Children's Agency in the National Curriculum: The Promise of Structured Freedom [Paperback]

At a time when childrens experiences of English schooling are dominated by teacher-led learning?Children's Agency in the National Curriculum's important message is that we need to pay serious attention to childrens agency, enabling them to make choices, and exercise some control over what and how they learn. The book is a timely reminder that children are our future, and that they need to grow up to be active participants in society, with the skills to think critically and creatively about the immensely complex world they face. The consequences of turning children into passive learners and not giving them a voice are not??only??damaging for teaching and learning in schools, but democracy and society more widely.

- Diane?Reay, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Cambridge?

This inspiring and rigorous exploration of agency in the primary school combines its collection of real childrens voices with measured critique of current policies and practices in English primary schools today.? Although this book is an exploration of Structure v. Agency, and also adopts a critical realist methodology like Margaret Archer (2007), its authors however focus more on Emirbayer and Micshes (1998) conceptualisation of agency. ?Agency, they explain, is a socially situated capacity to act.?

The authors draw on childrens and educators perspectives about agency in three case studies of primary schooling, providing a range of appealing and well-chosen quotations from both groups of participants. Their data provoke comment on a comprehensive array of agency-related themes, including how mathematics and English dominates childrens and teachers experiences and thereby limits both childrens and teachers agency.? The authors focus also on the vital link between agency, social relationships and effective learning, which provides a very welcome reminder of alóÆ