Promoting Student Agency in Project-Based Learning
What is a student agency?
A concept that describes a mode of accommodating, supporting, and empowering students that positions them as active agents in their learning experiences. The concept of student agency suggests that student agency in learning contexts occupies a place of both possibilities and the willingness and ability to act that is intrinsically linked to it. Desklib is an online tutoring and expert help platform where you can learn in detail about this and also it is one of the best online homework help sites.
I believe that children’s self-efficacy and motivation to succeed as students depends largely on their perceptions of their own worth and their belief in their own abilities, their perspectives regarding success at school, the sense of belonging to the class, and what they understand as the meaning and purpose of their actions.
The power of an individual to act rests on the individual learner themselves as well as on the environment in which they learn. In other words, they have a huge amount of capabilities in terms of skills and capabilities, knowledge, understandings, dispositions, and they have a tremendous amount of potential in their context. The opportunities created by adults and others in their learning environments are particularly fundamental to how students perceive their own sense of possibility, as is the way in which their interactions and relationships shape their sense of possibility.
What is Project-Based Learning?
Students engage in real-world and personally meaningful projects as part of Project-Based Learning (PBL), which is a teaching method that helps them acquire knowledge through active engagement.
EXAMPLES OF PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ACTIVITIES
- Design an app. Take the idea to a new level by having students design their own apps and games based on the newest apps and games. Kids also have the chance to practice creating apps and play online games with a free app development tool. Using technology is a great way to teach children skills to solve problems and learn about technology while enjoying the things they love.
- Implementing a recycling program that solves an identified issue with existing recycling programs in an attempt to find a sustainable solution. Providing business assistance to help them become more environmentally friendly.
- Identify the most important stories from older generations of your family. Come up with a way to ‘publish’ your family’s story by letting each individual tell their own story.
Benefits of Promoting Student Agency in Project-based learning:
- The project offers students a chance to connect their hands, minds, and hearts with projects that truly matter. The program is aimed at helping students learn how to do and how to be by doing.
- It develops sleuths, scientists, artists, scholars, musicians, dreamers, and, most importantly, it creates autonomous learners.
- Students are responsible for creating projects, solving problems, and managing their time well. If you look at student-designed, project-based learning as a personalized, or student-designed, method of learning, students are using agency when they control the variables that lead to learning. Project-based learning is collaborative, creative, authentic, and reflective.
- Builds community and encourages teamwork within the classroom to empower students and provide opportunities for them to explore their interests, find passions, and challenge themselves.
- The course begins with an “uncertain question” and the students then have to self-organize their learning process in order to come up with an answer. This forms a powerful learning experience that engages students in their learning process.
- Students learn how to effectively solve problems that are important to them and other issues in their own communities. They also learn how to avoid mistakes and perhaps start over again from scratch when they fail.
- By asking questions about the project and coming up with possible solutions, students learn how to approach problems with a critical thinking
How to Promote Student Agency in Project-based learning:
RENOVATE A PROJECT
Almost every organization has a project library. It is more efficient to renovate an existing project than to plan a completely new one with education goals, milestones, and products. Make sure you search the project libraries across all grade levels when looking for project ideas. Take the time to explore all the possible ideas, modify them, and then build on them.
LIMITED SCOPE
Student learning will increase as the project becomes longer. Instead of teaching across several disciplines, focus on one. Narrow your options to reduce the amount of time spent.
You might also consider narrowing your choice in addition to the time limit. Provide a shorter menu of products instead of many choices. Select the teams for the project yourself but let students decide how they wish to work. Voice and choice can be incorporated into a project in many ways, but these skills are not universal.
Teachers and their students can achieve short-term success by narrowing the scope of a project so they can build stamina to take on more complicated tasks later.
PLAN EARLY
This step is a challenge in PBL, but it is also a source of joy. Planning ahead is necessary for PBL, and it does take some time. Assessing and scaffolding, in addition to collecting resources, is a necessary part of project learning.
Ask your leadership for creative structures to carve out time for planning, even if you are able to do some of this during scheduled planning time. It may be feasible to use staff meetings for this time or to set aside release days for this purpose.
A project is something you should be prepared for and confident about, so get ahead and feel prepared. A backward design process will help you construct an instructional project that is ready to teach.
Rather than being always in crisis mode trying to figure out what will happen tomorrow, when you plan, you’re free to differentiate instruction and meet students’ needs.
GATHER FEEDBACK
Reach out to your colleagues to receive feedback both digitally and in person when you have a great project planned. Teachers can walk through your project gallery and leave feedback on post-its as a result of sharing an idea on Twitter or participating in a gallery walk of ideas. Talk to a colleague or an instructional coach for at least 30 minutes.
