The support of the agentic qualities of learners, autonomy, self-determination and decision-making, has been, since the Enlightenment, the backbone of the Western educational process. The term ‘agency’ describes the qualities of independent being and actions of humans: capacity for setting goals, action, independence, sovereignty and making choices. In the contemporary view, these qualities are some of the most important ones for coping in life (Erss et al. 2024). The vision of an agentic learner has been a long-time pedagogical dream and related school practice that has turned into a mainstream of educational policy as well as academic studies. The different aspects of agency (autonomy, self-determination, empowerment, self-regulation) have been cast in policy documents as in LifeComp (Sala et al. 2020) and GreenComp (Bianchi et al. 2022), while becoming an inevitable part of national and international educational aims. The underlying future dream of many policy documents shaping European-style education is an independently coping person: an agentic actor who can make decisions and choices, build positive relationships with other people and nature, and direct one’s unique life. Also, the Estonian Education Strategy 2021-2035 aims to develop learner agency and promote the empowerment of learners  (Ministry of Education and Research 2019).

The increased focus on learner agency in the educational process has brought along a myriad of educational ideas and school practices which are in use today: a learner-centred approach to instruction, personalised education with individual learning paths, more choice and decision-making power for each individual learner as well as respect and acknowledgment of individual differences. The aim is to achieve an independent thinking and acting generation that can master the design of their own lifespan and solve the ever more complex societal challenges.

There is plenty of empirical research that suggests that acting in a more 'agentic' mode has a positive impact on both achieving educational goals and on the learner's self-perception and relationships while developing skills to cope in a crisis-ridden world (Schoon and Cook 2021; OECD 2019). This is why learner agency is usually seen as a very positive quality worth striving for.

Nevertheless, in recent decades, there has been increasing criticism of the goals and practices related to agency within the context of education and in society. Emphasizing only individual agency is not enough. The wider aim should be learning to live together peacefully and cooperatively because otherwise „the world will be an undesirable place“ (Gardener, 2019). In the following, we analyse the so-called paradox of agency - being simultaneously a value and a destructive power.

The research questions of the paper are:

1)      Why has learner agency become a central topic in educational research?

2)      How have the ideas of learner agency influenced the school practice?

3)      Are there any (healthy) limits to the autonomy and self-determination of learners?/ What is the criticism of individual agency and individualisation of societies at large?

4)      How could individual agency be balanced in school and society for a peaceful and cooperative co-existance?

First, we give an overview of the history of how agency came to be the heart of the educational process by comparing the philosophical and reform pedagogical roots of learner agency. Next, we summarize the current empirical research on the positive aspects of learner agency. Then, we discuss the profound societal changes and new challenges that an increase in individual agency has triggered. Further, we explore some suggestions and debates on how to find a balance between the increase in personal agency and the skills to live together in a peaceful and cooperative way in school and society at large.

We use a historical comparative method in an interdisciplinary way, drawing from the literature on reform pedagogy, philosophy of education, sociological, social-psychological and anthropological literature and contemporary empirical educational research on student/learner agency. We also examine educational policy documents (including curriculum changes) and policy changes regarding learner and human agency in the global, European and Estonian context. We did not collect any new empirical data for this presentation.

The roots of learner agency can be traced back to European Enlightenment, represented by philosophers such as Kant and Rousseau and later by educational reformers such as Pestalozzi, Dewey, Montessori, Steiner and Freinet. Since the 1950s, the dreams of individual emancipation of people have gradually been realized by formerly marginalized groups such as working-class people, women and children gaining more rights (Pinker, 2018), which has led to the individualization of whole societies (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002). Consequently, individual agency has turned from a marginal topic to one of the central features of the educational process, representing also a dilemma or paradox ̶ being at the same time “a praised value and the source of an impending crisis” (Degen et al. 2024, 508). In the school practice, learner agency is manifested through student-centred practices such as student self-governments, choice of electives, a flexible curriculum and learning paths, as well as student voice and initiative. However, there is a heavy price that societies pay for individual agency: communities are collapsing, family and marriage are replaced by a myriad of different forms of co-existence, while the large number of single persons with their related problems is forcing politicians to make fighting loneliness a new political priority. Simultaneously, the increased rights of children and students, as well as their parents is putting teachers in a difficult situation. Teachers are facing an existential crisis that makes teaching as a profession increasingly unattractive. It is clear that individual agency needs to be balanced with collective agency or community competencies which “include shared responsibility, a sense of belonging, identity, purpose and achievement” (OECD 2019). Hence, school practices have to test new ways of merging individualist and collectivist ways of life.

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