A team of teachers, teacher leaders and school leaders came together, on July 26th2018, at Westgarth Primary School to share their experiences and wonderings around Learner Agency. The range of experience and passions in this area varied, from the appreciation of an inquiry pedagogy to surfacing and embedding learner agency in order to have growth in literacy outcomes, or so that creativity thrives. Whatever the lens that the members of the three schools have, there was a common aspiration to ‘create a culture of learning where learners have the agency to thrive and grow.’
Wales Street leaders shared their emphasis of learner agency being around the pedagogy with a literacy lens. They are seeking clarity around what does it look like on the ground level. Some groups in the school are exploring learner agency in a writing context. Currently rubrics for writing are being co-created with students. These rubrics have led to being part of the 3-way student conference scaffolds. The school noted this has helped translate their focus on learner agency seamlessly to parents, supported by regular newsletters articles about the benefits of this direction. The leaders are wondering if the learner agency layer could not be seen as ‘an add on’ but more of a surface and reveal concept?
Westgarth shared their focus using the Victorian Curriculum. They have refined the language in the framework as ‘I can’ statements in English and Maths. The students use these statements to reflect on and set goals. Assessment maps have been created and are supported by unnamed samples of learning from students. The impacts they are noticing are: improvements in students knowing where they are at and the next stage for me and the learning is more visible. Teachers are seeing students take care in editing their work and their learning goals are more accurate. Plus, the students are talking to others and are more curious about others ideas. The students are enthusiastic because they can see growth and have a real sense of achievement. One teacher stated “they like to track and see what is next… this warms my heart.” There are visuals to prompt and remind but are personalised not there just for the sake of it (white noise).
Ironically, both teachers were exploring the same idea of students tracking their learning but in different ways. This is due to the school leaders offering a framework and inviting their staff to ‘see what we can do with it.’ One teacher highlighted how she can’t wait for the staff meeting to share and hear about all the other teachers’ trials and the students’ responses in this area. The school leader did highlight that not all the sharing will be about successes there will be an opportunity, even an expectation, to share disasters. These early successes will provide a platform for further exploration into other curriculum areas where students track their own learning.
Questions the rest of the group raised for the Westgarth research team were:
· How can this move into other areas of the curriculum?
· What might a high aspiration like curiosity look like as I can/ I be statements?
· Will there be too many I can statements when all curriculum areas are explored this way?
· What are the students offering as valid evidence of the I can/I be statements?
St J’s Crib Point have opportunities for student agency – book club, learning intentions/success criteria, growth mindsets and the school café. They are exploring when and how more agency can continue to develop and maintain strong structures for learning. They are clarifying the core/the essentials for their year 5 and 6 students. The teachers shared photos of some of their visuals to support students to monitor and support their learning. They noticed that if the teachers don’t point and highlight these visuals regularly and purposefully the students can drop off from using them. The teachers are aware of the context of engaging parents in the learning as challenging but worthwhile. The whole school focus allows for regular dialogue with leaders, parents, students and fellow teacher colleagues around learner agency. This is now firmly on the agenda and the review year has incorporated many professional learning opportunities for teachers and students to have a voice.
The group spent quite a bit of time on unpacking the idea of agency in reporting learning and growth. The burning question for any reporting decisions being around ‘What are the benefits to the learner?’ There was a statistic shared that ‘25% of parents opened the online reports, whereas 95% attended student led conferences or the IB exhibition.’ This concerned the group given the time and effort used at the school to report. Wales Street are actioning this concern with a team of community members to engage parents and ensure there are benefits to the learner.
Maybe this is an area we are a Research Circle could problem solve further together? Any ideas?
