How much say do you have in what and how you learn at school?
For example, do you ever get to choose the books you read, the classes you take, the topics you study or the kinds of projects you do?
When you do have the opportunity for some control and choice over what you learn, what effect does that have on your interest and investment in it?
In the guest essay “Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results,” Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, who wrote a book called “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better,” present an argument for students’ being more involved in setting their own academic goals. The essay begins:
In a polarized nation, one point of agreement deserves more attention: Young adults say they feel woefully unprepared for life in the work force, and employers say they’re right.
In a survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation of more than 4,000 members of Gen Z, 49 percent of respondents said they did not feel prepared for the future. Employers complain that young hires lack initiative, communication skills, problem-solving abilities and resilience.
There’s a reason the system isn’t serving people well, and it goes beyond the usual culprits of social media and Covid. Many recent graduates aren’t able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out and deal with setbacks — because in school and at home they were too rarely afforded any agency.
Giving kids agency doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want. It doesn’t mean lowering expectations, turning education into entertainment or allowing children to choose their own adventure. It means requiring them to identify and pursue some of their own goals, helping them build strategies to reach those goals, assessing their progress and guiding them to course-correct when they fall short.
This approach works because it teaches kids strategies they’ll need to succeed in work and life — and keeps them invested, too. But a survey of over 66,000 young people that we conducted with the Brookings Institution and the education nonprofit Transcend showed that very few middle and high school students regularly have the opportunity to work this way. Only 33 percent of 10th graders report that they get to develop their own ideas in school. The result? In third grade, 74 percent of kids say they love school. By 10th grade, it’s 26 percent. School feels like prison, many teenagers told us over three years of research. The more time they spend in school, the less they feel like the author of their own lives, so why even try?
Johnmarshall Reeve, a professor at Australian Catholic University, has spent two decades studying what happens when kids are given some agency in school. In 35 randomized control trials in 18 countries, he and other researchers found that when students are allowed some opportunity to take their own initiative, they are more engaged in class and better able to master new skills, they have better grades and fewer problems with peers — and they are happier, too. The effect sizes were often between 0.7 and 0.9, a significant degree of impact.
Importantly, the teachers did not need to change the curriculum they taught or alter their disciplinary approach. They just applied a few new teaching practices in the course of their normal lesson. At the start of a lesson, instead of providing a step-by-step schedule and overview for the class period, as many good teachers do, they inquired about the kids’ own interest. They might say, “Today I’m going to tell you about the solar system. Before we start, is there anything about the solar system that you are particularly curious about or have a question about?” This simple step encourages kids to think about what they know, what they care about and what they want to know more about, rather than just settling in and tuning out.
Students, read the entire essay and then tell us:
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In your own words, what do the authors mean when they say that students should have a degree of agency in their learning? What is agency? Can you give an example or two of how it applies at school? What about outside of school?
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What are your thoughts on the argument that allowing students more input and autonomy in their education could make them more interested and invested in what they learn, as well as better prepare them for life and the work force?
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How much say do you have in what and how you learn at school? Do you feel that you have the right amount of agency and autonomy, or do you sometimes wish you had more? Explain.
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Have your teachers ever used the teaching techniques from the article — or similar ones — such as inviting you to set your own goals, allowing you to ask questions about a subject before diving in, or explaining why you’re learning what you’re learning? What exactly did these teachers do? What effect did their approach have on you?
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The authors cite a statistic saying that nearly half of the more than 4,000 young people who were polled felt unprepared for the future. Does that seem accurate to you? Do you think your skills in learning, managing time, setting and reaching goals, communicating, problem-solving and being resilient are sufficient for happiness and success after high school? If so, which ones have been helpful? If not, which ones do you think would?
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If you were a teacher, how would you make your classes engaging? What approaches would you borrow from your own educators, past and present? What new ideas do you have that could make learning more fun for students?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.