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In education, the proverb ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime,’ gives an analogy of how agentic learning and teachers’ feedback work.
Agentic means having the power to act. Agentic learning encourages the active engagement of teachers and students in the learning process. Students are encouraged and empowered to take control of their learning and seek new knowledge and skills.
Agentic learning suggests that students can actively learn through their actions. Students are motivated to learn and improve their skills. For example, a student with high motivation sets a goal and actively finds resources/ opportunities to achieve that goal instead of waiting for teacher guidance.
Agentic learning enables students to direct their thoughts and actions toward goals. Students develop confidence in working through challenges with focused efforts toward specific short /long-term goals. After setting goals, students plan out weekly study schedules to achieve them instead of last-hour study.
This type of learning helps students develop a growth-oriented mindset, persevere despite challenges, and avoid /overcome mistakes. It also helps students gain a deeper understanding of the subjects and apply them to practical situations.
How can teachers’ feedback in the class support students’ learning?
Teachers’ feedback should communicate teachers’ belief that the students can succeed in completing the tasks and allow them to do the work themselves. Here, teachers signal their expectations and belief that students can perform.
Instead of being passive feedback recipients, students should independently think, revise their work and become active participants in this process. This is a new dimension of feedback called ‘agentic feedback’.
A feedback with choices
Agentic feedback corrects mistakes and tells students to redo the assignment if they find errors. It guides students in their revision work and signals the teachers’ trust in students’ skill mastery.
Agentic feedback gives students more choice and encourages them to put effort into reworking their assignments. Students are made to think independently, do more work through problem-solving skills, and thrive in class.
This has the potential to support backward students by communicating teachers’ belief that they can improve their writing in assignments. This belief is powerful in improving their performance. Constructive criticism helps kids improve. Getting only praise will disempower and block the potential for learning and growth.
This approach can help students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, perform well academically and improve equity and results in the classroom. Teachers should encourage agentic learning through their agentic feedback by encouraging students. This can be done as follows:
Help them set goals, give them responsibility/ ownership towards learning, and plan for the future.
Praise genuinely when they experiment, are creative, and take the initiative and ownership of their learning. Even if they fail in their attempts, they can, with perseverance, learn from failure.
Ask about the assigned subject through discussions in class, and ask them to work through problems. If you are not getting through, try again confidently.
Create the student projects within the curriculum. They must choose a learning method that allows them to think critically about the topic and design/ make a presentation for the class.
For example, a lesson on leadership was done through agentic learning, where students were asked to ‘Learn Leadership from Leaders’. In this project, students in teams contacted and interacted with leaders in the society, inviting them to be guest speakers in the class. They presented a report in class before a faculty panel.
In this exercise, students developed collaborative learning and problem-solving skills through teamwork. Further, this built confidence and engagement in the learning process.