Here at Prem, we believe that agency and student self efficacy are important to student learning as it gives students voice and often, choice, in how they learn. As students have the opportunity to be agentic in their learning environment, they are developing important skills and dispositions such as confidence, critical thinking skills, independence and ownership over their learning. Students who are able to demonstrate agency in their learning environment are engaged with the learning experiences, ask questions, try new things and conduct and lead conversations that involve making decisions about their learning. Their ability to make a decision triggers a greater investment of interest and motivation.

Grade two students had a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate student agency in the class as they took part in creating the assessment criteria for their final assessment task of the Teamwork Unit. Students had many opportunities to explore different assessment tools and investigated how each one worked. They worked in groups of three to come up with what they thought good teamwork looked like in terms of cooperation, planning, communication and dividing roles. Their ideas were shared and a collaborative class rubric was co-constructed with the students and the teacher. The students demonstrated many agentic characteristics as they were involved in this process of agency.

Mary-Ann Van De Weerd

PYP Coordinator