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Rita Pierson: Setiap anak memerlukan seorang juara

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Rita Pierson yang telah menjadi guru selama 40 tahun, pernah mendengar seorang rekannya berkata, "Mereka tidak membayar saya untuk menyukai anak-anak." Jawabnya, "Anak-anak tidak belajar dari orang yang tidak mereka sukai." Sebuah seruan bagi para pendidik untuk mempercayai murid mereka dan memiliki hubungan pada tingkatan yang nyata, manusiawi, dan pribadi.

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Student-centered learning.

Student-driven education.

Student voice and choice.

These all describe student agency and the idea of creating an educational environment where students drive their learning alongside their teachers. The dream is that student agency creates an engaging, more empowering learning environment so learning is impactful and sustainable for a lifetime.

That dream drives efforts to implement student agency. But educators often get stuck on the surface definition focused on voice and limited choice. What does authentic student agency look like and how can we move beyond the surface to create a student-driven learning experience for elementary students as well as high schoolers preparing for college or career?

One example of this approach is California's Aveson Charter Schools, which is built on "Personalized Mastery Learning"-a competency-based personalized learning approach where student agency is essential.

What Is Authentic Student Agency?

A 2015 Harvard University Achievement Gap Initiative report commissioned by the Raikes Foundation states that student agency "is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative," and that students who possess a high level of agency are not passive participants in their learning but active participants engaged in seeking experiences, meaning and purpose that help them achieve the accomplishments they desire.

In student-centered schools, agency means that students have a level of control and autonomy in their learning as they make choices about what, where and how they learn and show mastery of their outcomes. Action, therefore, is the operative word in authentic student agency.

At Aveson, students have the opportunity to voice their opinions about everything from classroom design to how their outcomes will be measured. They collaborate with advisors on subject matter, how they learn the subject matter and how they show they've mastered their work. Mastery is a shared decision between student and advisor.

Developing deeper student agency is achieved by giving students the tools needed to understand themselves as learners and by making an intentional effort to nurture a student's power to act on their own behalf.

The Foundation

The Harvard report pinpointed noncognitive skills necessary to nurture an authentic student-centered learning environment. These noncognitive or foundational skills are as important as the cognitive skills measured on standardized tests.

According to a report by Students at the Center, self-regulated learners can more easily "plan, set goals, organize, self-monitor and self-evaluate" and ultimately change their learning strategies.

Social-emotional learning, relationships and language are central to the foundation of agency. Even in the early years, students and advisors build productive, collaborative relationships. Through constructive and supportive language, advisors help students develop persistence and rigorous thinking. And through social-emotional learning, students learn self-regulation skills and come to understand themselves as learners.

Through its Personalized Mastery Learning approach, Aveson explicitly supports relationship building and teaches self-regulation using multiple tools. In daily advisory, students and advisors come together to create conversation and connection by using tools like the Hawn Foundation's MindUp curriculum and an integrated daily practice of Becky Bailey's Conscious Discipline curriculum.

These tools include core practice breathing, lessons on understanding how the brain works, conversations on how to identify feelings, self-regulation strategies for students and support for educators to learn positive language that engages students and provides positive behavioral intervention.

The Structure

The foundation to student agency is the support students need in order to take action on what they learn and how they learn. Collaboration between student and advisor is vital if students are to drive their learning. A foundation of social emotional support and relationship building is necessary for robust collaboration.

Since Aveson students complete outcomes to mastery rather than a predetermined test or assignment that everyone completes at the same time and in the same way, students collaborate with advisors to develop their own ideas on how to fulfill assignments.

Grading and proving mastery is personalized, and this collaborative structure extends to goal setting and presentation of outcomes. Here are three examples:

Triad Conferences: Create a collaborative environment where students, parents and advisors agree on yearly learning goals.

Student Led Conference: Students practice ownership of their learning by presenting their work to adults to show how they reached mastery and are reaching their goals.

Celebration of Learning: showcases student work similar to an open house but also gives students the chance to present and defend their work in front of authentic audiences.

What Supports Student Agency?

