Lee Crockett’s highly anticipated Agents to Agency: A Measurable Process for Cultivating Self-Directed Learner Agency follows on from his bestselling Future-Focused Learning: 10 Essential Shifts of Everyday Practice.
The transformation of classroom practice and moving the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the learner is examined in greater detail, with an emphasis on the specific learning practices that successfully underpin the transition.
Agents to Agency explores how to adopt learning practices that develop and enhance learner agency and will provide the understanding you need to move forward with it in your classroom.
Lee guides you through the journey from agents to agency with clear summaries, key points, and tangible examples you can apply to your practice. Additionally, the final chapters also present a series of sensible and practical continuums for facilitating and measuring the progression of learner agency.
Praise for Agents to Agency and the author
‘Most educators would agree that student ownership and agency are essential elements of deep, meaningful student learning. What might not be as apparent, is the pathway to produce these realities. This book creates philosophical and practical clarity for any educator or education system who truly wants to graduate lifelong learners. Lee Crockett cuts through the rhetoric and provides insights and practical strategies that have the potential to significantly accelerate student learning.’
Dr Anthony Muhammad, educational speaker, presenter, and author and co-author of many books including Transforming School Culture and Professional Learning Communities at Work® and High Reliability Schools
‘If students are to become their own teachers, they need the skills, evaluative thinking and opportunities to develop a deep passion for learning. Gaining such agency rarely happens by chance; it needs systematising of the belief that it is important to teach students to become their own teachers and ensuring there is joy in the worthy struggle of this learning. Crockett’s Lesson Zero and beyond are powerful methods to enact agency based on the premise there is no perfection, yet it was perfect in the moment that was. O this learning, what a thing it is!’
John Hattie, laureate professor emeritus at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, and chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership board
‘A must-read for every educator. Agents to Agency provides the link between our current outdated education system and the “how” to authentically achieve change. It is a book about children and young people at the centre of learning. I highly recommend this book for any educator wanting to shift their practice.’
Natalie Otten, Future-Focused Learning executive coach at Evelyn Scott School and president of the Australian School Library Association
‘Lee uses his personal journey, his global experience and the literature to shape a seamless and practical argument that we can “do” the fundamentals of learning and teaching differently. If we start with learners and focus on their journeys, we can reframe school experiences, making them relevant and centred on preparing our young people for their futures, not our past.’
Professor John Fischetti, pro vice-chancellor of the College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle
‘This book is a must-have for any system, school or educator who has at the heart of their purpose, student agency. Lee Crockett has managed to successfully provide a blueprint for not only the “why” and “what” of student agency but also the “how”. Agents to Agency recognises where we are at in education and then pushes us to think about what’s next in our quest for an education system that truly fosters responsible, capable and independent learners. A concise, clear, practical and important book for any educator committed to self-directed learning.’
Gavin Grift, founder and CEO of Grift Education, and author and co- author of books including Five Ways of Being, Collaborative Teams that Work and the forthcoming Emerge: The Five Most Common Challenges You Face as a Middle Leader and How to Overcome Them
‘Lee’s latest work is a timely reminder that school should not be a place where kids go to watch teachers work. If we learned one thing from the experience of COVID-19 pandemic responses, it is that our learners have great resilience and capabilities. We can include them in the “secret teacher work” and trust them to guide and design their own learning.’
Simon Vaughan, principal of Canberra College
‘Engagement of learners is so important in our schools, but there are many compelling reasons to move students from an initial position of engagement to something much more powerful and meaningful. It’s how we unlock the capacity of a community of inquiry and practice to go from the transaction of interaction to the transformation of permission. In Agents to Agency, Lee Crockett skilfully sets out a practical blueprint to support educators with the necessary “how” for equipping, empowering and enabling young people to transform their own lives through amplifying learner voice, agency and advocacy in our schools and, ultimately, society.’
Adriano Di Prato, educator, former deputy principal, co-founder of a School for tomorrow. and co-author of Game Changers: Leading Today’s Learning for Tomorrow’s World
‘I am such a fan of the brilliant writing and work of Lee Crockett. In Agents to Agency, Crockett provides an illustrative roadmap of “destinations, milestones and footsteps” with exceptional clarity for developing student agency over their learning. I have planted his Lesson Zero flag into all of our mathematics lesson design work. The book offers a brilliant, practical and precise rationale, structure and process for us to follow.’
Dr Timothy D Kanold, award-winning educator, author of books including HEART! and SOUL!, and former superintendent of Adlai E. Stevenson High School District 125, a Model PLC at Work® district in Lincolnshire, Illinois