Finding voices and emerging agency in classroom learning

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a class as a learning community that transits from one established classroom practice that elevated monologic voices of authorities to another practice that encouraged dialogic participation. The project illustrated in this paper took a design-based approach in nurturing a learning community in a classroom, with which we re-designed the Secondary 1 Geography curriculum with teachers around six design principles. This paper proposes that the effort of a teacher, Nicole, helped learners find their inner persuasive voices and developed their conceptual agency in learning Geography. The transition of Nicole’s Geography class is examined by comparing episodes from different periods of the project implementation, with the goal of finding out how students’ agency emerges from this transition.