Confronting disruptions through student agency

Abstract

Like German programs around the country, the German faculty and students at Elon University (North Carolina) have faced powerful disruptions to their academic and personal lives. Some, for us, have been positive, such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, curricular and pedagogical reform influenced by the literacy movement and the democratic classroom, student engagement with social problems, the collaboration and community of a small program (two full-time faculty; low enrollment caps), and pervasive technologies that allow access to real-world L2 materials plus communication with global partners. Others are wholly negative: the restricted resources and capacity of a small program, plateauing enrollments, socioeconomic troubles for students, and the twin existential threats of COVID-19 and climate change.

Elon University is a private teaching university in North Carolina with roughly 6000 undergraduates and 750 graduate students. The German program is supported by two full-time German professors housed in a world languages department, plus a 10-member advisory board from eight departments. Total German enrollments are 150 per year, with 40 to 50 minors and two or three majors. Like other language programs in the department, German features a literacy-based curriculum (Kern, 2000) that uses authentic texts as the locus of linguistic and cultural study.

Student agency has proven an effective tool to counter negative disruptions and support positive ones. The German faculty at Elon promotes student agency in the following ways. In order to pursue a democratic classroom—a positive disruption promoting collaboration and community—students exercise agency by choosing topics and texts. For example, in the 200-level (intermediate) unit on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, students choose between a short story (Peter Weiss), an essay (Martin Walser), and an interactive website on Berlin's Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. In the 300-level (intermediate-advanced) course Germany in the New Millennium, students choose half of the course topics, texts, and materials. Students are polled at the beginning of the semester to generate topic ideas; the instructor and students continuously add to the list of topics throughout the first half of the course. In the most recent iteration, students chose German foreign policy and patriotism in Germany. Because the topics are real-world and the texts are authentic, this type of student agency also supports the faculty's efforts at literacy-influenced curricular reform (Warner & Dupuy, 2018)—perhaps the most positive disruption to the profession in decades.

Further democratizing the classroom, students exercise agency in decisions about pervasive technologies. Technology use thus becomes a choice. For instance, students may create social media posts in place of formal academic essays, and students vote how frequently (if at all) to participate in Talk Abroad, a video-conferencing service that pairs L2 learners with native speakers. So far, students have chosen to use Talk Abroad at least twice per semester, noting that it boosts confidence and efficacy, which in turn gives students additional agency.

In an extraordinarily powerful positive disruption, the German faculty, like many colleagues in Elon's Department of World Languages and Cultures, have moved decisively away from traditional grades—a process known as ungrading (Blum, 2020). For example, the faculty have reinterpreted participation grades traditionally assigned by the instructor as engagement grades that are tied to concrete low-stakes assignments. Quizzes have unlimited attempts, which reframes them as a learning opportunity where students are encouraged to take intellectual risks. Assignments that target a presentational mode of communication are highly scaffolded with multiple drafts and frequent feedback. Rubrics are cocreated with students to allow transparency and increase buy-in and ownership. In some courses, students determine their own final grades, based on attendance, task completion, participation, and fulfillment of course objectives. These agency-building initiatives signal to students that their learning and intellectual growth matter most and that they play an active role in course design and assessment.

Countering the perceived lack of control over profound existential disruptions such as poverty, climate change, racism, and the COVID-19 pandemic, students reassert agency by studying these matters in an international context. In addition to the 300-level course mentioned above, every 100- and 200-level course includes a unit on current events. Recent student-selected topics have included refugees and migration; racism and the Black Lives Matter movement in Germany; poverty among German university students; and climate change and environmental protection. The remaining 300-level courses—on Weimar, the post-1945 era, East Germany, the concept of Heimat, and contemporary media—make explicit links to contemporary affairs. Discussing these complex, emotionally laden disruptions promotes student agency via exposure to solutions being proposed in Germany and via ample time and space to reflect on these problems in a structured setting.

Last but not least, students recently exercised agency by repeatedly requesting additional course sections to eliminate scheduling conflicts—making clear they would enroll in more German courses if they had more enrollment options. The faculty, mindful of tight budgets that would prevent hiring additional instructors, responded by teaching all 100- and 200-level courses as combined courses (German 101 and 102 together; German 201 and 202 together). The ensuing cross-level collaborations further promote student agency, community, and efficacy. Students form bonds across levels, less-experienced students perceive that they can keep up with and learn from their more-experienced peers, and more-experienced students take on the role of peer mentor.

The authors’ lived experience of the effectiveness of student agency is reinforced by strong support in the research literature on student motivation and student–faculty partnerships. A range of studies (e.g., Ambrose et al., 2010; Kupatadze, 2018; Oakes, 2013; Papi & Hiver, 2020; Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2012) have suggested a link between student agency and increased motivation, ownership, collaboration, and engagement. Kupatadze (2018, p. 1) has pointed out that the lack of student agency in traditional higher education has worrisome downsides for democracy and civic engagement. For Kupatadze, the teacher-dominated classroom “discourages active participation of students in the process of their education—a characteristic that undoubtedly is an important attribute of a democratic society or democratically minded individual” (p. 1). Kupatadze's alternative—to reassert student agency by treating students as partners—improves both teaching and learning: “[B]y involving them in the design and development of course and/or curriculum components, [students] will become more engaged, more invested learners and, consequently, change their attitude towards the process of learning, viewing it as an equal responsibility of both teachers and students” (p. 7). We concur with Kupatadze; in our experience, boosting student agency has led to increased motivation, ownership, and collaboration.

Efforts to increase student agency have met with a positive response. Students report that they appreciate being involved in decision-making, that the shift away from traditional grading increases enjoyment and satisfaction by refocusing attention on learning rather than grading, and that engaging in discussion with more experienced students boosts their confidence and efficacy. The efforts to boost student agency also correlate with a period of strong enrollment retention in our German program, countering the disruption posed by the national decline in modern language enrollments.

A necessary step to enable student agency, and therefore its positive disruptions, is to involve students in program conversations from the start and frequently. For example, before developing a new advanced-level course, the faculty might ask students what this course should be about. When experimenting with a new pedagogical innovation, the faculty should inform students of the experiment, ask for feedback, then modify. Most importantly, students should know when changes in the program or teaching have been inspired by student input. For example, the Elon faculty began teaching combined levels because students pointed out frequent scheduling conflicts. The faculty also supported students in their vocabulary acquisition because they specifically asked for this support. Involving students in these conversations ensures that they take ownership and realize that their contributions are valued.

It is not a stretch to say that L2 teachers can help students address the social, political, economic, and environmental disruptions of our time by boosting student agency. Studying these matters in an international context is enlightening and being included in classroom decisions is empowering. Ultimately, the effort helps build students’ democratic capacities.