By Mary Ryan and Maryam Khosronejad
Original article: LINK
Recently, the idea of agency has become a hot topic in teaching writing [LINK]. Put simply, agency is the ability of students to make their own decisions in the writing classroom. Children’s agency is influenced by the school’s writing policy and the classroom environment, meaning it’s not just about individual choices but also how these choices are shaped by the context of the school’s pedagogy.
When students feel they have agency, they can be more engaged and motivated, which is crucial to their writing development [LINK]. However, a school’s approach to writing significantly affects students’ sense of agency [LINK and LINK]. In their article, Ryan & Khosronejad argue that more research is needed to understand the personal, cultural, and structural factors that influence young writers’ abilities to act independently in the writing classroom [LINK].
Writing as a practice of agency
Despite the long-standing crisis in student achievement and motivation [LINK], many schools, particularly those in economically underserved areas, persist with a ‘back to basics’ approach to teaching writing. This method, which focuses heavily on presentational skills, has long been the dominant pedagogy in such schools. However, the issue with this type of pedagogy is not so much what it chooses to focus on, but its neglect of the advanced writing skills necessary for becoming a successful and agentic writer. Factors such as context, identity, beliefs, and intentions, which are vital for children’s writing development, are largely neglected [LINK, LINK and LINK].
There’s a growing need for students to be active participants in their writing journey. Teachers can create space for students’ choices and voices, empowering them to take control of their writerly apprenticeship and exercise their agency. For example, teachers can invite children to:
- Help establish a publishing goal for class writing projects [LINK]
- Read as writers alongside their teacher and establish the product goals for a class writing project collaboratively [LINK]
- Choose what they would like to write about within the parameters of the class writing project [LINK]
- Choose their favoured planning strategies [LINK] and writing process [LINK]
- Pursue their own personal writing projects at home and at school [LINK]
Writing is deeply connected to a student’s sense of identity [LINK] and offers a way for them to express their agency across different subjects [LINK]. When students write, they make decisions about their thoughts and language to achieve their purposes, whether it’s to teach, entertain, paint with words, express themselves, or influence others.
The study shows that we can see children as agentic writers who can make their own decisions and warns against directing every single aspect of a child’s writerly life. To explore writing as a practice of agency, Ryan & Khosronejad examined how children used stories to reflect their feelings of agency.
Conclusion
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasises that children should be free to express themselves in any way they choose, including by talking, drawing, or writing. This right can sometimes clash with the writing approach schools choose to use. However, there are teaching methods that can help enhance children’s voices and choices.
Results from this study have shown that children find ways to express their agency through their choice of words, how they decide to plan their stories, and the main messages they wish to convey.
The study found that stories are a great way for children to practice their agency because it allows them to imagine and create new worlds and characters. The stories the researchers examined featured child characters who solved their own problems. In one story, ice power was used when there were no adults around. In another, adults were shown as controlling. One story even showed a father making decisions but was seen as utterly incompetent, which made the child question his actions. These examples show how children use their stories to reflect on their own feelings towards power and control.