One of the key factors in the development of self-regulation skills is the way in which we build our sense of self. In order to learn how to self-regulate, we need to believe that we can determine our own pathways through life, take responsibility for our own choices and decisions, set our own goals and work to achieve them, even when that is hard. We need to believe that it is worth us putting in the effort to do these things because it will improve our experiences of our lives. This gradually developing sense of ourselves as active agents supports us in being motivated to control our impulses, manage our reactions and to handle the challenges we face. Central to the notion of 'self' is the understanding that we have autonomy - that we are active participants in our own lives, working towards goals that we can set for ourselves. When we learn how the choices we make impact on our experiences of our world, we become more motivated to control our behaviours and our emotions.
As children develop, there is an important balance to be achieved between enough agency, and too much. Adults need to manage the levels of risk, creating suitable environments, in which children can experience challenges, aim to achieve goals, and learn how to cope when things do not go to plan. It can be very tempting for adults to over help children - to hover over them, saying 'just let me do that for you' or 'let me show you how that's done' or 'be careful, don't do that!'. (What I tend to call 'helicopter' parenting or teaching.) But where we over protect and over help, children do not learn to believe in themselves, nor do they learn how to cope with challenge and failure, because they do not experience it often enough. What children need is a gradual move from co-regulation with trusted adults, to self-regulation by and for themselves. Too much scaffolding can lead to a sense of learned helplessness, where the idea that adults will take over and solve everything for you means that you take on less responsibility for yourself. Too much protection can mean that, when we do fail, we struggle to cope with the emotional fallout by ourselves. For agency and self-regulation to develop, children need opportunities to be responsible, to take managed risks and to work towards goals of their own choosing. We need to be willing to do that hardest of things - to sometimes allow our children to fail and to learn by making their own mistakes for themselves. In an educational context, this can be complex to do, because our role as teachers or practitioners is to support learning, and there is often a sense that we need to be 'seen' to be doing something. Standing back or standing aside can feel like a leap of faith when 'just tell them' is the commonly heard cry. Of course, when we consider the development of self-regulation skills in the context of school, questions about agency and autonomy are tricky to manage. In a class of thirty students, it is not going to be possible for everyone to have agency simultaneously; in a class preparing for an important exam, autonomy may need to be put to one side. In the early years, when many of these key self-regulation skills are starting to develop, and before children begin their compulsory education, there is a strong focus on agency. The high ratios, the focus in the curriculum on developing and caring for the 'whole child', and the use of play as a key part of pedagogy all support the notion of choice, autonomy and personal goal setting. As the more formal school years begin, and there is an academic curriculum to 'get through' and statutory tests to take, allowing children to have agency can feel risky and too time consuming to manage. There is sometimes an underlying concern that, given the choice, children and young people would choose to take the easy path, or to do nothing. In reality, though, agency is at the heart of intrinsic motivation and is a key aspect in helping children and young people become lifelong learners. All the research into motivation shows that, where we conceptualise learning to be intrinsically valuable to us, we are more likely to engage in it of our own accord. But when the pressure is on teachers to 'get results', allowing young people to learn how to be intrinsically motivated can feel risky or even potentially damaging. Extrinsic motivators can become a very tempting 'go to' alternative. In a fascinating study, researchers looked at how babies begin to act with purpose (Sloan et al, 2023). They looked at how babies reacted when their feet was tied to a mobile, meaning that they could consciously move it with their feet. A positive feedback loop very quickly developed, whereby the more the mobile moved, the more the baby was incentivised to move, thus producing more movement in the mobile itself. The babies appeared to already understand that there was a cause and effect between themselves and what happened with the mobile. They had effectively set themselves a goal and made it happen. The researchers described the 'aha!' moment that they observed, when the babies realised that it was they themselves who were causing the effect, and rapidly sped up their movements. Even at this very earliest age, human beings are driven to take decisions which allow them to have a direct influence on their experience of their lives. As I note in my new book, while there is plenty of research into teacher agency, there is relatively little research into children's agency in educational contexts. It is interesting to consider why this is, and to look at different models of education where young people might experience increased levels of agency, for instance in some self-directed learning and home-based education contexts. Agency has been described as the "power to originate action" and is often also described using the term "self-efficacy". Where our aim is for our learners to develop self-regulation, particularly around goal setting and resilience, we should not under estimate the importance of agency and autonomy in building self-efficacy skills. One simple way to incorporate agency into your classroom is to offer some simple choices. These can often usefully be incorporated during more routine parts of the day. For instance, when self-registering in the mornings, we ask our children to choose whether they would prefer milk or water at snack time, and to put their names on the relevant part of the board. These simple choices can help children feel like they do have an element of agency and influence, within their classroom setting. Similarly, saying to a child who is hesitant to start writing, "would you prefer to start by doing this, or by doing that?", offers a straightforward way to add an element of agency to learning in class. Reference: Sloan, Jones and Scott Kelso, Meaning from Movement and Stillness: signatures of coordination dynamics reveal infant agency, 2023 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) Find out more about my new book, or purchase a copy by clicking on the image below. I also offer online and in-person CPD/training sessions on Supporting the Development of Self-Regulation. Please email me for more details.
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AuthorSue Cowley is a teacher, trainer and the author of more than 30 books for teachers ArchivesCategories |