The student agency change lab project as a catalyst of practice development

Siebrich de Vries, July 2024

The Student agency change lab project (a project funded by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), 2023-2027) focuses on the problem that schools in the northern region are faced with the task of providing equal opportunities to pupils in secondary education and students in vocational education. We believe that equity can be promoted by supporting pupils and students to take their own direction and thereby develop (student agency). However, although more and more knowledge in this area is emerging, research and educational practice find each other only sparsely. With this practice-based research project we want to stimulate equity by creating learning environments in which all pupils en students in secondary and vocational education can develop student agency. This requires a learning culture at the schools in which all involved will study existing knowledge with each other and together develop new knowledge on how to achieve equity within these target groups. When equity and student and teacher agency becomes a common topic of discussion in the schools, the expectation is that it will eventually find its way into educational practice. From this shared ambition, which was based on an extensive question articulation, teacher educators, teachers, practice educators and researchers from the schools and teacher training programs work closely together in so-called change labs.

We based this research project theoretically on the CHAT. We also apply a formative intervention based on it, the change lab in which the expansive learning cycle is central. In the project three training schools (two secondary and one vocational) participate, all three forming a change lab with the teacher training program involved (NHL Stenden, University of Groningen and Hanze). In addition, we have a sounding board group with the responsible managers. The change labs have their process in their own meetings, but twice a year the three change labs and the sounding board group meet in a network meeting where there is exchange and sharing. At that time, the sounding board group itself also meets.

Now that the project has completed the first of its four years, there appears to be a central friction noted both by the change labs (how do we interest the management and colleagues in this important and beautiful theme?) and by the sounding board group (how do we get the results from the change labs into the organizations?), namely the linking of the change labs to their own organizations. 

From the ambition of connection, we started last Friday, June 28, 2024, with the sounding board group to analyze this friction. This yielded a lot, including the experience that the ambition seemed to be really felt. The next step will be to also model solutions with each other. In this way we are trying to use the sounding board group as a change lab with regard to connecting the change labs to their respective organizations.

The CHAT turns out not to be necessarily easy to apply in practice; participants also find an intervention like the change lab not easy to grasp. On the other hand, the enrichment of the theory is that it also provides tools to analyze what is chafing, and hopefully then take the next developmental step.

Dance & play to express your experience with CHAT

Marijn Neuman, Bianca Dusseljee, Vera Schuurmans, Menno Wierdsma

At Firda, we do research on the development of agency in students and professionals in the light of sustainability transitions and personal development. For us, CHAT provides practical starting-points and leads for professional development interventions and theoretical insights for research on the development of professional, relational, and career agency. However, as a research group, we repeatedly touch upon the complex character of the academic literature regarding CHAT and agency development. The frequent use of complex ideas and terms makes the theory rich in information and ideas. That, however, also makes using the theory very demanding for us as teacher-researchers and the people we work with, like students and teachers. We frequently search for simpler or better ways to convey the theory to others but feel that we lose the meaning and richness of the theory. .

While discussing Gonzalez-Rey’s review of perezhivanie (Gonzalez-Rey, 2016), we realized that the theory is mostly communicated and discussed in rational or cognitive modalities, such as the large body of academic literature. This appears inconsistent with the theory, which emphasizes human development as a reflexive process of individual and collective development, emotional, social, and cognitive development, lived experience, memory, etc. In terms of how the theory is presented, we do not see the layerdness that is discussed in the content or the theory.

Furthermore, our research on the nature of sustainability transitions and the challenges for our development as people emphasizes the necessity of intertwined and complex development of possible solutions that are, by definition, multi-disciplinary and multi-formed. For instance, Donna Haraway pleads for developing science-art entanglements to tell stories of becoming-with (Haraway, 2016). Like in CHAT, her perspective represents an interactive and relational view on (human) development as opposed to the impoverished perspective on development as something of the individual:

“It matters what we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” (Haraway, 2016, p.12)

These experiences raised the question if and how we can add different modalities of experience to the mostly cognitive or rational modalities that are the focus in academic papers. To that end, we propose a discussion not (directly) in words, but in play (creating figurative artworks with Lego) and dance (feeling moves and movement). Therefore, this round-table discussion will focus on the use of play and movement to express your experience with CHAT and open up our common zone of proximal development.

