Different Routes, Shared Goals: Teacher Agency in the Classroom

Different Routes, Shared Goals: Teacher Agency in the Classroom

Enas Mabrouk | Oct 26, 2026

This article explores how differentiated teaching approaches can support learners in reaching shared learning goals, highlighting the importance of adapting resources, providing appropriate support and exercising professional judgement to foster confidence, independence and growth.

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Silence

It is one of the moments that continues to challenge me as a teacher.

The story is finished. A student knows the characters, understands the events and can answer questions about what happened. Everything seems to be going well. Then I ask, “Can you retell the story in your own words?”

And sometimes, there is silence.

While many students can confidently express their understanding, others may find it challenging to organise their ideas and retell a rich Arabic text in their own words. This is a challenge I sometimes encounter when students explore enrichment stories designed to broaden their knowledge, vocabulary and ability to communicate ideas.

This continues to challenge my thinking: If the understanding is there, what is preventing the student from expressing it? And what can I change in my teaching to help?

Being a native Arabic speaker does not necessarily mean that retelling a rich Arabic text will always come naturally. These experiences have led me to recognise that the difficulty may not lie in understanding the text itself, but in organising and expressing that understanding. Rather than lowering the learning objective, I have learned to reconsider the route towards it.

Making Understanding Visible

These classroom experiences have helped me recognise the importance of supporting the transition from comprehension to expression. Sequenced images can provide a useful starting point, allowing learners to visualise the main events and characters of a story and recognise how events connect.

However, visual resources alone may not be enough. Modelling, repeated reading, questioning and encouragement can create further opportunities for learners to develop their language and confidence.

For example, a student who finds it difficult to retell a story may begin by sequencing images of its main events, then use key vocabulary and linking words to explain what is happening in each one. As confidence develops, gradually reducing these prompts can encourage more independent retelling.

What I have come to understand is that comprehension and language production do not necessarily develop at the same pace. A learner may understand a text well but still need support to organise and express that understanding accurately.

This has reinforced my belief that supporting learners does not necessarily mean simplifying the learning objective. Sometimes, it means reconsidering the pathway that allows them to reach it.

The Same Resources, Different Possibilities

Another important understanding that has developed through my practice is that differentiation should not only focus on learners who need additional support. It must also provide meaningful opportunities for those who demonstrate greater confidence and linguistic ability.

Visual resources, for example, should not become a ceiling for more confident learners.

While one student may use sequenced images to understand and retell the original story, another may use the same images to create a new story, applying learned vocabulary and language structures while transferring the values and concepts of the original text into a different context.

The same principle can be applied to writing. When a learner has a limited range of vocabulary or finds it difficult to generate and organise ideas, a mind map supported by carefully selected language resources can provide a starting point for developing their writing.

For a more confident writer, however, the same mind map may become an opportunity to explore richer vocabulary, develop more complex ideas and experiment with increasingly sophisticated sentence structures.

One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching is seeing students take their learning in directions that were not initially anticipated.

These experiences have helped me see resources not as fixed solutions, but as flexible starting points. The same resource can provide access for one learner while creating opportunities for greater independence, creativity and challenge for another.

Differentiation, therefore, is not simply about making tasks easier or harder. It is about recognising what different learners need while maintaining meaningful expectations and opportunities for growth.

The Same Destination, Different Routes

Over time, these experiences have reshaped the way I think about differentiation.

When a learner struggles to reach an objective, the question is not always whether the objective is too demanding. It may be whether the pathway provides the right opportunities and support for that learner.

Students can work towards the same core learning while engaging with it at different levels of independence, complexity and creativity. Some may benefit from visual sequencing, modelling, mind maps or carefully selected vocabulary. Others may use those same resources to analyse, extend, reinterpret or create.

This has led me to an important conclusion: the learning goal does not necessarily need to change when learners require different forms of support.

What may need to change is the route, the level of scaffolding and the opportunities available for each learner to progress further.

Maintaining high expectations does not mean expecting every student to follow the same pathway. It means recognising that different routes can lead towards shared goals, while allowing learners to develop beyond them.

Teacher Agency: From Noticing to Acting

Reflecting on these experiences has also deepened my understanding of teacher agency.

For me, teacher agency is not simply about having the freedom to make choices. It involves noticing what is happening in front of us, drawing on our professional knowledge and experience, and making purposeful decisions in response to learners’ needs.

Priestley, Biesta and Robinson (2015) offer an ecological perspective on teacher agency, suggesting that it is not simply an individual quality, but something achieved through the interaction between teachers and the cultural, structural and practical conditions in which they work.

This perspective resonates with my classroom experience. Professional judgement is important, but so are the time, resources and opportunities available to respond thoughtfully to learners’ needs.

Preparing differentiated resources takes time, and responding to different learners requires flexibility. Having the professional space to make these decisions is therefore important.

When I adapt a learning pathway, I am not necessarily changing what students should achieve. I am exercising professional judgement about how they might reach that goal.

This is where I see teacher agency connecting with educational leadership. By noticing learners’ needs, adapting our practice and reflecting on its impact, we take an active role in shaping learning.

Leadership does not always begin with a formal title. Sometimes, it begins with the thoughtful decisions we make every day in our classrooms.

And perhaps this leaves us with a question worth continuing to ask:

When a learner struggles to reach a shared learning goal, how do we decide whether it is the learner who needs more support, the route that needs to change, or our own assumptions about how learning should happen that need to be reconsidered? 

Reference List

• Priestley, M., Biesta, G. and Robinson, S. (2015) Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Teacher's Bio

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