Intentional, explicit communication about learning expectations is a key support for fostering student agency. Here are examples of explicit communication about learning outcomes:

I can describe the challenges I faced, how I tried to overcome them, and whether I was successful.

I can describe what was hard for me and how I felt.

I can reflect on my learning.

I can apply procedures accurately, efficiently, and strategically to solve a complex problem.

I can think like a mathematician.

I can use an appropriate tool to interpret set(s) of data.

I can perform a regression analysis.

Scaffolding student agency according to developmental ability also supports agency. Not all students of the same age or grade are at the same developmentally and educators need to respond accordingly. Scaffolding is simply giving students guided supports until a student can do it themselves. And this can occur at any age or grade level. For example:

In a pre-K/K classroom, younger students can be scaffolded in student agency through the morning greeting ritual. Every morning students enter the classroom and say 'good morning' to their advisor. This is a teacher-driven activity. Some students will listen to the instructions and make the choice on how they want to say hello right away while others who are more shy or resistant, will be scaffolded to meet the learning expectation.

In a middle school projects class, an advisor can teach student agency through the exercise of creating a driving question. Some students will only need her example to learn, while for others she will need more tools. She may offer students a template or graphic organizer to walk them through driving question development or she may model for students what it's like to make choices by offering a mind map.

In high school English, students fill up a big letter "I" with personal attributes, interests, learning challenges and skills. Adding to it throughout the year, students begin to understand themselves and evaluate their thinking. Advisor and student one-on-one conferences that model critical thinking through the use of sentence starters like "I wonder" or "I'm thinking" also help students experience what it sounds like to change their own thinking and move from dependence on the educator to reliance on their own abilities to take action and evaluate learning. These are important exercises in being empowered to take action and ownership of learning.

Utilizing metacognitive, connective language that encourages students to evaluate their thinking and learning is a third support for agency. These are vital in establishing relationships with students. Interest surveys, strength and growth area questionnaires, writing surveys and reading surveys get students thinking about their interests, strengths and challenges so they can identify ways they will participate in their learning. For example:

What Hinders Student Agency?

The two top hindrances are inflexible thinking and the inability to work outside of comfort zones.

The idea that we need to restrict students and simply tell them how to complete their outcomes is inflexible thinking. Educators cannot see themselves as the only driving force in a student's learning. They must accept that they are guides or advisors rather than instructors. Even the youngest students can make choices and take authentic action to complete their learning outcomes. But this requires educators to get out of the way and let the student drive the learning too.

When we re-design classrooms that allow students to learn in an environment that supports their individual needs, and when we give students the opportunity to choose their topics and then the power to act on how they will complete their work and show us mastery, we step out of the way and let students drive their learning. And when educators see themselves as advisors, counselors and mentors rather than instructors, students learn to take an active part in their learning and we achieve the dream of student agency.

For more, see:

Kate Bean is the founder/executive director of Aveson Charter Schools and the Personalized Mastery Learning Network. Follow her on Twitter: or ‏

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Student Agency: Creating An Integrated and Authentic K-12 Approach

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Student-centered learning. Student-driven education. Student voice and choice. These all describe student agency and the idea of creating an educational environment where students drive their learning alongside their teachers. The dream is that student agency creates an engaging, more empowering learning environment so learning is impactful and sustainable for a lifetime.

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Play–based learning (and inquiry) – supporting learner agency: Part 3

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What happens if a student asks to re-arrange the tables in a classroom? This article talks about a PYP teacher relinquishing control, standing back and allowing students to change everything.
Last year I reflected a lot on building our classroom community. It was a journey of trial and error and constant reflections with my students to see what was working well for us, and what needed changing. A moment that really stuck with me was when one of my students asked if we could move the tables, and when I relinquished control and dropped my plans for the afternoon, the results were magical.

After this past year's experience, I knew that I wanted my next year's class to start the year in this way, making the big decisions about how the room is organized and structured.

The students were confused and excited to enter a classroom where nothing was unpacked or arranged. We began by discussing what we wanted from our space and how we could best begin making changes. One member of our classroom community suggested splitting into groups and drawing plans, and everybody was on board. Taking a step back to watch them collaborate as they discussed and sketched their ideas was wonderful! It was the most collaborative spirit I had ever seen in them.

