Can student agency improve students' attitude towards learning?
Can student agency improve students' attitude towards learning? Students often find school a controlling and constraining experience. St udents have no choice over what they learn at school and for many students much of what they are taught seems completely irrelevant to their lives and their futures. As a maths teacher, I’m very familiar with questions like "why are we doing this?" or "what is the point of this?" etc. I always struggle with these questions because the answer is often that the actual content will be useless to 99% of students beyond their GCSE. It’s difficult to convince a student that knowing how to use a compass will be beneficial in adulthood or that algebraic reasoning is a useful life skill. It’s not just what children learn that is controlled though. In recent years, the UK has seen a shift towards traditional authoritarian schooling. Students are told when they must work, when they eat, when they can take breaks, what they have to do ...