Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves

Trend 1: Learner Agency Explanation The concept of agency has been central to educational thinking and practice for centuries. The idea that education is the process through which learners become capable of independent thought which, in turn, forms the basis for autonomous action, has had a profound impact on modern educational theory and practice. Learner Voice Demonstrates Commitment to Building Agency Learner voice gives learners a chance to share their opinions about something they believe in. There are so many aspects of "school" and "learning" where learners have not been given the opportunity to be active participants. Some learners, especially those that are concerned about extrinsic factors like grades, may not feel comfortable expressing their own opinions. Giving learners voice encourages them to participate in and eventually to own and drive their learning.

Learner Agency: The Missing Link A collaborative blog series by Personalize Learning, LLC and the Institute for Personalized Learning. This is the first post in our collaborative blog series on Learner Agency. Defining Learner Agency Learner agency often gets missed in conversations on transforming the educational system. Learner agency / Teaching What is learner agency? Agency is having the power or capacity to act and make choices.In a learner-centred environment, learners have agency over their learning and classroom systems serve the needs and interests of the learner.Future-focused learning in connected communities, May 2014 Agency involves the initiative or self-regulation of the learner. Learners must have a belief that their behaviour and their approach to learning will make a difference for them in their learning context – in other words, a personal sense of agency. Agency is interdependent.

Leadership, well-being and trust in the PYP - International Baccalaureate® 14 January 2020 Join Rynette de Villiers, Head of School at the International School of Utrecht in the Netherlands where she discusses leading an IB continuum school and developing a culture of well-being and trust - with a focus on teacher agency. "These are the wonder years...students wonder and they think about what the world is like and...they are really, really idealist. They know they can change the world. Living with Agency I believe we are living exciting times with regards to education. With the arrival of our new buzz word ‘Agency’ we are seeing educators give more value and recognition to the voice, choice and ownership of our students. Surely this should have always been good practice, but now it has a name, ‘Agency’. With this seemingly ‘new dawn’, I see bright days ahead for the education of our Students. But what do we really mean by ‘Agency’?

Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide (*) September 1993 Why and How to Let Students Decide By Alfie Kohn Defining Learner Agency There is a significant and growing demand for learners to be able to do more than receiving instruction, follow a learning path designed by educators and complete problems and assignments presented to them by an adult. Learners need to develop the capacity to shape and manage their learning without over-reliance on the direction and control of others. Too often adults treat children as though they are incapable of making decisions or holding valid opinions. As children advance through the system, they develop a form of “learned helplessness” that keeps them from advocating for themselves. The process for learning and the role learners play must be different than most adults experienced.

Student Agency: Creating An Integrated and Authentic K-12 Approach By Kate Bean 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. It’s Time for Student Agency to Take Center Stage By Marie Bjerede and Michael Gielniak, Ph.D Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap defines the modern workplace as an environment that no longer calls for compliant workers who wait to be told what to do, who believe that collaborating is cheating or who hoard information believing it to be power. Instead he describes the need for creative critical thinkers who solve problems and share information with others.

The Intersection of Critical Thinking and Student Agency By Jenny Pieratt The desire to foster critical thinking in our students is nothing new to the field of education; in fact the ambition to teach humans to think deeply dates back to early thinkers such as Aristotle, who once said: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” As we push further into the 21st century we have rekindled the aspiration to develop critical thinkers who can solve complex problems and make changes. Longitudinal studies have confirmed our fears that critical thinking as an “intellectual and practical skill seems to be a skill that the majority of students coming into higher education and the workforce are not only lacking in function, but also in understanding what the concept is.”

What is Agentic Learning and Why is it Important? By Marie Bjerede and Michael Gielniak, PhD The word agentic is described as an individual’s power to control his or her own goals actions and destiny. It stems from the word agency, which Webster’s Dictionary defines as the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power. In the late 1980s, Stanford University Psychologist Albert Bandura began developing a theory of social cognition that he associated with self-efficacy. The Willpower Gap - Misinterpreting Student Agency There is something about how people learn that involves a balance of activeness vs passiveness, self-direction vs micro-management, ownership vs compliance, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Something based in interest and engagement and basic psychological needs such as autonomy, mastery and relatedness. Something that leads to curiosity, creativity and thriving. It is something that is all too often lost in translation. I write a great deal about student agency, by which I mean when students of their own volition extend the learning experience. This could mean exploring further in a topic area than required by an assignment, getting up on a Saturday to work on a project just because it’s compelling, learning something outside of school such as video editing, suggesting a new way to demonstrate mastery, or any of a number of other acts.