I loved how much they were valuing and respecting each other's opinions as they made informal presentations explaining their bird's eye drawings in detail. The ideas they came up with were much more creative than what I would have planned for the space and they carefully thought about all the areas that they thought were important, and justified why they thought this. As an example, I chose to get rid of my big teacher's desk but many of the groups felt passionate that there should be a small desk designated as the teacher's space and explained the reasons they thought the desk was important. Another group creatively decided that we should have one silent library area and another 'chatty library' where one could read with a partner.

Once we heard everybody's ideas, I left it to them to decide what to do next. Somebody suggested choosing different parts of the plans they all seemed to like, so they voted on each section of the classroom to see which plan was best for that section (for example, library, tables, carpet area, big plant, etc.). I gently guided and mostly watched as they stitched together a 'Frankenstein' plan using different parts of different groups until they had all the spaces they wanted planned out. I noticed what I thought would be a couple of potential issues with their plan, but kept quiet to see what would happen.

They then worked as teams to set up the space following the plan. They designated leaders of each team and had people responsible for carrying out different parts of the classroom, from organizing the library into genres, arranging the tables and chairs, to deciding what information the wall spaces should contain.

Over the next couple of weeks they continued to reflect, identify issues and modify their designs; identifying for example, that the interesting table structure they originally planned did not quite work out. They nurtured, cared for and maintained the space in a way that they would not have done if they were not part of the process. It was an invaluable start to building our classroom community and not only were they setting the space up, but it also gave me a chance to take a step back and observe some of their skills: collaboration, problem solving, organization and measuring skills are a few. Having the students take charge of this process was so powerful and although the space was not automatically perfect, it was theirs.

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Liz Evans is a British teacher working in a multi-lingual language immersion school in California which is an IB candidate school. Currently working in 5th grade and coordinating math and design, she has a keen interest in promoting learner agency in and outside the classroom. She records her reflections on her blog and tweets from the classroom @_lizevans.

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What happens if a student asks to re-arrange the tables in a classroom? This article talks about a PYP teacher relinquishing control, standing back and allowing students to change everything. Last year I reflected a lot on building our classroom community.

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This article talks about Primary Years Programme students inquiring into the p hysical and virtual public spaces. As part of their action, students chose to design the mother tongue space for the library.
The beauty of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) is the empowerment of students during their learning journey and also as a result of their learning. P6 students (8-9 years old) started their academic year by inquiring into the central idea Physical and virtual public spaces provide people with opportunities to make connections and establish a sense of community under the transdisciplinary theme How we organize ourselves.

During the unit of inquiry, students differentiated between physical and virtual spaces and identified the importance, need and purpose for each. They looked at different public spaces in the school and brainstormed several ideas to redesign a space for the learning and teaching community. Some of these ideas included improving the design of the PYP field, the breakout space outside the P6 classrooms and the PYP library.

The students chose to redesign the PYP library by adding a home and family languages section. The teachers and PYP coordinator ensured that students were off to a successful start in their journey by involving experts in the field of architecture and design from our community, and arranging visits to different libraries in the city.

Students visited the Atelier D'Arts & Architecture firm to understand how the idea of a physical space develops from the concept of a virtual space. The architecture firm conducted a design workshop where students were mentored to design the space and shelving for the home and family languages library section. Students came back enriched with knowledge and ideas for their library. The mathematics focus on shape and space for the unit of inquiry enabled them to apply their knowledge to design this section of the library. Students continued to brainstorm additional ideas in the classroom, then worked on a plan and created a second and third draft.

Next, they visited the British Council Library and the Alliance Française to see how the libraries were organized. After their return, students reflected on the overall design, including furniture and arrangement of books in the two libraries, compared them to their PYP library and incorporated a few more ideas into their plan. During the design process, students looked at their peers' plans and gave each other feedback and suggestions for improvement. They were enthusiastic, cooperative and collaborative during the task and used persuasive language to convince others in their groups to include their ideas in the plan. The students' final designs included a description of the space in the library they have chosen for home and family languages section as well as detailed illustrations of furniture with measurements.

