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This article provides tips and cites research re: agency.

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Agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative-the opposite of helplessness. Young people with high levels of agency do not respond passively to their circumstances; they tend to seek meaning and act with purpose to achieve the conditions they desire in their own and others' lives.
A new Harvard study , sponsored by the Raikes Foundation , suggests that student agency may be as important an outcome of schooling as basic skills.

The report, The Influence of Teaching Beyond Standardized Test Scores: Engagement, Mindsets, and Agency , relies on the Tripod survey of teaching. Over 300,000 students in grades six to nine in 14 states were surveyed during the 2013-14 school year.

Developed by Ron Ferguson 15 years ago, the Tripod construction appears more relevant to traditional teacher-centered classrooms than student-centered approaches. As a result, there are some limitations of an instrument designed for measuring agency in low agency environments. However, next generation Bay Area models including Summit Public Schools and Education for Change (EFC) find the survey useful.

"Where this report is effective is in pushing us to think about agency in the context of what grown-ups have to do to facilitate it," said Hae-Sin Thomas, CEO of EFC. "Tripod unfortunately is not a tool designed specifically to evaluate teacher practice specific to agency, but it's as good as it gets with respect to student surveys and student-centered teacher practice."

An important subset of Habits of Success ( discussed last week ), agency, the capacity and propensity to take purposeful action, is key to success in life.

Albert Bandura said:

Through agentic action, people devise ways of adapting flexibly to remarkably diverse geographic, climatic and social environments; they figure out ways to circumvent physical and environmental constraints, redesign and construct environments to their liking... By these inventive means, people improve their odds in the fitness survival game.

Hitlin and Elder suggest four overlapping conceptions of agency:

Existential agency: The capacity, or free will, for exerting influence on our environments.

Programmatic agency: Following rules and routines.

Identify agency: What we believe about ourselves and the ways that we wish to be perceived by others.

Life-course agency: Actions that we take to affect future outcomes.

10 Guidelines for Teaching

The Influence of Teaching report makes 10 suggestions for teaching.

More Than Teaching

The report logic map is shown below. It suggests that teachers and family assets play a major role in support agency development.

The central question explored by this report is, "How do distinct components of teaching influence the development and expression of agency-related factors in sixth to ninth grade classrooms?"

A more useful question, given advances in tools and schools in the last 15 years, would be, "How do distinct components of learner experience influence the development and expression of agency?" In particular, factors related to learning models, progressions, and environments appear critical to promoting or damaging agency.

A useful complement to this report is exploring how new models, like NGLC grantees, promote agency through:

Blended learning environments where students have some ability to co-create path, pace, and place;

Competency-based learning environments where students show what they know and progress based on demonstrated mastery;

Project-based and interest-based learning where students have some ability to shape the driving question, the process, and the work product; and

Work and service learning experience that students select or create.

The report completely misses model-based factors which are becoming at least as important as teacher factors. The difference between a Summit or EFC secondary school and a big bad high school is everything. There are certainly differences in teacher quality, but it's one of a dozen model factors (e.g., mission, schedule, structure, advisory, technology blend, learning trajectories, and real world connections).

The report dumps a lot in teacher's laps but most of them are stuck in an obsolete low agency model that infantilizes teenagers rather than empowering them to own their learning.

Every high agency secondary school I have visited has had some kind of an advisory structure . The sustained relationship with a caring adult that sets the cultural tone, is part of a distributed guidance system, and provides continuous feedback on success habits is every bit as important as classroom instruction in developing student agency.

Agency development isn't just a product of quality teaching, it's the product of a quality system-one designed as a high agency environment.

Hae-Sin Thomas said, "It's definitely time to take this conversation around agency to a deeper level- what are the components of agency, how do we measure those components, how do we map those components to specific practices, conditions or attitudes and then how do we measure those specific to building agency."

For more see:
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Agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative-the opposite of helplessness. Young people with high levels of agency do not respond passively to their circumstances; they tend to seek meaning and act with purpose to achieve the conditions they desire in their own and others' lives.

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The PAACC from Blended Learning in Action

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The PAACC from Blended Learning in Action

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Applying blended learning to the classrom

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Applying blended learning to the classrom

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About using Kahoot.it in class

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the cognitive difference between inking and typing

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the cognitive difference between inking and typing

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Studies on effectiveness of digital learning tools.

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Students becoming more engaged.

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New ways to engage teachers in this work.

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New ways to engage teachers in this work.

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The teachers response to blended learning

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The teachers response to blended learning

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Students not keeping with how to use the tool.

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Preparing students for a digital world

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Aligning teach practice to resources for increased student centered learning 

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Aligning teach practice to resources for increased student centered learning 

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having the right equipment, wasting time bc of bad wifi, controlling for hurtful (bullying) student chat

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having the right equipment, wasting time bc of bad wifi, controlling for hurtful (bullying) student chat