Student Agency
An Introduction to Student Agency
Our purpose:
Our overall purpose within Strategic Direction 2 of the 2018-2020 school plan was to build on the successful personalised learning strategy to create opportunities for all students to become educated adults, prepared for life at and beyond school with the capacity to demonstrate and articulate their strengths, their own learning and their dispositions using new ways of knowing, doing and being. The purpose of the Student Agency PLLT was to provide opportunities for students to demonstrate dispositions and agency as active participants in their own learning. As a result of this approach, the team was able to collect evidence of increased self-efficacy in students.
Context- Why have we done this?
By working with the existing personalised learning platforms, the team collaborated with the Student Pathways PLLT to shift the trajectory of student learning through ownership, voice and agency. An extending partnership with the Capability Driven Assessment PLLT enhanced student learning through increasing their understanding of their ability to meet capability benchmarks with quality annotations accompanying approaches to assessment and achievement. Underpinning this work is the opportunity for students to lead, engage in and evaluate their own voice and agency in curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular contexts.
What is agency?
Learner Agency is the capacity of students to chart their own learning towards expertise in a chosen path, taking risks, investing in learning to attain their purposes, harnessing interests, and taking responsibility for the results attained1. Having agency means being able to build on personal and community experience and interests, in ways that count (Milligan et al. 2020).
What is Student Agency?
Student agency refers to the student attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions about school and learning that are associated with positive academic outcomes and school success. Student Agency provides opportunities for students to develop their capacity to articulate their strengths, their own learning and their dispositions. These non-cognitive skills or factors include students’ beliefs about themselves, their goals in school, their feelings of social belonging, and their self regulatory skills (Dweck, Walton, & Cohen, 2014)2. This definition also encouraged the team to consult the work of Barbara Bray (Bray, 2018)3on the continuum of student ownership that helps to shift education from teacher centred to learner driven.
How did Student Agency align with the School Plan?
SEF elements addressed: 1.4, 1.5
APST descriptors addressed: 1.1.4, 3.1.4, 4.2.4, 4.3.4, 5.4.4, 5.5.4
Evidence: There is evidence in documents, including academic reports and #MyLearningHub (achievement of capability and disposition benchmarks) that students understand and have taken a greater ownership of their own learning and assessment.
Practice: Students lead, engage in, evaluate and own their own learning by demonstrating voice and agency in curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular learning.
Key Performance Measures
A deep understanding and demonstration of new student centred ways of knowing, doing and being with:
100% of students have a My Learning Hub portfolio in which they have articulated their strengths, their skills and capabilities, their goals and their own personalised learning journey.
60% of students demonstrating each of the ACARA/NESA capability benchmarks by the end of Year 9.
60% of students demonstrating each of the RHHS signature disposition benchmarks by the time they transition from the school to work or further study in Years 10, 11 and 12.
Our “Theory of Practice”
Dr Russell Quaglia- Student Voice4
DoE Future Frontiers Analytical report,
The Melbourne Declaration
2018 Gonski 2.0 report Priority Two on ‘Equip every student to be a Creative, Connected and Engaged learner in a rapidly changing world’.
The original theory of practice was the work of Dr Russell Quaglia and the publication of his work on Student Voice. This was also made possible by the professional learning session facilitated by ACEL in which we could develop our skills and knowledge of student voice and how to facilitate this in the classroom. The PLLT group used three educational policies to frame the focus of the project and address the need to prepare our students for their present. The first was the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 2008)5 which encouraged successful learners who develop the capacity to learn and play an active role in their own learning. The second was the Through Growth to Achievement: The Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools6 report which recommended providing information that is more meaningful to students, parents and carers about individual achievement and learning growth to consider whether academic report writing processes could promote student agency. Finally, the Future Frontiers Analytical Report (Healy, Nicholson & Gahan, 2017)7 was consulted as it reflected on more innovative ways that schools can prepare students as active learners both now and into the future.
References:
1. Milligan, S., Luo, R., Kamei, T., Rice, S., and Kheang, T. (2020) Recognition of learning success for all: Ensuring trust and utility in a new approach to recognition of learning in senior secondary education in Australia. Learning Creates Australia, Melbourne, Victoria.
2. Dweck, C. S., Walton, G. M., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Academic Tenacity: Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
3. Bray, B. (2018). Development of Ownership: From Compliance to Autonomy | Rethinking Learning. [online] Barbarabray.net, viewed 18 May 2018, https://barbarabray.net/2018/02/10/continuum-of-ownership-developing-autonomy/
4. Quaglia, R.J. and Corso, M.J., 2014. Student voice: The instrument of change. Corwin Press.
5. Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. (2008). Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young. Melbourne: Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_declaration_on_the_educational_goals_for_young_australians.pdf
6. Department of Education and Training. (2018). ‘Through Growth to Achievement: The Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, viewed 6 December, 2018, https://www.education.gov.au/review-achieve-educational-excellence-australian-schools
7. Healy, J, Nicholson, D & Gahan, P. 2017, The future of work in Australia: anticipating how new technologies will reshape labour markets, occupations and skill requirements, Future frontiers analytical report, NSW Department of Education, Sydney, viewed 18 May 2018, .https://education.nsw.gov.au/our-priorities/innovate-for-the-future/education-for-a-changing-world/research-findings/future-frontiers-analytical-report-the-future-of-work-in-australia.
An overview of the importance of Student Agency
Clare Melville and Linda Graham Co-PLLT Leaders discuss the implementation of their program and the progress they have achieved in Mid 2019.
Evaluating how much was done and how well it was done:
To build the capacity of staff to best support students in writing their own academic report comments, the Student Agency PLLT designed and delivered a professional development session at a highly accomplished level. This session was critical in defining and framing student agency for the school context and looking at shifting the ownership of learning and formative assessment to both teachers and students. This allowed the school to establish a clear and consistent understanding of why students should write their own academic report comments and the impact this would have on developing self-efficacy in students . As part of the learning process, teachers completed a pre-mortem activity on student academic reporting to use prospective hindsight to identify threats to the project’s success and develop strategies to address potential risks.
After the whole school session, staff were able to work collaboratively within their faculty context to develop faculty resources. Each faculty was able to develop a teaching and learning sequence with lesson plans and resources to support students in drafting, editing and refining their own report comments. Each faculty developed their own methodology for tracking student report comments before being imported into Sentral for printing and distribution to parents and carers. These academic report comments were published in semester 2, 2018 and indicate a shift in the report writing practice.
In the first year of development, over 95% of students in Stage 4 and 5 took ownership of their learning through co-constructing academic reports with their classroom teachers. These academic reports utilised teacher feedback to comment on individual learning growth, achievement whilst also setting goals to improve learning into the future. Published academic report comments, when analysed, indicated a reflection on assessment approaches and how they may impact individual achievement. In 2019, staff and students were surveyed and indicated growth and progress in the academic report writing process using a perception survey. Analysis of academic report comments and student PLPs for links to evidence and the use of SMART annotation principles
In every semester since the first prototype was put into place, students have published their academic report comments. For year 7 students, a specialised information session is held at the start of term 2 to introduce students to the process and how they will work with teachers to write and publish their first set of comments.
Impact and Evaluation Poster