For the summative assessment, students presented their final designs, explained why their design was suitable for the PYP students and assessed the other groups using a rubric.

Creativity was evident throughout the unit of inquiry. Some of the ideas for the library included a tree book shelf, a cozy section with stuffed toys, bean bags and synthetic grass carpet, lower book shelves with different flag colours and a colourful caterpillar shelf for different language books.

We have now completed our first unit of inquiry, but action is ongoing and the students are eager to see their virtual designs transformed into reality.

It is great to see students enthusiastically take ownership of their learning.
Syeda Hafsa Quadri is a primary teacher at Stonehill International School, Bangalore, India and have taught in PYP schools for 5 years. She is passionate about inquiry-based teaching and learning and constructivist methodologies that empower students to make a difference in the global world. You can follow her on Twitter

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This article talks about Primary Years Programme students inquiring into the p hysical and virtual public spaces. As part of their action, students chose to design the mother tongue space for the library. The beauty of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) is the empowerment of students during their learning journey and also as a result of their learning.

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This article is based on an example of listening to learning within a pre-kindergarten classroom and how teachers tuning into student voices helped to shape the direction of our inquiry into the transdisciplinary theme of 'How we express ourselves'.
Within our school in Suzhou, China, our pre-kindergarten learners shine brightly as leaders in their quest for understanding and experts in their play. As a co-teaching partnership, my colleague Anna and I understand that often our job is to listen to learning and to take our cues from what we hear.

As we began our inquiry into the central idea that "imagination extends our ability to think, create and express ourselves", Anna and I were supervising outside morning play and talking about how to get started. What provocations might we set up? What stories might we share? As we were talking, a most extraordinary thing was taking place, not five feet from us. One of our students had bent down in concentration, another had joined, and another, until a little group huddled closely, and the buzz of their excitement was reaching us. As I approached, one of our students exclaimed: "Look! Look what we found! It is a blanket from a fairy!" The "blanket" was a golden sweet wrapper, cradled carefully in the hands of a 4-year-old child. As I examined this treasure, our students began to add to the fabric of the tale. "There must be a fairy house nearby! Where could it be?", said one learner. "I hope the fairy is not cold without her blanket!", add another one. Little voices erupted around Anna and I, brimming with excitement and ready to seek out magic.

In The learner in the enhanced PYP communication, it is said that "agency is present when students partner with teachers and members of the learning community to take charge of what, where, why, with whom and when they learn" (IB, 2017). Student agency is supported when teachers marry the interests, talents and skills of the children to the inquiry. Samuellson (2008) notes that play, initiated by children, is often separate to learning, initiated by the adults around them. Within the early learning framework of the PYP, there is a strong case to be made for teachers leveraging students' play and making it the foundation of inquiry, enhancing the status of play and celebrating the competency of children.

Immediately, we realized that the provocation we were seeking had come straight from the perspective and imagination of our learners. Immediately we sought books about fairies from the school library. Supporting our line of inquiry, which was to bring stories we read, share and know to life, we became consumers of fairy mythology. Designing clothes and homes, making beds and blankets, we gave life to our theory of fairies in our playground through shared belief. We naturally began to explore our second line of inquiry, imaginative use of everyday materials, as we played and built.

That evening, I painted a small fairy door and hung it on one of the trees. The next day at play, a shriek of excitement told Anna and I that it had been found. We began to sketch fairies, talk about who might live behind the door, and whether we could only see it now because the fairies knew we believed in them. When the fairies sent us a letter with ingredients for a magical potion, we mixed the ingredients and began to wonder if a small fairy school existed behind the door, where making potions and flying lessons were taught. Students talked, played, drew, sculpted and danced their ideas of what magic might exist around us. We effortlessly explored our final line of inquiry, which was different ways to express ideas.

