Agency in the Early Years

Introduction

This blog post documents the initiative taken by the early years teaching team at Xi'an Liangjiatan International School. Most of the team members along with me took part in professional development provided by Innovative Global Educators. During this PD we all got on the same page as to what are some best practices in early years education. We learned from some fabulous early years educators such as Anne VanDam and Fiona Zinn. The team also read the updated PYP documents to learn the philosophy behind student agency. The following paragraph is taken from The Learner, published by the International Baccalaureate Organisation. 

Agency in the Primary Years Program

When learners have agency, the role of the teacher and student changes; the relationship between a teacher and a student is viewed as a partnership. Students take initiative, express interest and wonderings, make choices and are aware of their learning goals. They are actively engaged and monitor and adjust their learning as needed. Students offer feedback to others and consult on decisions that affect them. In school, students take responsibility for their learning and collaborate with teachers and other students to plan, present and assess learning needs (2018).

The components of agency are voice, choice, and ownership. In the early stages of this process, the early years team surveyed students to determine their interests and give them choice in what they would be learning. Students were divided into multi-age groups according to the area of their interest. Part of the mission at XLIS is to create a sense of community. This weekly time helped to develop this sense of community. 

Teacher Agency

The most important factor for this time to take place was a willingness for the teaching team to try new things. It is important that teachers have agency also to implement new initiatives. For this to happen the timetable needed to be created in a way that allowed for two periods of uninterrupted teaching time for all six classes. This was planned at the end of the academic year. 

Evaluation

At the end of the school year I evaluated the effectiveness of the initiative by interviewing students and some of the staff who were involved. Below are some of their responses.

Students were asked if they liked agency time.
Student 1, "We go to other teacher's classrooms"

Student 2, "Because it is fun. I like to learn about the space and about the world". 

Student 3, "We can play and I can see my friends."

Student 4, "I can go to different classes and I can play. I can play with my friends."

Student 5, "A little bit, I like the cars."

Student 6, "Because you make things."

Student 7, "We can do different stuff. I don't like when we do not usually share."

Student 8, "Yes, because there's friends."

Student 9, "We can play with our friends."

Student 10, "So so."

Student 11, "We can go to different rooms and we can play different things."

Teachers were asked if the agency time was effective.

Teacher 1, "It has been interrupted by events too often like assemblies and sports day. Once a week has not been enough. We are trying to figure out how to align it to our curriculum. It is becoming a second curriculum. It has been good to mix the students with different teachers, they are able to interact with other students and teachers to learn from them. P1 and ECE now interact with each other."

Teacher 2, "What is nice about it is the different ages in one room. We asked the children where they would like to go and gave them different experiences at the start. They have the opportunity to experience different things. We have given the students choice over their learning and valued their choices."

Teacher 3, "The kids love it and try different activities. They meet different friends and build connections with the other classes."

Teacher 4, "It has been good to get the early years students together to collaborate. It has been good for the teachers to collaborate vertically also."

Conclusion

This year our early years team and I went to a REACH conference in Chengdu. REACH stands for Reggio Emilia in Asia for Children. We were very fortunate to learn from Claudia Giudici, president of Reggio Children. This conference further solidified for us the importance of play in the development of children and the value of agency. 

References

The learner (2018), International Baccalaureate Organization (UK) Ltd.

Innovative Global Educators - http://www.innovativeglobaled.org/home-0.html

Reggio Emelia in Asia for Children