Cultivating Student Agency: Empowering Students to Own Their Learning

What if the most important skill we can teach students isn’t content, but the ability to choose, create, and take charge of their own learning? That’s the essence of student agency—a skill that could shape the very future of education. We exercise agency every day:  deciding how to spend time, allocating resources, proposing solutions, taking initiative on projects, pursuing learning opportunities to grow professionally, and advocating for fairness in our communities. Agency is essential for thriving in an increasingly complex world.

Student Agency

Agentic engagement involves students taking responsibility for their choices and actions, reflecting on what works, adapting strategies, and adjusting approaches as needed. According to the newly released curriculum framework, Transformational Learning Principles, teachers should first nurture a sense of belonging, then guide students to explore new ideas and develop expertise, and finally empower them to exercise agency in the classroom (International Society for Technology in Education & ASCD, 2025). As students exert agency, they assume ownership of their education by setting goals, making choices, and acting with purpose to shape their experiences.

“Agency is the capacity and propensity to take purposeful initiative — the opposite of helplessness. Young people with high levels of agency do not respond passively to their circumstances; they tend to seek meaning and act with purpose to achieve the conditions they desire in their own and others’ lives.”

Fergusson, Phillips, Rowley, & Friedlander (2015)

Shifting Economic Needs

With significant changes in the workforce due to automation displacing many routine and manual labor jobs, these shifts highlight the importance of fostering student agency—equipping learners to take ownership of their learning, adapt to new challenges, and develop the skills needed for lifelong success. The World Economic Forum (2025) has therefore identified the top five skills most in demand today: analytical thinking; resilience, flexibility, and agility; leadership and social influence; creative thinking; and motivation and self-awareness.

Top Five Skills in Demand Today

Analytical Thinking

Resilience, Flexibility, and Agility

Leadership and Social Influence

Creative Thinking

Motivation and Self-awareness

These skills serve as the building blocks of student agency. As AI systems increasingly assume routine cognitive tasks, it becomes essential for learners to set their own goals, monitor progress, and accept responsibility for outcomes. When students design personalized learning pathways, make informed decisions, and reflect on results, they cultivate distinctly human capacities that differentiate them in a technology-rich world (Vander Ark, 2025). When students demonstrate agentic engagement, they become active drivers of their learning, making decisions, taking ownership, and shaping their environment. Tavenner and Horn (2025) argue, “It’s really time to move from an age of achievement to an age of agency in education.”

Research Highlights

A growing body of research underscores the powerful benefits of student agency, including increased engagement, improved academic performance, greater motivation and ownership of learning, and enhanced resilience and self-regulation. The PISA study (OECD, 2019) found that students’ belief in their ability to improve and their sense of control were strongly associated with higher resilience and engagement, as well as higher scores in reading and mathematics. Similarly, a RAND study on student agency (Pane, Steiner, Baird, & Hamilton, 2017) reported that students in schools emphasizing agency and personalization outperformed their peers in traditional settings, achieving notable gains in reading and math.

Additional studies confirm the link between agency and engagement. The High School Survey of Student Engagement (Yazzie-Mintz, 2009) revealed that only about half of students reported being fully engaged in school; however, engagement rose significantly when students had choices in assignments and opportunities to set personal goals. Likewise, Cheon, Reeve, and Vansteenkiste (2020) found that classrooms where teachers consistently elicited, listened to, and acted upon student voice demonstrated higher behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, along with improved attendance and course performance. Collectively, these findings highlight the profound and multifaceted impact of student agency on student outcomes.

Core Attributes of Student Agency

As schools seek to design experiences that expand opportunities for student agency, several core attributes consistently emerge: voice and choice, ownership and responsibility, self-regulation and reflection, motivation and purpose, and collaboration and influence. Student agency encompasses identifying significant issues, contributing to communities, and participating in authentic learning experiences (Vander Ark, 2025). Agency is grounded in students’ ability to monitor and adapt their learning strategies. Hattie’s Visible Learning (2009; updated 2023) identifies influences such as goal setting and feedback as especially powerful drivers of achievement. When students establish goals, act on high-quality feedback, and adjust their approaches, they demonstrate agentic engagement in action.

The core attributes of agency are summarized below, with examples provided to illustrate each attribute.

Voice & Choice

Students express their ideas, opinions, and make meaningful decisions about their learning.

Examples in Schools

• Students vote on class read-aloud books.
• Students design discussion questions for a seminar.
• Students co-create rubrics with the teacher for a project.
• Students design their own “genius hour” projects on topics they’re passionate about.
• Students propose alternative assessments (TED-style talk, interactive model, or documentary).
• Students co-create a classroom contract and vote on classroom norms.

Ownership & Responsibility

Students take charge of their learning goals, monitor progress, and accept responsibility for outcomes.

Examples in Schools

• Students set weekly reading goals and track them on charts. 
• Students create personal growth plans. 
• Students self-assess work before teacher feedback.
• Students design their own learning contracts, including goals, deadlines, and check-ins.
• During final presentations of capstone projects, students pitch their ideas to a panel of teachers and community members.

Self-Regulation & Reflection

Students monitor their emotions, behaviors, and learning strategies, making adjustments as needed.

Examples in Schools

• Students use digital portfolios to reflect on progress and revise goals.
• In reflection circles after collaborative projects, students discuss teamwork strengths and challenges.
• Students track how feedback influenced their revisions of their work.
• Students receive digital badges for demonstrating persistence, resilience, or growth in a skill.

Motivation & Purpose

Students connect learning to personal interests, values, and future goals.

Examples in Schools

• Students develop science projects based on questions that spark their curiosity.
• Career pathway courses are aligned to student aspirations.
• Students design products that solve real problems in entrepreneurial challenges.
• Service-learning projects connect to local community needs.
• In interdisciplinary exhibitions, students showcase how their interests cut across multiple subjects. 

Collaboration & Influence

Students work with others to co-create solutions and use their agency to impact classroom or community contexts.

Examples in Schools

• Class councils decide on a service project. 
• Students collaborate on designing school spirit events. 
• Student advisory boards present policy ideas to school boards or lead peer mentoring programs.
• Students lead podcasts or news broadcasts that highlight school and community issues.
• At collaborative innovation fairs, student teams pitch solutions to real-world challenges (e.g., climate, school safety).

The Connected Components of True Student Agency

Student agency is not a single skill but a collection of interconnected behaviors that empower learners to take ownership of their education. When students have voice and choice, take responsibility for their goals, regulate their learning, connect work to meaningful purposes, and collaborate to influence their environment, they become active drivers of their learning—rather than passive recipients.

By intentionally designing learning experiences that foster these five components, educators create classrooms where engagement deepens, motivation increases, and students develop the confidence and capability to navigate an ever-changing world.

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