Torch - Spring/Summer 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From music to medicine, Upper School Club and Community Partnerships Heads promote their co-curricular passions at Club Fest.

around them have agency. In short, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) education initiative called Learning Compass 2030, student agency is about: acting rather than being acted upon; shaping rather than being shaped; and making responsible decisions and choices rather than accepting those determined by others. 1 While it’s difficult—perhaps impossible—to measure and quantify, agency can be modelled, supported and taught. In fact, in many ways, it’s the primary purpose of education. Preparing young women to make a difference means providing the teaching, learning and living frameworks that develop this core competency. A 2015 Harvard University education study states that the development of agency may be as important an outcome of schooling as the skills we measure with testing. Why? Because young people “with high levels of agency do not respond passively to their circumstances; they tend to seek meaning and act with purpose to achieve the conditions they desire in their own and others’ lives.” 2

Based on data collected from 16,000 Grade 6 through Grade 9 classrooms, the Harvard study identifies what it calls agency dampers and agency boosters within schools. For example, the researchers illustrate that schools dampen agency when they coddle and overprotect students. Teachers who engage in off-topic classroom conversations and provide too much problem solving and clarification for their students also dampen agency . These approaches send the message that students are not capable, which then diminishes effort and undercuts confidence. What are agency boosters within schools? Below, we’ll take you through a handful of practices here at Havergal that align with the OECD Learning Compass 2030 and the Harvard study. Each of them develops a girl’s ability to chart the course of her own life and shape her world.

1 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. “OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030.” Accessed on January 28, 2020, via oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning. 2 Ferguson, R.F. “The Influence of Teaching—Beyond Standardized Test Scores: Engagement, Mindsets, and Agency.” The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. October 2015. Accessed on March 1, 2020, via agi.harvard.edu/projects/TeachingandAgency.pdf.

SPRING/SUMMER 2020 • TORCH 13