Build Learner Agency in Every Classroom
Building Learner Agency: Strategies That Work Across Every Classroom
A recent conversation with Matt Magowan, elementary PE teacher at the United Nations International School in Hanoi, described how Universal Design for Learning pushed his team to stop asking “What’s wrong with this student?” and start asking “What’s wrong with this environment?” That shift, from fixing learners to designing better learning, is the foundation of genuine student agency. It belongs in every classroom, not just physical education.
Learner agency isn’t about giving students free time or letting them do whatever they want. It’s about intentionally building the skills and structures that allow students to understand themselves as learners, make meaningful choices, and take ownership of their growth. Here’s how that can look across any subject area.
Start with the goal
Before students can make good decisions about their learning, they need to know what they’re actually working toward. In a math classroom, that might mean co-creating a rubric for what strong mathematical reasoning looks like. In English, it could mean walking students through the qualities of a compelling narrative before they write one. When learners understand not just the task but the purpose behind it, they stop waiting to be told what to do next. Instead, they start self-directing.
Build in structured choice
Choice doesn’t have to mean chaos. Matt’s gymnastics choice board offered 17 activities and all of them aligned to the same unit goals. In a social studies class, this might look like offering three different ways to demonstrate understanding of a historical event: a written analysis, a visual timeline, or a structured discussion. The content goal stays constant; the path to it becomes flexible. Students who feel some control over how they learn are more likely to invest in what they’re learning.
Explicitly teach the social and executive function skills
Matt’s story emphasizes that skills like collaboration, self-regulation, and giving constructive feedback don’t develop by accident. His team taught specifically named strategies like a step-by-step conflict resolution process and a structured way to share ideas in a group because they recognized that even adults struggle with these things. In any classroom, when a student can’t work productively in a group, the answer is rarely to remove the group work. The answer is to teach the skill more explicitly. Sentence starters, discussion protocols, and structured reflection tools belong in every subject.
Make growth visible and tangible
One of the most powerful practices Matt described was using magnetized popsicle sticks on a continuum to help students track their own development. The power isn’t in the popsicle stick itself, it’s in giving students a concrete, low-stakes way to locate themselves in their learning and set a goal for what comes next. In a writing classroom, a similar continuum might track revision habits. In a science class, it might reflect how confidently a student can explain their experimental reasoning. The medium matters less than the act: students seeing themselves as learners who grow over time.
Normalize “not yet”
Agency requires a safe environment for honest self-assessment. Matt’s team explicitly acknowledged with students that some days collaboration feels hard, and that’s okay. That kind of language, the normalizing of struggle, gives students permission to be where they actually are rather than performing competence they don’t yet have. When classrooms treat growth as a direction rather than a destination, students are more willing to take the risks that learning requires.
The through-line in all of this is simple but easy to forget: learner agency is built, not born. It emerges when educators design environments where students have the tools, the language, and the safety to understand themselves and navigate their own learning. That’s not a PE idea or an English idea. It’s intentional planning and instruction to help all learners gain agency.