Re-thinking Teacher Agency and Inquiry

I'm in the process of applying for my full teacher registration, as part of this process I have to share evidence of my teaching, professional learning and reflections via Standards of the Teaching Profession. This morning I saw this tweet, and like any curious teacher, I travelled down the rabbit hole...

A very amazing article. The depth and research links supported with the action in the school makes me yearn to start all of this today! Shaping our future: Teacher agency and inquiry https://t.co/S2lpYbxRG9 via @wordpressdotcom #pypchat #agency #studentagency

— Jonathan Twigg (@twiggnet) October 23, 2018

The first section suggested readers watch the following video that talks about "Drive: The surprising truth about motivation" (

Here are my key takeaways from the video:

* Incentives don't increase performance in workers

* Purpose is a key motivator

* Start treating like people (not horses that need carrots and sticks)

So then, what does this have to do with teacher agency and inquiry?

Well, the authors made this statement:

Autonomy is the choice for self-directed learning, mastery is having the skills and knowledge to take ownership of learning and voice is about being able to contribute to a greater purpose.

Followed by these 3 points (which had me nodding ecstatically - YES!!! we don't give or take agency. It is completely inherent in all of us, setting up 'agency' opportunities can actually be detrimental to children's innate sense of agency.

• Agency is not ours to give or take.

• We all have agency by nature.

• As schools and leaders we can decide to honor this and support learners to engage with agency

The authors urge us to seek 'true agency' not what we think agency is. Ensuring that this is built on trust and relationships. There are no surprises that the key to success in this area, and in teacher inquiry and growth is 'purpose' looking at teachers as people rather than the role they keep. Ryan's (the authors) suggested method of figuring out your purpose is to ask a series of questions:

First answer what do you do? Then keep asking ‘Why?’ Why do you do what you do? Why does it matter? ‘Why?’ Why do you do what you do? Why does it matter?

There are so many gems in this article, https://chooseactreflect.wordpress.com/2018/10/21/shaping-our-future-teacher-agency-and-inquiry/ I strongly urge you to read, and read again and reflect on how this might impact your own journey.

What next for me?
I'm going to have a go at figuring out my purpose, I am also going to really interrogate the word 'agency' and read further into this.