Having agency is another way of saying that a person should be in control of their own experience (as far as is possible!), and in this context that also means disrupting hierarchy where the opportunity presents.

In the original focus group for the nature connection toolkit development, I had several teachers describe this as pure chaos, and almost refuse to try this technique in their sessions, especially removing hierarchy! ‘A loss of control is NOT good for a classroom’… but that’s not what this means. Let me explain…

1. Being in control of their own experience and learning

Relinquish the blow-by-blow lesson plan that has every second accounted for to a dot, and instead follow the learning that holds the interest of the students. It can be helpful to view learning in broad themes (read more about thematic learning here).

If you have the space for it, the gold standard of agency is allowing your learners to find what interests them and giving them the chance to follow it (though as a start, perhaps inside a given structure, framework, or rubric). This may lead them to uncover areas of learning where you feel less confident or don’t have expertise in, and this leads me neatly onto decentralising hierarchy…

2. Disrupting (decentralising) established hierarchy

Accepting that we are all lifelong learners and don’t know everything about everything will make this much easier!

It is of course the norm in education to assume a top-down and protective role, but when it comes to experiencing and learning in the natural world you are as dependent on it as any of your learners. Everyone has a different experience, different perspective, or something that can be shared, and it is important to find ways to honour these.

So, what might this actually look like? Simply, finding ways to let your learners become the teacher, not always being the one person who knows everything and is in charge of sharing ‘the only knowledge that matters’.

Let the learners trust that their insights are valid without the external validation of the teacher.

3. Participation and team based learning

This is a quieter way to remove hierarchy, and something that no educator is a stranger to, working in equal teams. By distributing responsibility across the group everyone’s experiences are treated as equal and shared.