This article explores the concept of student agency within the Thrive Co-operative Learning Trust. It details the Trust's journey in developing student voice and influence, using the Lundy Model of Child Participation as a framework. This article highlights the importance of authentic pupil agency and showcases successful initiatives undertaken by…

Enhancing agency--or in a more colloquial term, promoting empowerment--is typically viewed as an unquestioned good. International organisations promote the empowerment of girls and other vulnerable groups around the world. Domestically, democracies rely for their legitimacy on the idea that citizens have agency; hence, civic educators aim to…

As 'self-law', autonomy contributes to people's psychological health and helps secure meaning in one's life. Within higher education, it enables students to navigate this environment and prepare for professional life, empowering them to take ownership of their learning and development goals. Autonomy is multidimensional, encompassing the local…

Thoughtfully planned professional development (PD) that fosters teacher agency has the potential to impact student agency in the literacy classroom. Drawing on a body of research with 82 teachers across multiple schools and clinical settings, this article first presents findings from a variety of PD contexts that are synthesized to highlight four…

In this paper, we examine traditional psychosocial approaches to the study of student agency in science education, emphasizing the importance of incorporating sociocultural and critical perspectives. We present both contemporary studies of student agency in educational psychology and the work of scholars who study students' student agency with…

This paper investigated the impacts of education on women's empowerment in Kenya using six waves of nationally-representative KDHS data. Our study utilizes the change in educational structure in 1985 as an instrument and finds that women under the new system enhanced their schooling by approximately two years. One year of education prolongs…

Poverty is a clustered and corrosive disadvantage that affects students throughout their lives. The education system has been positioned as an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty. Yet, the education system continues to fail to achieve its potential. We conceptually explore how educational leaders could perceive their responsibility in…

This article considers the potential ways for coaching and mentoring practices in higher education to support the development of learner autonomy, a key espoused aim of university education. I argue that coaching and mentoring can foster self-regulated learning, critical thinking, and goal-setting among students, empowering them to take greater…

In this article, we engage in a discussion about how we came to Torres' Rights of the Learner (RotL) and how these ideas can transform the way we teach mathematics and the ways our students learn mathematics. This article serves to introduce teachers and teacher educators to the RotL and to remind ourselves that before one can rehumanize our…

Critics of the neoliberal university argue that grading undermines student learning. In this article, I survey the literature in order to ascertain whether such critiques are supported by pedagogical research. Investigating the relationship between grading and motivation, feedback, and autonomy, respectively, I conclude that grades most often do…

The normative aim of childhood studies is to show that children are and should be recognized as active shapers of their lifeworlds. In this article, we discuss which concept can best be used to accomplish this. Our thesis is that the agency concept ubiquitous in childhood studies only inadequately advances the field's normative agenda. Mostly…

The Mosaic approach has been used as a form of participatory research for over two decades. It has been popular with researchers in the early childhood education and disability sectors because it encourages the participants to utilise a large range of communication tools, rather than relying on verbal and written data. Promoters of the Mosaic…

This paper investigates an abortion clinic's procedural choices regarding the management of linguistic diversity. It focuses in particular on how language serves as capital for clients' agency in decision-making regarding their abortion treatment. Based on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in a Flemish abortion clinic, we analyse the clinic's…

As theories of developmental psychology continue to define educational goals and practice, it has become imperative for educators and researchers to scrutinize not only the underlying assumptions of such theories but also the model of adulthood toward which they point. Carol Gilligan examines the limitations of several theories, most notably…

As strategies for co-creation in teaching and learning, the democratic classroom and students-as-partners pedagogies seek to empower students by equally distributing the responsibilities of decision-making across the students and instructors in a class. In this essay, we describe and analyze how students in a second-year interdisciplinary seminar…