Building a Culture of Student Agency and Autonomy

The pilot study to my dissertation found that personalized learning environments established a culture of student agency. In this post, I review what has been said in my reading about student agency in regards to personalized learning and draw on ideas on learner agency from in and out of formal education settings to inform this study’s understanding of student agency.

In regards to personalizing learning, some have called for a level of student voice and choice – or agency – which radically reorganizes what and how we teach, such as the British politician and former Schools Minister David Miliband:

The Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan used to say that the freedom to choose was worthless without the power to choose. This is the power of personalised learning. Not a false dichotomy between choice and voice but acceptance that if we are to truly revolutionise public services then people need to have both. Because students are not merely educational shoppers in the marketplace; they are creators of their own educational experience. Their voice can help shape provision, both as a means of engaging students in their own learning – the co-producers of education – and as a means of developing their talents – using their voice to help create choices. (OECD, 2006, pp. 29–30)

In the U.S., the call for student voice and choice in personalized learning is a bit more measured, such as this statement on student agency in the iNACOL report on personalized learning, “student has voice and choice on level of standards/lesson and some control over how they learn” (Patrick, Kennedy, & Powell, 2013, p. 6). The difference between the two, perhaps, is that between theory and practice. While Miliband was setting forth a vision, the authors of the iNACOL report were providing guidance to practicing teachers, administrators, and policy makers. Why would we want to increase student agency in formal education?

Research points to a connection between student agency and student engagement and motivation. Students who have a sense of ownership and control over their own learning tend to be more engaged and motivated to participate in formal education (R. Crick, 2012; Newmann, Wehlage, & Lamborn, 1992). Student engagement is tied to their sense of agency – their belief that what they are in charge of their learning, that their learning is related to their lives out of school, and that they can succeed at their learning tasks (Newmann et al., 1992; Reeve, 2012). Newmann and colleagues find that students are more engaged when their learning “… meets extrinsic rewards, intrinsic interests, offers students a sense of ownership, is connected to the “real world” (i.e., the world beyond school), and involves some fun” (Newmann et al., 1992, p. 23). Extrinsic motivators include a known pathway between the work in school and the students’ subsequent independence and livelihood out of school. Providing students some degree of control over aspects of their work, as explained below, can foster a sense of ownership, align school work to student interests, and provide intrinsic motivation:

Students need some influence over the conception, execution, and evaluation of the work itself. At a minimum this entails flexibility in the pace and procedures of learning; opportunity for students to ask questions and to study topics they consider important; and students’ constructing and producing knowledge in their own language, rather than merely reproducing the language of others. (Newmann et al., 1992, p. 25)

On the other hand,  when asked, students report being bored every day in class. When asked why they are bored they tell us that they often don’t feel what they are ‘supposed’ to be learning is interesting or relevant to their lives – or efforts in school lacks a connection to the intrinsic interests of students (Yazzie-mintz & Mccormick, 2012). Instead of ownership over learning targets or processes, schools often expect students to wholly comply to the interests and learning structures of others to achieve measured success. Personalized learning designs challenges this compliance-based design by including a degree of student control over the learning process and content, which therefore challenges educators to release some control over these domains while including mastery over learning itself as a target (R. D. Crick, 2007).

We know that youth – even those who have dropped out of school – are highly engaged with communities and creative and constructive activities outside of schools (Charmaraman & Hall, 2011). What is it about these communities that foster such engagement? Youth seek communities, both online and in-person, that share and foster their interests (Gee, 2007; Ito et al., 2010; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2005). Upon entering interest-driven communities, young people begin to make meaningful contributions and are mentored by others as they achieve membership in the community (Jenkins et al., 2005; Lave, Wenger, & Lave, 1991). Participation in these communites is both interest-based and controlled by the student (Jenkins et al., 2005).

Jenkins and colleagues suggest that the designs of formal learning environments may do well to take cues from designs that engage youth in productive work out of school, as well as focus on providing students both the technical and social skills they need to be productive members of these communities (2005). When students have some control over what they learn, they have the opportunity within school to follow their interests. When paired with digital learning tools, students may find communities that share their interests online as well as in school.

Personalized learning environments are oriented to increase opportunities for student choice and agency and therefore provides a compelling opportunity to examine how the concepts of student and interest-driven learning may be supported within formal learning contexts.

From the literature and pilot study, student agency emerges as a defining characteristic of personalized learning, setting it apart from the other pedagogical designs from which it emerges. In the pilot study, students in personalized learning environments were seen to have a degree of control over what and how they learn by being included in the instructional decision making process. Little is known about how instructional decisions are made in these learning environments, or what information forms the basis for these decisions. Mapping the practices and tools that students and teachers use to make instructional decisions may suggest areas for future research exploring how personalized learning may prepare students to be productive members within interest-driven new-media ecologies.

Works cited

Charmaraman, L., & Hall, G. (2011). School dropout prevention: What arts-based community and out-of-school-time programs can contribute. New Directions for Youth Development, 2011(S1), 9–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/yd.416

Crick, R. (2012). Deep Engagement as a Complex System: Identiy, Learning Power and Authentic Enquiry. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. New York: Springer.

Crick, R. D. (2007). Learning how to learn: the dynamic assessment of learning power. Curriculum Journal, 18(2), 135–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170701445947

Gee, J. (2007). Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today’s Schools. In Good video games+ good learning: Collected essays … (pp. 87–103). Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&btnG=Search&q=intitle:AFFINITY+SPACES:+FROM+AGE+OF+MYTHOLOGY+TO+TODAY?S+SCHOOLS#0

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., … Martinez, K. Z. (2010). Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M., & Robison, A. J. (2005). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st century (Digital Media and Learning). Chicago. Retrieved from https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Lave, J., Wenger, E., & Lave, J. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Situated-Learning-Participation-Computational-Perspectives/dp/0521423740/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Newmann, F. M., Wehlage, G. G., & Lamborn, S. D. (1992). Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools. (F. M. Newmann, Ed.), Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

OECD. (2006). Personalising Education: Schooling for Tomorrow. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264036604-en

Patrick, S., Kennedy, K., & Powell, A. (2013). Mean what you say: Defining and integrating personalized, blended and competency education. Vienna, VA. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&btnG=Search&q=intitle:Mean+What+You+Say:+Defining+and+Integrating+Personalized,+Blended+and+Competency+Education#0

Reeve, J. (2012). A Self-determination Theory Perspective on Student Engagement. In Handbook of Research on Student Engagement (pp. 149–172). Boston, MA: Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_7

Yazzie-mintz, E., & Mccormick, K. (2012). Finding the Humanity in the Data: Understanding, Measuring, and Strengthening Student Engagement. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement (pp. 743–761). Boston, MA: Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7