By: Melissa Emler

This month's theme brings us full circle. In September, our newsletter and community of practice meeting explored the concept of expert learner. Creating expert learners is the goal of UDL.

This month, we'll dig into learner agency and inquiry. Agency is a term used in education, and like many other terms we use, it is not clearly defined. I'll provide several working definitions of agency, but what is likely more important is understanding how agency relates to Universal Design for Learning.

Here's the tldr (too long didn't read).

The goal of UDL is to create expert learners, and expert learners have agency.

According to Getting Smart, “Student agency is when students of their own volition initiate actions that support their learning within the context of their learning environment. It is fostered through engagement, intrinsic motivation, and relatedness. Agency is a critical goal in its own right in preparing students for career and life, but is also made of building blocks that in and of themselves lead to deeper learning.”

The Raikes Foundation in a study commissioned by Harvard University's Achievement Gap Initiative in 2015 said, "Student agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative."

Albert Bandura contributed to Social Cognitive Theory with his writing of An Agentic Perspective. In his writing about agency, he claims that to have agency means for people to be the originators of experiences with intentionality, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. John Holt says, “The spirit of independence in learning is one of the most valuable assets a learner can have, and we who want to help children’s learning at home or in school, must learn to respect and encourage it [learner independence]."

In all my studying of learner agency, I have come to believe that a learner with agency to act is engaged and driven to learn more. Often people confuse learner agency with having choice and voice, but true learner agency is deeper than that. Learners with agency co-construct learning experiences with adults. Learners determine what they want to learn more about and adults support them in co-constructing a path to that learning.

Some worry that environments rich with student agency lead to a complete free for all among learners. Teachers worry about not having the skills to "manage a classroom" when all the learners are doing their own thing. That doesn't need to be the case. Katie Martin, VP of Leadership and Learning at Altitude Learning, has this to say in response to the fear of a free for all learning environment, "Agency is by definition the power to act, but this doesn’t have to be misconstrued as a free for all. We all operate within constraints but we don’t have to all do things the same way to reach the intended learning targets and goals."

Creating expert learners is the goal of Universal Design for Learning. Expert learners are purposeful and motived, resourceful and knowledgable, strategic and goal-directed. Ultimately, expert learners will thrive in agency-rich environments. Agency is not something that can be given to students. Agency is developed over time in the conditions that support it.

When your school or district commits to Universal Design for Learning, ultimately you're committing to creating expert learners who have learner agency.

Be sure to check out the resources below to explore more about learner agency. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

By: Michelle Ring-Hanson, CESA 7 and JoAnn Miller, CESA 8

Developing expert learners, the ultimate goal of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is an intentional pursuit that hinges on the ability of teachers to design learning, not just plan lessons. Expert learners defined by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) are purposeful and motivated, resourceful and knowledgeable, as well as strategic and goal-directed. Actually, student agency lives at the heart of expert learners. Simply put, designing for student agency is intentional work necessary to the development of expert learners.

In the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Teach. Learn. Grow. education blog, How to build student agency in your classroom, Jacob Bruno describes student agency as “giving children the power to act in their own learning.” There are a variety of strategies that teachers can use to develop agency in their students. Let’s take a closer look at two essential strategies: voice and choice.

In our work as UDL coaches, we guide school teams through an implementation process that leverages two UDL practices aimed to foster student agency: learning goals and self-assessment. The main entry point into the UDL design process is to set clear, meaningful learning goals. As teachers develop learning goals, they can promote student agency by giving students voice in designing their learning options, co-creating their learning plan or pathway, and sharing their ideas or understanding of the goals. Designing for student voice positions students as stakeholders in their own learning.

Encouraging student agency through choice is another priority of UDL school implementation teams. As teachers design for learners that vary, giving students choice can mean giving them the opportunity to choose how they will learn and/or demonstrate their understanding of the content. Learning choices enable students to take ownership of their own learning process. When students understand through self-assessment that the method of learning has not been effective, they are able to choose an alternate mode of learning to move closer to the learning goal. Student agency though choice is only possible when the learning environment supports learners. The environment must allow students to know where they are in relation to the learning goal AND allows students to experiment with alternate choices when the current learning format is not resulting in productive learning.

