The concept of agency in education refers to the ability of learners to take control of their learning process, make informed decisions, set goals, and take action to achieve those goals. Connecting the concept of agency with a competence framework underscores the importance of empowering learners to take an active role in their learning and development. By providing learners with the tools, resources, and support they need to identify their learning goals, assess their skills, and design personalized learning pathways, competence frameworks can help foster agency and autonomy, ultimately leading to more effective and meaningful learning experiences.

According to the The Education Hub, “agency” describes the ability to identify valued goals and desired outcomes, and to pursue those goals and outcomes proactively, purposefully and effectively. The key components of agency include:

• the thoughtful identification of one’s values and priorities
• a belief in one’s abilities
• the capacity to intentionally direct one’s efforts towards specific goals

It is important that agency is understood in educational contexts to incorporate both action and intention.

The concept of agency is derived from the fields of sociology and psychology, and has been used in different ways for different purposes in education. It is sometimes used interchangeably with concepts like proactivity, autonomy, the ability to exercise choice, and self-regulation. This conceptual instability, combined with a limited empirical evidence base, means that the evidence for the role and impact of agency is less emphatic than that for other, more stable concepts such as self-efficacy.

While some factors of social emotional learning, such as self-efficacy, motivation or engagement, may be lower in some domains and higher in others, agency is a characteristic specific to an individual. Students have a sense of agency in guiding their own educational pathways as a whole regardless of how they feel in specific content areas. Importantly, it is malleable, and teachers can support students to develop their sense of agency.

The benefits of an agency-focused education are not controversial: indeed, some are fairly obvious. Agency supports all aspects of achievement while students are at school as well as powerfully setting them up for life beyond school. Agency, like many other factors of social emotional learning, is both an enabler of success at school and an outcome of schooling.