Agency in the classroom

This chapter is about the notion of agency and its role in language learning. The main principle involved is that learning depends on the activity and the initiative of the learner, more so than on any “inputs” that are transmitted to the learner by a teacher or a textbook. This does not, of course, diminish the need for texts and teachers, since they fulfil a crucial mediating function, but it places the emphasis on action, interaction and affordances, rather than on texts themselves. Although this is nothing new if we take seriously the writings of Comenius, Vygotsky, Montessori, Dewey and many other educational thinkers over the centuries, it is good to remind ourselves of the wisdom of this fundamental pedagogical principle.