With agency, learners know how to become purposeful and motivated; resourceful and knowledgeable; and strategic and goal directed. In other words, expert learners!

References

Bruno, J. (2021, October 28). How to build student agency in your classroom. NWEA. https://www.nwea.org/blog/2021/how-to-build-student-agency-in-your-classroom/

Green, C., & Harrington, C. (2020, September 1.) How implementing voice & choice can improve student engagement. Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute. https://michiganvirtual.org/blog/how-implementing-voice-choice-can-improve-student-engagement/

Shafer, L. (2016, August 18). Giving students a voice, five ways to welcome student input and bolster your school’s success. Harvard Graduate School of Education. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/16/08/giving-students-voice

The UDL guidelines. (n.d.). CAST. Retrieved March 30, 2022, from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

What is student agency. (n.d.). Renaissance EdWord™. Retrieved March 30, 2022, from https://www.renaissance.com/edwords/student-agency/

By: Mark Thompson, UDL Coach Sheboygan Falls

I vividly remember the first time I looked through the UDL Guidelines and checkpoints about eight years ago. I mean really looked through them, from top to bottom, I even clicked on them and read the

descriptions.

I began at the top with the accessibility layer and drifted my way down consciously measuring my classroom practices against the core elements of Universal Design for Learning. During those first glances through the top layer, I have to say I felt pretty good about myself, accessibility, check, check, check.

As my eyes wandered downward into the build layer my confidence began to falter a bit, got it, got it, maybe…

Reaching the bottom layer was unmooring akin to Chief Brody snapping upright when first being confronted by a problem fish that was much larger and more daunting than he expected (I tend to run into a lot of situations I feel unprepared for, and if I am being honest, this is the visual that torments me).

The parts of the internalize layer and the characteristics of an expert learner were so dependent on a classroom culture that fostered student agency that a bigger boat would simply not be adequate…to help students achieve those goals a complete redesign was necessary. To be blunt, I could see the value of those ideas, but I was completely unsure of how I might work to achieve them.

Coincidentally, soon after this, I began studying the C3 Framework for Social Studies curriculum work. The realization was not immediate, there was no eureka moment, but I began to see the connection between the agency being created for students in inquiry as well as the student agency that is at the heart of expert learning, and perhaps I felt a bit less confused about what a redesigned learning environment might look like.

Then about four years ago, I read Dive Into Inquiry by Trevor MacKenzie, and through his description of not only what inquiry might look like, but the classroom culture that fostered it my vision solidified. I suddenly felt like those important but daunting characteristics of an expert learner were achievable.

Every teacher’s UDL journey is unique, mine was a bit more of a drift back to shore buoyed by the pillars of Inquiry-Based Learning. I hope some of you might choose that same path to foster expert learning in your classroom (perhaps with a more apt analogy than Jaws, Encanto maybe?).

So instead of writing an article on the topic, I sat down (over Zoom) with Trevor MacKenzie, author of The Inquiry Mindset, Dive Into Inquiry, and Dive Into Inquiry: Assessment Edition and talked with him about expert learning, agency, and assessment in Inquiry-Based Learning and Universal Design.

Give it a listen!

Timeline of Our Conversation for your Convenience:

0:00-4:51 What is Inquiry-Based Learning? What does Trevor see as the connection between Inquiry-Based Learning and UDL? Curiosity-rich learning experiences, co-constructing and co-designing the pathways of learning. We close no doors to learning, provocation of interest.

4:51-9:50 How does Inquiry support the Expert Learning goal of students becoming more purposeful and motivated? The relevance of entry points, the power of conferencing/ feedback throughout the process, and not being the only expert in the room.

9:50-14:30 How does Inquiry support the Expert Learning goal of students becoming more resourceful and knowledgeable? Transparency over the resources we bring to the classroom, “What or who can guide us through the learning process?”, Importance of the how of learning, flex those learning muscles!

14:30-24:24 How does Inquiry support the Expert Learning goal of students becoming more strategic and goal-directed? Along with closing comments. What are learning competencies and dispositions that are important to the learner? The power of personalized learning goals, negotiable vs. non-negotiable aspects of learning. Provoking a shift in agency with students.