How Positioning Shapes Opportunities for Student Agency in Schools

Abstract

This chapter shows how student positioning by adults shapes opportunities for students to develop collective systemic agency. Collective systemic agency refers to the capacity to organize others, participate in discussions, develop a systemic analysis, and take action in complex institutions, such as schools. This repertoire can be cultivated by encouraging students to ask critical questions about their educational experiences and to uncover evidence about how policy affects people. In observing this process taking place in schools, we notice that the ways adults positioned students, in part through talk, greatly impacted learning opportunities. To warrant our claims, we draw on data from Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI), a university–school partnership in which teachers guide students through an action research cycle. Our analysis looks at the ways in which school and classroom level positioning of students impacts student experiences and openings for action. Both focal classrooms make space for civic learning, but the chances to express agency are limited in some cases. We argue that these learning opportunities are strengthened when education professionals look beyond curricular experiences and attend to how students are positioned through discourse in the broader context of the school.