Whether specific types of interactions are empowering or not depends on the surrounding system of cultural values. For example, telling a child how to complete a puzzle may be a sign of guidance and care in one family, while in another it may be seen as intrusive on the child’s independence. Moving towards engaged pedagogy…Ĭross-cultural comparisons of parenting have demonstrated that a given type of interaction may support agency in one context, while it appears to hinder it in another context (Lee, Baker, & Whitebread, 2018). It implies teaching and learning that is playful, vulnerable, flexible, connected to experience and democratic, where the teacher’s “voice is not the only account of what happens in the classroom” (hooks, 1994). At each level, while there may be reasons for the structures to exist (efficiency of resource? accountability of employees?), how often do we question their benefit for learning?Ĭan we imagine, not just in the early years and in advanced graduate work at University, but all the way through the phases of education, an ‘engaged pedagogy’, such as the one described by bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)? Engaged pedagogy supports and relies on agency. imposing a timetable, with rigid starting and stopping times for activities). In education, ideas and actions can be imposed from the state (e.g. In education terms a highly relevant dimension of agency (Rainio & Hilppö, 2017) is the practice of freedom from oppression. Autonomy, doing something by and for oneself, may merely simulate agency, like Jacques de Vaucanson’s automaton duck. It distinguishes us from machines that can be highly automated, and which engage our curiosity because they are so human-like, and at the same time not quite human ( see, for example, this podcast on chatbots). At its essence, the human experience of agency implies self-awareness in thought and self-determination in action. There are a number of different meanings and forms of agency (Leslie, 1994). What would organised education look like with agency at its heart? What is agency, and what does it look like in education?Īgency is reflective. ‘Agency’ allows students to play an active role in their education and is critical for learning. We know now that children learn through play and active engagement with their environment. Over the past 50 years though, we’ve come to realise that young children are much more than simply passive ‘knowledge-stores’. In the banking model, teachers were the rich actors, bestowing knowledge upon the children, who were seen as mere recipients in the one-way relationship.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written 50 years ago, Paolo Freire critiqued the ‘banking system’ of education where students are passive consumers, storing up a valuable resource (‘knowledge’) for use at a later date.

Education as the practice of freedom