Fostering Learner Agency through Hybrid Teaching

Callum MacLeod - Sancta Maria Primary School

I am passionate about lifelong learning, forever looking for new opportunities to enhance my teaching and student engagement, as well as learn new methods of classroom practice. Since graduating in 2020 with a Masters degree in teaching and learning, I have been committed to the teaching of Year 5 and 6 at Sancta Maria Catholic Primary.

In this inquiry, I would like to build learner agency in any environment. Giving students the opportunity to grow their learning at their own pace and on their own motivation. As a teacher in an ILE, I recognise the importance for students to have the resources and lessons necessary at their disposal online. So that they can advance their learning when they aren't with their teacher. A skill that will carry them well throughout their lives. 

Some notes from the brainstorm:

Students are very savvy with using technology on their devices that they bring for learning, they use Seesaw, Google Sites and Google Drive within the classroom. They are able to create and follow instructions clearly, although get lost in their interpretations of text instructions. Which is where the need for further help arises. Routines have been set up so that they know what to do when they get started in the classroom for lessons. 

However, students will switch off when they are doing their own tasks, they will be given instructions and options of what to complete but will often do bare minimum and spend time playing games on their devices, switching back when teachers are looking. We want to encourage them to work well in their independent learning, enhancing their agency. 

We will survey them using the Agency and self-efficacy questions provided by Andrew, this should give us a gauge of where they are currently at with their levels of self-efficacy. Also as I am using a matrix which involves six tasks a week, I will use a quantitative measure of how many tasks were attempted, with a scale of how well they were attempted (e.g. getting the task correct might be worth the same as a good effort). 

For qualitative data, I will pull out children on my release days and question them about the effectiveness of the process. I will keep the questions consistent and target them towards gauging their self-efficacy and agency. 

A problem is that students do not know how to use their devices for learning, they still rely on their teachers to provide them with the necessary information for their learning. If they do not know what to do, they do not have the drive to figure it out alone or from their previous lessons. This is potentially due to their learning and teaching not being entirely available online. 

The purpose of this inquiry is to foster learner agency through hybrid teaching for year 6 mathematics students. 

Most of the evidence gathered (work submissions, standard classroom practice), points towards the notion that the class doesn’t know how to efficiently use their device for learning. They are distracted and often unmotivated (poor self-efficacy and grit) in learning this way. 

This is the first year that a lot of them have been using devices for learning, however they all use devices for games and communication outside school, they are proficient but need to focus their attention?

Need to consider that they won’t be learning with encouragement from the teacher at all stages in their life so I need to promote the need and give them the tools to learn on their own (hybrid learning) as well as in the class from their teachers. 

We want to see children using their devices for learning because we are providing the learning online. Rather than just using their devices as a means of sharing work, they can use them for gathering information that they may not have learnt in class (if they weren’t there) and recapping lessons that they have already received to cement their knowledge. 

We want to see advancements in the agency and self-efficacy of students across year 5 and 6 students in their first experience with an ILE. To do this, we have selected a group of 3 students from each of our Whanau classes to be evaluated on their literacy performance, a total of 9 students as the measured group.

Students were chosen to be surveyed based on their answers to a focusing survey (which was given to the class), which asked a variety of general questions on agency. Of the students that responded, these responses came through as the least confident among the class. From the less confident responses, students were chosen. 

Looking at the data from the surveys earlier (namely graph 3), it seems that perhaps, alongside their visible distraction by other aspects of their devices, these students also are not capable of learning efficiently because they cannot plan their time on their devices effectively. They cannot make and set goals for themselves to achieve in this aspect of learning. 

Solid belief across the team that learning should be as accessible as possible. The devices should pave the way for easier learning rather than making it harder for the children to focus. 

Children need guidance in maintaining focus and learning how to make the right choices in their digital learning. 

One of the changes we have talked about implementing as a team is the use of Hapara in our classroom. This will let us keep an eye on what the children are working on during class time, as well as giving us the ability to control their devices if need be. 

This would take away their agency however, so is this the right decision to make in the long run if the class is trying to learn how to persevere? 

Hapara will be used, but only as another tool that can enable online learning. It will also serve as a good way of measuring who is on task during classes, and how much time is spent being on task which should come in very handy during Term 3 in this inquiry. 

We have talked about the possibility of going into rewindable learning, or even a flipped learning environment that would make the most of their devices. 

With the WST Understanding Agency team, we talked about the potential for getting children to record these lessons themselves once they have mastered a skill, essentially teaching their juniors in a tuakana/teina relationship and cementing their knowledge through practical use of their skills. 

Powerpoint Presentation for my learning and progress summary so far, available here.

Hapara has taken the place of Seesaw as the go-to place for students to find their beginning tasks. The students initially put up a bit of a fuss about it, partly because they are so used to Seesaw as the place for their learning and partly because it is unfamiliar at the moment.

 Hapara grants additional possibilities, a place to add clear goals for the class, a resource bank, and a rubric section for each Workspace of online learning. Meaning that all of the expectations and instructions can be set up and attached to each ongoing assignment. Making it easy to set the consistent beginning format and giving students the opportunity to see how to go about achieving this.