our schools and classrooms.
Identify the conditions required to promote learner agency in your context, and the characteristics you will observe in your students.
Design the specific actions you need to take in your context to see this shift occur.
Evaluate your progress towards these goals, and identify the ‘next steps’ to take as you work towards your goals.
Publication of this playbook has been made possible through the generous support of the Aurora Institute. The Playbook can be downloaded for free from their website.
What you”ll find inside…
The Playbook includes….
- definitions and descriptions of the attributes necessary to develop student agency.
- reflection boxes to encourage note-taking for who are piloting, investigating and applying the tools and resources available
- reflection questions that will provide opportunities for discussion among educators
- best practice examples from educators who are building a student -agency -centered model in their classrooms and school
- rubrics by which to assess current practice against a more agency centered practice
- self analysis tools to use over time to show shifts in understanding and practice.
A framework to guide you…
The substantial part of the playbook is organised around a framework for implementation (Illustrated below) that is divided into 7 chapters dealing with the conditions we create to see learner agency develop, and 7 chapters dealing with the characteristics we expect to see develop in our learners as they operate within these conditions.
Professional Development Opportunities
The shift to a more student agency-centered model requires courage and determination. To be effective this needs to be done in depth, over time and made relevant to the context you are working in.
We offer a range of professional learning opportunities using the framework in our playbook, and welcome approaches from school, clusters of schools, school districts, whole or state or other jurisdiction to work with you to design an approach that will work for you.
The range of Professional Learning services we can provide includes:
- In-person facilitation, including conference workshops or teacher only days, through to longer term engagements to support and mentor educators through the process
- Virtual learning experiences, from one-off webinars to introduce the ideas to longitudinal engagements to mentor educators through the process
- We can work with classroom teachers, school administrators and leadership teams or system level leaders.
Use the link below to contact us for more information.
Contact us for more information
Meet the authors…
Derek Wenmoth
Founder, FutureMakers
New Zealand
Marsha Jones
Springdale School District (Retired)
NW Arkansas
George Edwards
New England Association of Schools and Colleges
Annette Thompson
Inquire Innovation
Arkansas
