How Might We Promote Engagement and Agency so that Students Learn More Deeply?

In my previous 2 posts I referenced a framework from The Disengaged Teen which highlighted the importance of focusing on agency as much as we focus on engagement so that we can support more students into the top right Explorer mode.

Early last year I shared what I was learning from reading this book and I reshare some of that below:

Engaging young people in school is a worthy aspiration and it has been focusing our attention for many years.

Many of us have hunches that young people are less engaged than they may have been in the past. Sometimes there is clear evidence to support these hunches:

• Our government tells us kids are disengaged because of PISA results evidence

• Our government tells us kids are disengaged because of attendance statistics

• Parents tell us kids are disengaged because, especially in their teens, they often seem reluctant to go to school or to give it their very best while there

• Teachers tell us that students seem more difficult to engage and often put this down to the pandemic experience

These beliefs then set us off in the direction of measuring engagement and the impact of any interventions on things like achievement data and attendance data. But might we be looking at this incorrectly.

What do the students say?

Well, the authors, on the 3rd page of their book, report:

“A shocking number of young people don’t see the point of school anymore.”

They produce evidence that the decline in achievement and engagement has been occurring around the world for at least 10 years, well before the pandemic.

Their years of research led them to develop this framework which identifies 4 modes of engagement:

Their work describes the importance of agency in achieving meaningful engagement; a type of engagement that enhances their ability to learn and adapt, which the authors argue:

“is not a nice-to-have but a must-have. It is the price of entry for a meaningful life.”

They certainly have sympathy for teachers who, “are sandwiched between a system that demands preparation for tests, restrictive accountability standards, and parents who insist their kids excel in a system not serving them well.”  But they report that, “In classrooms where teachers encourage agency, kids who explore get better grades.” 

Whenever I talk with adults about how they learn best in their current lives they often talk about needing to feel some level of control in how they go about the learning, that they are stretched to reach a goal but also have support to get there, that something is challenging but achievable.

The authors claim that this is also true for young people:

“The magic place for learning lies between challenge and support.”  and:

“Rigorous research across multiple countries shows that in classrooms where teachers support students’ agentic engagement, kids get better grades and do better on tests.”

The book delves deeply into the 4 modes of engagement identified in the above framework.

The 4 modes of engagement they identify are Resister, Passenger, Achiever, and Explorer. Resisters use their agency to let you know school is not working for them. Passengers coast in low gear (scarily they suggest this may be 50% of kids). Achievers work hard and 'do well' but are often fragile as it's all about the grades. Explorers are deeply involved and engaged in their own learning.

Passengers

"They don't see the relevance of what's being taught to their life and ability to solve problems in the world. Math becomes a series of formulas to memorize instead of tools to use to build new technology to solve climate change. History becomes a  series of dates to remember rather than the forces that shape our current politics."

We can move students out of the Passenger zone (disengaged and coasting) by linking learning to what the student is interested in.

Achievers

Being in Achiever mode may seem to be the ideal place to be.

“Young people in Achiever mode have internalized that doing well at school is important, and it has become a central motivation for them. Thus they build excellent work habits and real-life skills : time management, getting things done, doing things well.”

But, the authors found that many kids in Achiever mode are not enjoying school even though they are performing well:

“These students in unhappy Achiever mode are often plagued by perfectionism and haunted by fear of failure. They have the worst mental health outcomes of all students, even those who are deeply engaged.”

We can move students out of the Achiever zone by supporting them to practice trying things, falling down, reflecting on why they fell, and getting back up and trying again.

Resisters

Resisters show they have agency but point it away from learning because they are not engaged. They show this by avoiding going to school, or by quietly avoiding work and missing deadlines, or by disrupting class.

We can engage them simply by linking learning to their interests. In fact, one of the easiest shifts through the zones is from Resister to Explorer zone simply by linking learning in such a way.

Explorers

Explorers have agentic engagement:

"[Explorers] connect their interests to what's being taught...they make suggestions about how to do the work they are asked to complete...they seek help to investigate things they are interested in...they express their preferences."

In my next post I am going to try to provide some practical suggestions as to how our design of learning for our students can support more of them to become Explorers as we keep our focus on the top right quadrant below.

How might we grow our leadership in order to take action on what matters so that students and teachers thrive together?

In my last post I attempted to capture within a single framework the things that mattered most when we strive for deep learning for all learners. My most succinct summary would be that we need to focus on being Warm & Demanding (caring for students while having high expectations for and of them and for ourselves and colleagues) while promoting high levels of student agency and using a wide range of proven teaching strategies that allow for that.

The previous post identifies flaws in this framework and it is still very much a work in progress. But let’s go with it in the meantime.

So, how do we take action in this space? The answer is Leadership.

But a particular type of leadership - leadership that is driven by a strong moral purpose to do what is right for our learners, our staff and our school and its community; leadership that has courage to bring that moral purpose to life; leadership that is open to learning and doing things differently.

