Learner agency has been integral to education’s evolution, enabling independent thought to drive autonomous action, shaping modern educational practices. Learner agency means having the “power to act,” offering learners the freedom to choose where, what, and how they learn, empowering them to take decisive steps. It is about shifting the ownership of learning from teachers to students, enabling students to have the understanding, ability, and opportunity to be part of the learning design and to take action to intervene in the learning process, to affect outcomes and become powerful lifelong learners.
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Agency By Design: An Educator’s Playbook has been written with all educators in mind. It provides a comprehensive overview of what learner agency is, with an in-depth look at the conditions that teachers and educational leaders can create in their schools to promote the development of learner agency in their classrooms and schools.
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
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 do we understand by learner agency?
Learner agency is about having the power, combined with choices, to take meaningful action and see the results of your decisions. It can be thought of as a catalyst for change or transformation. We see this shift given many names – ‘personalisation’, ‘self-managed learning’, ‘self-directed learning’, ‘self-regulated learning’, ‘choice and voice’, ‘individualisation’ and so on. While there are subtle and nuanced differences in each approach, the broad outcomes are very similar – a shift in the ownership of learning, with the learner taking greater responsibility for all aspects of her/his learning.
By ‘shifting the ownership of learning’ we mean that we (as educators) must be designing learning so that there is an intentional shift from us being the font of knowledge and our lessons being primarily about the learners following the path we’ve planned for them (however exciting we think we may have made it) – to where we offer our learners far greater ‘ownership’ of what is happening.
This shift is not an abdication of teacher responsibility however. Teacher will continue to play an important role in the teaching and learning process – it will simply be different. Most often it will mean a greater focus on intentional design, providing greater transparency around the purpose of learning activity and the measures of success being applied and adopting a more pro-active role as mentor, coach, facilitator and/or “fellow learner”.
At it’s heart this is about taking responsibility for our actions as learners – at three levels:
Responsibility for self
This ‘shift in ownership’ involves the learner in taking an increasing level of responsibility in her/his learning. The emphasis on learners becoming self-managing, self-regulating and self-directed features in this thinking. Before a learner can exercise agency in their particular learning context they must have a belief that their behaviour and their approach to learning is actually going to make a difference for them in the learning in that setting – in other words, a personal sense of agency. They must also develop the skills and tools to be able to solve problems and apply critical thought to decisions they make in the learning process.
Responsibility towards others
Agency is also interdependent. It mediates and is mediated by the sociocultural context of the classroom. It’s not just about a learner in isolation doing their own thing and what suits them. Learners must develop an awareness that there are consequences for the decisions they make and actions they take, and will take account of that in the way(s) they exercise their agency in learning.
Responsibility for the environment we share
Being agentic also includes an awareness of the responsibility of our actions, as individuals and collectively, on the environment. So there’s a social connectedness kind of dimension to that. Every decision a learner or group of learners make, and action she or he takes will likely impact on the use of or interaction with the environment they share. This might apply to a shared space where there is no responsibility taken for ensuring it is kept tidy and the shared materials returned to their appropriate place after an activity, through to the impact on the physical environment of decades of consumer behaviours based on extractive industries that are slowly depleting the limited supplies of the earth’s natural resources – or polluting our shared water resources to the point they are no longer usable.
Explore Further
Discover insightful articles, thought pieces, and ideas from within our ecosystem that align with this approach.
Agency By Design: Making Learning Engaging
A paper I wrote in collabroation with Marsha Jones and Joe DiMartino from the US, published by the Aurora Institute.
This report offers guidance – including practical advice – to education leaders and teachers in redesigning schools and classrooms by centering on learner agency, through a shift in the ownership of learning.
Learner Agency Research Report
This research report was created by my colleagues at CORE Education. It is the result of both a literature scan and a series of conversations with students and teachers from three New Zealand schools.
This work and the analysis that followed identified ten conditions that foster agentic learners, each of which is explained in more detail in the report.
Learner Agency: Maximising Learner Potential
Published by Oxford University Press, this paper is filled with advice from an Expert Panel, and will help you to nurture learner agency with straightforward guidance you can adapt to your needs.
Their definition of learner agency refers to the feeling of ownership and control that learners have over their own learning. When students believe their actions can make a difference, they become more confident, engaged, and effective learners. Every student can develop their agency – but they must be supported by their teachers and learning community to do so.
Student Agency: Learning to make a difference
Charles Leadbetter wrote this paper while he worked as an advisor to the OECD Education 2030 project. He explains what he means by agency, explores the origins and development of the concept, and outlines what education would have to be like to ensure that learners emerge from schooling as confident, able, responsible agents of change. He identifies the essential components, levels and aspects of agency for this to be achieved, and comments on the required approach to learning.
Student Agency for 2030: Conceptual Learning Framework (OECD)
The concept of student agency, as understood in the context of the OECD Learning Compass 2030, is rooted in the principle that students have the ability and the will to positively influence their own lives and the world around them.
In the introduction the authors say this about learner agency; “[Agency] is about acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others… [Agenctic] students are also more likely to have “learned how to learn” – an invaluable skill that they can and will use throughout their lives.”
The report speaks about learner agency as both a learning goal and a learning process, and illustrates how learner agency is critically important in overcoming adversity.
Learner agency is a key dimension of their Learning Compass 2030 work.
Amplify: Empowering students through voice, agency and leadership
Amplify is a practice guide for school leaders and teachers.
It explains how to create the conditions, employ the practices and develop the behaviours, attitudes and learning environments that are conducive to student voice, agency and leadership. Whatever their current starting points, school leaders and teachers can draw on this resource to facilitate rich conversations, collaborate and take actions to empower students.
Students at the Centre
A resource that I frequently refer to is the spectrum of student voice oriented activity that appears on page 24 of this document from Students at the Centre.
This organisation has published a large number of resources to support the shift in ownership idea – placing students at the centre of their learning.
This particular document has a wealth of information and ideas to provoke your thinking!
Learning on Purpose: Ten Lessons in placing agency at the heart of schools
Written by Charles Leadbetter, in partnership with the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia, this paper presents lessons participating schools learned from the three-year Student Agency Lab project in South Australia. The ‘A Lab’ helped schools help one another develop practical approaches to achieving greater agency among students. The schools also explored the role of teachers, as well as the organisation and leadership of the whole school..
Learner Centred Education and school improvement
An excellent post by By Katie Martin and Devin Vodicka on the Getting Smart site from March, 2021 titled Why Learner-Centered Education is the Key to Meaningful School Improvement. I’ve found the references made in this article really helpful – hopefully you will too!
Enabling eLearning: Learner Agency
This site contains a wide range of resources, links and examples on the theme of Learner Agency.
Check out the School Stories tab for some excellent videos and stories of what’s happening in other classrooms and schools.
CORE’s Ten Trends: Agency
Learner agency has been a focus in CORE’s ten trends since 2014. In each of those years I wrote more about learner agency and how this idea is being increasingly emphasised in classrooms and schools around NZ. Each year’s feature has links to a number of other papers and examples in practice that ware well worth exploring.
Shifting Ownership Tool (original)
My original Shifting Ownership of Learning resource which is available in several versions:
A4 version (as shown)