It may be said that often times, we unpack our central ideas through looking at the words on a page or through a conversation without context. Had Anna and I ignored the voices beside us that fateful day in the playground, we could have had a very different inquiry. Our lesson that day was that the possibilities for magic and wonder that exist when we listen, trust and follow the leads of our students is simply phenomenal.
References:
Pramling Samuelsson, I. & Asplund Carlsson, M. 2008. "The Playing Learning Child: Towards a Pedagogy of Early Childhood". Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 52, issue 6.

Primary Years Programme. The Learner in the enhanced PYP. December 2017. http://blogs.ibo.org/sharingpyp/files/2017/12/2017-December-The-Learner.pdf
Niamh Price is from Ireland and has been teaching for ten years. She has been a pre-kindergarten teacher at Suzhou-Singapore International School in Suzhou, China for 6 years. Prior to this, Niamh enjoyed 4 years of teaching and working with children and families in different areas of Dublin, Ireland. Niamh holds a Masters degree in Drama in Education, with a research specialization in play and creativity in the early years classroom. She believes in the importance of establishing relationships with every student who crosses the threshold of her classroom and is committed to finding out not just what each child can do, but who they are. Creating environments that invite beauty, curiosity and collaboration is an essential feature of her practice.

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Listening to learning: Agency in the early years

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This article is based on an example of listening to learning within a pre-kindergarten classroom and how teachers tuning into student voices helped to shape the direction of our inquiry into the transdisciplinary theme of 'How we express ourselves'.

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This article illustrates the importance of listening to students' voices and the powerful learning that can happen when allowing them take the lead. Planning for inquiry
As we made our way through the first year of our Primary Years Programme (PYP) journey, teachers at Summerhill International School shifted their focus from planning a unit of inquiry with their teams to a collaborative process that included the learners' voices in the planner.
Listening to the students' voices
Our five-year-old class was exploring the central idea, Members of a community can cooperate to achieve their common goals under the transdisciplinary theme How we organize ourselves. During circle time, the students discovered that their teacher had gotten engaged during the break and were excited to hear about her wedding plans. Upon hearing that their teacher had not yet had the time to plan for her wedding, one learner said, "It's ok; we can help you plan". Everyone was very excited about that idea and the Wedding Project was born.
Letting students lead

One way of thinking of learner agency is when learners have the 'power to act'. When learners move from being passive recipients to being much more active in the learning process, and actively involved in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.
~ Derek Wenmoth, CORE Education 10 Trends

The students started by thinking about what they needed to plan for the wedding. As they started to share their ideas, they decided that they needed some way to record and remember their thoughts. They recorded their ideas on cards and stuck them on the wall. A system to organize all the ideas and everyone's roles and responsibilities soon emerged as the students were readying to put their ideas into action. After a group discussion, the students decided to organize their ideas into categories and delegate who would be doing what.

As they got started, they began to take on roles within their wedding plan. The students negotiated their responsibilities with their friends, managed their own materials, and then chose a space to store their on-going project. They also used the calendar to manage their own time by counting how many days were left until the wedding party.
Putting it all together
After all of the wedding preparations for the bride, the students turned their attention to the ceremony and celebration events. They had decided that since they would not be able to attend the actual wedding, they would have a class wedding party with their teacher. This launched a new query into how people celebrate their weddings. The children took on roles as wedding planners by planning and organizing the schedule of events, the guest list, what to wear, and how to set up and decorate the room. They even found a way to make sure that the groom was present at the wedding!
What we learned
Throughout this unit, we witnessed the power of learner agency when we involve students in the planning process. Both students and teachers learned a great deal during this inquiry. With reflective dialogue the teachers realized the power of following the students' lead and how empowering this is when students have ownership over the direction of the inquiry, and are truly invested in what is going on. As teachers became more comfortable with the capacity of young learners to steer the inquiry, the depth and quality of the inquiry rose substantially.

At the beginning of our PYP journey, we tried to plan for student-led inquiry by filling in all the boxes in the planner without leaving room for the learners' voices in the planning. As a school that is new to the IB Primary Years Programme, we felt comfort in knowing that the unit was planned for and in a sense, "completed" before we began the learning. Now we have shifted our thinking to a having a planner that starts off with just a few good provocations and an inviting environment. This means that there is space for children's ideas in the planner. Student-led inquiry can only happen when we listen to and honor the children's ideas and take the time to plan the unit together.

