What is student agency and how might it be influenced by project-based learning?

Student agency is a capacity for purpose-driven reflexive action for learning in the school environment. Agency is seen as a quality essential for young people to not only survive, but also thrive, in the volatile times that characterise the 21st century. Therefore, student agency is a topic of increasing intrigue in Australia and indeed, around the world. Despite this high level of attention, student agency as a construct is under-theorised. Research regarding the effects schools and teachers can have on student agency is limited. This mixed method study proposed an integrated model of student agency and utilised it to investigate the influence of project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy on student agency. Participants included students in the Year 5 (n = 50) and Year 9 (n = 26) cohorts of a New South Wales independent school in Australia who were engaging in PBL. Constructs comprising the proposed model for student agency were represented in a student survey developed as a part of this study. Those constructs were tested for their conceptual validity via exploratory factor analysis. Survey data collected before and after the PBL intervention were used to measure changes in aspects of student agency using a t-test and effect size calculations. Semi-structured student focus groups for Year 5 (n = 6) and Year 9 (n = 5), and semi-structured teacher interviews (n = 2) were undertaken to further describe the conceptual model of student agency and support explanations of quantitative results. The findings suggest that PBL can positively influence some aspects of student agency. Aspects of student agency were observed to be highly sensitive to environmental factors. The nature of teacher-student interactions at the micro level of the classroom and curriculum pressures at the macro level of the educational system appear to affect the quality of student agency exercised. The implications of these findings for stakeholders in education are discussed, with the intention of supporting the greater agency of students in schools.