Empowering early learners: Navigating the interplay of teaching practice and formative assessment for cultivating student agency in the primary classroom

Perspective Article

Published on: May 13, 2024

Feedback, marking and assessment

8 min read

Bev Coombridge, Doctoral Student, University of Buckingham, UK; Initial Teacher Educator, Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, New Zealand The development of student agency is increasingly recognised as a crucial element in effective education (Sirkko et al., 2019; Cook-Sather, 2020; Ruef, 2021), particularly in the formative years of primary school (Vaughn, 2018). Research has consistently shown that formative assessment can significantly impact children’s learning (Black and Wiliam, 2006; Dann, 2014). Despite a robust body of research on formative assessment and a growing interest in student agency, a notable gap exists in understanding how specific assessment methods, such as co-constructing an assessment context, affect student agency. This is especially true for children in their first two years of primary school. To address this gap, a doctoral research project was initiated to explore how student agency can be fostered through co-constructed formative assessment in classrooms of fiv

Join us or sign in now to view the rest of this page

You're viewing this site as a guest, which only allows you to view a limited amount of content.

To view this page and get access to all our resources, join the Chartered College of Teaching (it's free for trainee teachers and half price for ECTs) or log in if you're already a member.

Allal L (2021) Involving primary school students in the co-construction of formative assessment in support of writing. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 28(5–6): 584–601.
Bandura A (1986) Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bishop R and Berryman M (2010) Te Kotahitanga: Culturally responsive professional development for teachers. Teacher Development 14(2): 173–187.
Black P and Wiliam D (2006) Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment. London: Granada Learning.
Carlone HB, Mercier AK and Metzger SR (2021) The production of epistemic culture and agency during a first-grade engineering design unit in an urban emergent school. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research 11(1): 10.
Cook-Sather A (2020) Student voice across contexts: Fostering student agency in today’s schools. Theory Into Practice 59(2): 182–191.
Dann R (2014) Assessment ‘as’ learning: Blurring the boundaries of assessment and learning for theory, policy and practice. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 21(2): 149–166.
Dyson AH (2020) ‘This isn’t my real writing’: The fate of children’s agency in too-tight curricula. Theory Into Practice 59(2): 119–127.
González-Howard M and McNeill KL (2020) Acting with epistemic agency: Characterizing student critique during argumentation discussions. Science Education 104(6): 953–982.
Mameli C, Caricati L and Molinari L (2020) That’s not fair! The effects of teacher justice and academic achievement on Self and Other’s resistant agency. The British Journal of Educational Psychology 90(4): 933–947.
McQueen R (2022) Enhancing student agency in the primary music classroom through culturally responsive practice. Teachers and Curriculum 22(2): 89–98.
Moses L, Rylak D, Reader T et al. (2020) Educators’ perspectives on supporting student agency. Theory Into Practice 59(2): 213–222.
OECD (2019) OECD future of education and skills 2030. Available at: www.oecd.org/education/2030-project (accessed 5 June 2021).
Oswell D (2013) The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riley K (2019) Agency and belonging: What transformative actions can schools take to help create a sense of place and belonging? Educational & Child Psychology 36(4): 91–103.
Ruef J (2021) How Ms Mayen and Her students co-constructed good-at-math. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 52(2): 152–188.
Sairanen H, Kumpulainen K and Kajamaa A (2022) An investigation into children’s agency: Children’s initiatives and practitioners’ responses in Finnish early childhood education. Early Child Development and Care 192(1): 112–123.
Sirkko R, Kyrönlampi T and Puroila A-M (2019) Children’s agency: Opportunities and constraints. International Journal of Early Childhood 51(3): 283–300.
Vaughn M (2018) Making sense of student agency in the early grades. Phi Delta Kappan 99(7): 62–66.
Vaughn M, Jang BG, Sotirovska V et al. (2020) Student agency in literacy: A systematic review of the literature. Reading Psychology 41(7): 712–734.