Reference:

Wenmoth, D. (2014) "Ten trends 2014: Agency ". Edtalks. http://edtalks.org/#/video/ten-trends-2014-agency
Jenny Yan is the PYP Coordinator at Summerhill International School, and IB candidate school. She has been a PYP educator for seven years and is passionate about supporting the development of critical and creative thinking in learners.

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Supporting learner agency in the early years

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This article illustrates the importance of listening to students' voices and the powerful learning that can happen when allowing them take the lead. Planning for inquiry As we made our way through the first year of our Primary Years Programme (PYP) journey, teachers at Summerhill International School shifted their focus from planning a unit of inquiry with their teams to a collaborative process that included the learners' voices in the planner.

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This article talks about the journey of a Primary Years Programme (PYP) exhibition and the role of student agency in designing inquiry and research.
As the IB rolled out a PYP enhancement about learner agency, the grade 5 team at International School of Tanganyika thought about how to incorporate agency into our PYP exhibition. Unpacking the understanding of agency and thinking about its implication in this major event in the life of a fifth grader was a challenge.

Our first step was to break out of our preexisting notions of group dynamics and setting an expectation that each student would eventually work in a group. As the grade level central idea "Through our interests we can gain a deeper understanding of what matters in our community" was rolled out, the students were asked to inquire into an interest that they would like to learn more about. The enthusiasm to inquire into what they were genuinely passionate about paved way for more choices about the nature of groupings. At this stage, teachers chose to step back and let the students take charge. Students made choices about what they wanted to focus on after a few weeks of research and narrowing down their choices, which authentically led to forming groups based on common interests.

Choices of topics ranged from conventional ones like deforestation, gender equality, recycling, poaching and endangered sea life to more unconventional topics like guitar, mathematics and chronic kidney disorders. After an initial engagement with the grade wide central idea, students crafted their own central ideas based on their interests, developed concept questions and made choices about the transdisciplinary theme under which to place their inquiries. A focus on three key concepts drove the inquiry deeper. Some students decided to branch off from their umbrella group into working independently on ideas that excited them.

To combat the challenge of providing mentor support for each group/individual, the fifth-grade team decided to try a 'floating mentor' system. This enabled the mentors to visit classes and support various groups/individuals in the allocated times. Traditionally our school had allocated a mentor to each group, but with more flexibility this year, the mentors were able to support the groups/individuals that were hungry for "more". This model provided more time and efficiency to be able to scaffold the learners based on their needs.

Learner agency was gradually taking shape and students were more in control of their learning. It was exciting, yet unnerving at times for us as we sometimes struggled to see what the "end product" was going to look like. It was truly amazing to see students taking on their learning and demonstrating the approaches to learning as PYP learners. The power of student agency was on display. Teachers now have a better understanding of learner agency beyond its literal meaning as we got real life professional development from our "learners".

One of the students reflected on the process and commented that "During the exhibition I displayed self-management, commitment and independence. I learned that I was often asked the questions in the group and I often felt like the leader in the group. But with this position comes responsibilities, because lots of people are counting on you."

Designing an inquiry into personal interests was definitely successful and we hope to continue being able to enable students' choices about areas of interest. As the PYP enhancements are released next school year, we feel more and more excited to take on the role of learner agency into all areas of curriculum development.
Rehana Jasani has been a PYP practitioner for over 13 years. She is a PYP workshop leader, school visits team member and a PYP consultant. She currently teaches grade 5 at International School of Tanganyika, Tanzania. Prior to this, she was a PYP coordinator for 7 years at Aga Khan Schools, Dar-es-Salaam. Rehana is a lifelong learner who is passionate about inquiry based learning and believes in empowering students to take action as part of their learning. You can follow her on Twitter @Rehanajasani.

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This article talks about the journey of a Primary Years Programme (PYP) exhibition and the role of student agency in designing inquiry and research. As the IB rolled out a PYP enhancement about learner agency, the grade 5 team at International School of Tanganyika thought about how to incorporate agency into our PYP exhibition.