However, if you have the courage to take action and are open to learning and doing things differently you still need tools and strategies to take action, overcome resistance, maintain momentum and embed the transformation.

Over the past couple of years my colleague Derek Wenmoth and I have been running some boutique PD programmes to empower leaders for transformational change. With those programmes we worked with individual leaders, within a group setting, to bring a particular change idea they had into fruition. 

We are now in a position to offer a range of flexible programmes for individual leaders, networks of across schools leaders (PLGs), and school based senior leadership teams and/or middle leadership teams.

Across four face-to-face sessions and regular on-line connection spread over a 12 month period we undertake four purposeful cycles that take you on a journey from self-discovery to sustainable impact. Participating as an individual or as part of a leadership group, you’ll explore what drives you as a leader, translating that understanding into how you lead and empower others, develop strategies for managing conflict and change, gathering evidence of your growth along the way to create systems that celebrate, sustain, and share your success.

Our experience with our previous work means that it is important to not  only focus on tools and strategies, but also to surface how we feel about our work, how we want to and not want to feel, how we want fellow team members to feel about their work and our team, and how we want those whom we lead to feel and not feel. We all respond emotionally to our work and particularly to change and we must be purposeful about the emotions we wish to promote and those we wish to manage.

The design of these programmes, particularly those for PLGs and senior and middle leadership teams, has been informed by our work when working with teams to spend time describing the culture we aspire to and agreeing on the norms and ways of working that contribute to this culture. Such a focus makes it more likely that the team will be successful in its work

All the information you need on any of these programmes can be found here. Simply register your interest through the link or email me directly at maurie@hmwlead.co.nz. You can also access a flyer with all details here.

The frameworks explored in my previous post have helped shape the GROW programmes which are focused on supporting you to make the changes you want in your schools.

Reach out if you want to talk further.

How might we focus on what matters so that students and teachers thrive together?

I haven’t published anything for 6 months. Rather, I’ve spent my time being overwhelmed with the publishing others have done and trying to keep up with people’s takes on the madness of the sheer volume and pace of system imposed change on schools. In my 45 years of involvement in schools and education I’ve seen nothing like it. When I read the writings of those involved with Aotearoa Educators Collective (AEC) (you know who you are) and Derek Wenmoth’s regular pieces I am in awe and haven’t felt that I could add anything of value to the current context.

Those of you who have read my posts in the past know that I regularly go on about the importance of being aware of then being true to your driving values and having the courage to stick to them, especially when the ‘weather’ gets roughest. I’ve often used Julia Atkin’s circle framework to describe how to do that:

You’ll also, possibly, know that I am a fan of frameworks that we can use to help us stay true to our vision; at least a vision that inspires us to contribute to an education system that allows students and teachers to thrive, one in which students and teachers both have agency.

Apart from Julia’s Circles, which have been the foundation of how I have operated and support others to do so, my go-to frameworks are below: the first drawn from Margaret Thorsborne’s work on Restorative Practice and encourages us to operate as often as possible in the top right corner by being Warm & Demanding. The second comes from Russell Bishop’s work on teaching and leading to the north-east and encourages us to operate as often as possible in the top right corner by combining high relational skills and high teaching skills. The third comes from Disengaged Teens which encourages us to teach and manage our classrooms in such a way that our learners locate themselves in the top right corner where they experience high levels of agency and high levels of engagement.

While out for a run the other day a thought popped into my head: each of these frameworks have us striving to be in the top right corner, how hard would it be to combine them together to make some sort of ‘super’ framework.

So I gave it a go!

Structurally, it was easy to place accurate descriptors in the correct quadrant. However, this current framework doesn’t quite fit nicely.

The green highlighted texts describe students with that particular combination of engagement and agency (high or low) (from Disengaged Teens) and the yellow highlighted texts describe teachers with that particular combination of relationship and teaching skills (high or low) (from Russell Bishop).

But it doesn’t work in a neat and tidy way e.g. Achieving Students (High Engagement Low Agency) do get great grades so those teachers must display some good teaching skills and couldn’t be described as ‘Undemanding’. I could, however, suggest that they might have a narrow range of teaching skills that they are very good at and do not include those that would support students to be lifted into the top right corner and become Explorers.

Similar inconsistencies exist in the other quadrants, especially those on the left.

Anyway, I haven’t given up on tweaking this to see if I can make it more useful. Any suggestions will be most welcome.

The thought I leave you with, especially if you work and/or lead in schools and are about to kick off 2026, is that you try to look for ways to lift students into the Explorer quadrant by allowing for more, not less, agency on their part and that you show them every day that you care for them as individuals and as learners, and that you have high expectations of them to learn deeply and of yourself and colleagues to find ways for everyone of them to learn deeply.

Of course, the big question is how do we do this? I’ve got some ideas to share in my next post.