Supporting Learner Agency

in Your Classroom
3 easy steps to help you reflect on your practice
and support agency more effectively:
Learner agency refers to the sense of
ownership and control that students have over
their learning. When students believe their
actions can make a difference, they become
more invested, confident, and effective
learners. By promoting agency in your practice,
you can nurture active and engaged learners,
fostering a growth mindset and maximizing
learner potential.

Teachers play an important role in promoting

guiding the development of agency. By
providing a supportive environment and
opportunities for learners to exercise their
agency, you can help your learners become
more agentive.

Most teachers will already be following some practices which promote agency.
This activity will help you to reflect on your approach, and consider which
practices to adopt and develop in order to nurture agency more effectively.

Supporting Learner Agency in Your Classroom | 1

Exercise 1: Reflect on your classroom practice:
This exercise will help you reflect on your current classroom practices and
consider the degree to which your approach promotes learner agency.

Below you will find 21 statements. Statements 1–12 are about your own
classroom practice. Statements 13–22 are about the students in your classes.
Think of a specific class as you read each statement, and decide how often this
statement applies to your practice. You can repeat this exercise for as many
classes as you like.

How often does this statement apply to my practice?

My Classroom practice
Often Sometimes Rarely Never
1) I see myself as a partner with my students Try completing these
in the teaching–learning ecology. exercises with a group of
2) I seek to cultivate an attitude of inquiry
among my students. colleagues! You can reflect
3) I am conscious of who participates in the on your practice and
class, who does not, and why.
4) I teach my students to adapt the language explore ways of promoting
they use to the situation in which they are
communicating. learner agency together.
5) I have a somewhat flexible approach to
managing lessons.
6) I make use of technology (where it is
available) to enable students to generate
their own content and direct their learning.
7) I see it as part of my role to prepare my
students for challenges and opportunities in
life beyond the classroom.
8) I provide opportunities for my students
to self-assess.
9) I make use of feedback, including learner-
driven feedback, as appropriate.

10) I am open to learning with and from
my students.
11) I teach what students show me that they
have not yet learned and are interested in
learning.
12) I am comfortable with not being certain
about the outcome of an activity.

How often does this statement apply to my students?

My Students
Often Sometimes Rarely Never
13) Students choose topics, texts, and activities
that match their interests.
14) Students feel that their opinions are welcome.
15) Students feel that it is safe to make mistakes.
16) Students set personal goals and learn how
to work towards meeting them.
17) Students work with me to design certain
aspects of their course.
18) Students reflect on what they have learned,
what has gone well, what they have found
difficult, and how they can move their
learning forward.
19) Students bring items of interest from their
lives outside school and share them in the
classroom.
20) Students believe that they can be successful.
21) My students and I have a mutually
respectful relationship.
22) Students’ curiosity is encouraged.

Supporting Learner Agency in Your Classroom | 2

Exercise 2: Developing your classroom practice:
When you have finished the first exercise, try one or more of the following
activities to help you develop your classroom practice and promote agency
more effectively:

1) Pick one thing that you do ‘often’ and evaluate how successful it is. Why do
you think it is successful? Are there any changes you could make to improve
it, use it in another context, or expand it in another way?

2) Pick one thing that you do ‘sometimes’. What stops you from doing this
more often? Is it something that you can or want to change? How might you
develop it to allow you to do it more often?

3) Pick one thing that you do ‘rarely’ and think about why. Is there a way that
you could add it to your repertoire? Why or why not?

4) Try out one new way to encourage learner agency in your class.
Think about:

the context of your school/classes

what is achievable

any challenges

what is likely to be most successful and have the most impact on

teaching and learning.

Try it out in class and evaluate its success. Think about any changes you could
make to improve the outcomes next time.

5) Identify three of the main challenges to promoting learner agency within

your context. How might you overcome one of them?

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Exercise 3: Taking the next step:
Now you have reflected on and developed your classroom practice, you may
want more practical tips and in depth advice to help you promote agency. You
can get both by downloading our in-depth guide to promoting learner agency,
Learner Agency: Maximizing Learner Potential. It’s filled with advice from our
expert panel to help you nurture more agentive learners.

Turn to page 8 for a list of different practices you can adopt in your classroom
in order to promote agency. Here are two examples:
Download now at:
www.oup.com/elt/expert/learner-agency
Learner agency Enabling conditions and examples of high
Low High learner agency practices

Teachers specify Students are Students are encouraged to believe they can learn
goals for the invited and improve. Students who set their own learning
course and to set meaningful goals have more confidence in taking on challenging
lesson personal goals in tasks and sustaining their learning.8
objectives. partnership with Example: Teachers ask students to write down (in
their teachers. English or their L1) answers to questions such as:
What are you good at in English?
How can you build on this strength?
What do you want to improve?
What would prevent you from improving,
and what can you do about it?
Students may not know what their goals should be
at the beginning of the school year or how to state
them in English, but they can discover their goals and
revise them as the course progresses.

Activities are Activities are Learners’ opinions are invited and respected when
closed. more open- discussing an issue. Tasks do not always have an
ended. obvious single solution, and they allow students to
apply skills such as critical thinking.
Example: The teacher or students occasionally
introduce a topical issue and organize a debate
around it, giving equal time to multiple
perspectives.
Example: Students work together in order to find
one or more solutions to a problem. For example:
‘You spend a lot of time on social media connecting
with your friends. However, as a result, you have
missed several homework assignments, and you have
not prepared for a big test tomorrow. In your opinion,
what should you do?’

You will find many more ideas in the paper, along with in-depth advice on how
to promote agency in your practice, how your school leaders can create an
environment that supports agency, and how to face some of the challenges
to promoting agency. Everyone who downloads the paper will also receive a
toolkit of free classroom activities.

Download now at: www.oup.com/elt/expert/learner-agency

Once you have read the paper and developed your practice further, try
completing exercise 1 again, and reflecting on how your approach has
changed.

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