References

González Rey, F. (2016). ‘Vygotsky’s Concept of Perezhivanie in The Psychology of Art
and at the Final Moment of His Work: Advancing His Legacy’. Mind, Culture, and Activity 23(4):305-14. doi: 10.1080/10749039.2016.1186196.

Haraway, D.J. (2016). Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

How flexible can we use the Change Lab method? What are the experiences of other users when it comes to combining the role of researcher and coach/facilitator?

Astrid van Beusekom, Richard Voss, Elly Meetsma, Ankie Boelema

We, as inexperienced researchers, used the change lab in companies trying to support and strengthen the development and the learning of employees who needed to adapt to innovation and changes in their work routine. We worked according tot the principles of CL and taped or filmed every session. However, we were not very strict as to its form. One of the reasons for this was that we felt we did not want “to burden” the people who took part in the CL with our research. It was difficult for us to combine the roles of coach/facilitator and researcher, especially in the beginning. We know that Engeström himself does not insist on strictness in form, but we are interested to know what the limits of flexibility are and whether others find themselves dealing with these issue as well.

Question: How flexible can we be in form using a change lab? How do other researchers deal with this?

Co-creation on the boundary of school and workplace

Frank Blokhuis

MBO Amersfoort has had a practical research center since 2020. The center is a team that conducts practice-oriented research. This means investigating complex issues from educational practice and finding solutions for these issues. The practical research center for Work-Based Learning focuses on the question of how educational companies and learning companies can be strengthened as learning environments. In these learning environments, learning and working come together. Connecting learning and working aligns with the mission and vision of MBO Amersfoort, which emphasizes learning in and based on practice.

Co-creation is an important pillar in the research. Together with stakeholders, the center maps out how they view educational companies and learning companies as learning environments and where opportunities lie to strengthen these environments. Stakeholders include students, practical supervisors, teachers, and managers.

The professorship bases its research on a number of theoretical foundations. Looking at the research questions of the professorship, learning environment, co-creation, and design are important concepts. We will briefly address these and some others.

Goodyear (2001) describes a learning environment as the socio-cultural, physical, and social environment in which people can learn. Others refine this by noting that there are social, substantive, instrumental, temporal, and spatial aspects to a learning environment (Zitter & Hoeve, 2012; Zitter, 2021).

Bouw (2021) distinguishes different types of learning environments that can be placed on a continuum from school to work. Where school and work are most intertwined, there is a hybrid learning environment. Educational companies and learning companies can be placed on this continuum.

Strengthening learning environments at the boundary of school and work is closely linked to designing learning environments. Aspects of a learning environment can be used as perspectives for designing (Carvalho & Goodyear, 2018; Zitter, 2021).

Looking at learning environments from these perspectives can help strengthen them.

Dimensions for learning also help in looking through learning environments and searching for opportunities to come to reinforcement. One dimension is that of acquisition – participation: acquiring knowledge – integrating into a community. Another is that of constructed – realistic: under safe conditions – in reality (Zitter & Hoeve, 2012; Zitter, 2021).

Focusing on strengthening is one thing, the intention is to achieve sustainability of the reinforcement that has been initiated.

Co-creation helps with this. It is a process in which relevant stakeholders systematically and from a position of equality actively arrive at multiple diagnoses and solutions to an educational issue (definition professorship, 2021).

The professorship aims to achieve impact through its research in four ways: development of education (change), of products (creation), of knowledge (understanding), and of colleagues (professionalization) (derived from Andriessen, 2019).

Looking back, we can say that the approach we used has provided insights into educational companies as learning environments. Together with co-researchers, we have identified leverage points for strengthening these learning environments: the desired changes.

Engaging in co-creation meant that stakeholders could dialogue with each other to identify desired changes. The changes that emerged in this way were seen by them as a win for all involved parties. Where there is intensive contact and collaboration from all parties involved, an energetic network is created that fosters movement and development: working together as a key.