Within the Dutch Educational Network  “Sprong Voorwaarts [“Jump Forward”] 13 partner organizations participate varying from primary and secondary schools, teacher education institutes, and an academy for community and talent. Within this network teachers, teacher educators, and researchers collaborate in ‘Knowledge Labs’ (KL) to develop knowledge products for daily practice. This workshop focuses particularly on the output of the Knowledge Lab: ‘Agency of Educational Professionals’ which is related to the theme of developing teacher agentic behaviorin the context of educational innovations.

Agency is seen as an important part of the professionalism of teachers and teacher educators especially in relation to the continuous changes in education (Oolbekkink et al., 2017). Agency is “practiced when teachers exert influence, make informed choicesin a way that affects their work within and beyond schools, and/or their professional identities (Eteläpelto et al. 2013, p. 61).” In relation to the role teachers can play in educational innovations they are sometime referred to as change agents. A study by Van der Heijden et al. (2015) indicates characteristics of change agents pertaining to lifelong learning, mastery, entrepreneurship and collaboration.

However, how to effectively promote professional agency is still uncharted territory, especially because knowing what agency is, does not automatically gives professionals the capacity to develop their agency within their professional contexts (Oolbekkink et al., 2017; Emans et al., 2025). Research suggests that professionals are more likely to develop professional agency, when they: a) involve themselves in acts of agency fitted to their professional contexts, b) choose acts of agency that are within their zone of proximal development, c) when they discuss together which actions are most suitable in specific contexts for them to develop agency, and d) when they reflect on the impact of these actions on the development of their agency (Van der Heijden et al., 2015). These insights were used to develop a knowledge product for practice: the serious game Super Agent.

The Super Agent game is built around ‘Super Agents’ who all represent a specific quality that supports agency (for example Socrates is the Super Agent that represents “reflection” in the game). All the qualities that are related to change agency characteristics are operationalized in concrete actions that can be undertaken in daily educational practice. After playing this game, the participants are expected to have gained insight in their own agency and they will have taken a next step on their path of lifelong learning.

Over time, we have played the game Superagent in various contexts with beginning and experienced teachers and student teachers . We consistently received a great deal of enthusiasm, along with the recurring question of whether we could also consider developing a version for students. Many educators identified opportunities to similarly enhance student agency through such an approach.

We elaborated on this idea and formulated a plan, which was subsequently funded by the Dutch National Organisation for Scientific Research in Education (NRO), a prominent provider of educational grants in the Netherlands. This funding enabled us to develop a student-focused version of the game. For this game we focused on vocational- and higher education students in different contexts (different schools and different courses).

We have now completed this one-year project and created a version tailored to students. While certain elements of this iteration differ from the version designed for professionals, the overarching objective—enhancing agency through small, actionable steps—remains unchanged.

During the first year of its existence, the members of the Knowledge Lab developed a game for educational professionals which aims to encourage agentic actions and reflection. Using the Design-Based Research methodology (McKenney & Reeves, 2018 ) and Design Thinking (Brown, 2008), researchers explored: What are the most important characteristics of professional agency?, Which persona might represent those characteristics?, Which kind of actions might support agency from the perspective of that specific characteristic? In the second year the Knowledge Lab was continued and the first version of the game was tested in different settings. The following version was developed in co-design with educational partners (Sanders & Stappers, 2018) using the prototyping methodology for serious games (Viudes-Carbonell et al., 2021). Prototypes of the game where tested in several rounds of testing and development. Four rounds of play sessions were organized with small (N=8 up to N=12) mixed groups of educational professionals: teacher educators, teachers from higher and secondary education and teacher-students. Every play session was evaluated with the participants. For developing the student version, we began with the original iteration of the game. Through multiple development sessions and gameplay sessions with students, we systematically tested and reconsidered all elements of the original game. Additionally, we engaged in discussions with professionals from the Student Agency Network, as well as with teachers and policymakers from various institutions and educational programs. This process culminated in a completely new version that is more specifically tailored to students.

The game that was developed received enthusiastic comments from the network partners. A major finding was that the Super Agents were not only appealing to the participants and clarifying what agency was about, but they also made very clear how the specific characteristics of agency could be developed to a maximum. A second major finding was, that playing the game made players more aware of the possibilities for developing agency, but organizing a second “return” meeting in which players could exchange whether and how they had implemented the proposed actions and reflect on the reasons why they had or had not succeeded in doing so, was most beneficial for understanding and developing their agency. The preferred outcome of this workshop is to provide participants with a gaming experience with one of our serious games (the professional- or the student version of the game) in order to help them understand how we encourage professionals and students to develop their agency in daily educational practices. After playing this game, the participants will: a) have gained insight in what the agency concept means, b) gained an experience of how to strengthen their own agency, and c) will have acquired deeper knowledge how the game mechanics in a serious game may contribute to the intended goals of the game. We will also hand out some copies of the game , as they can be taken home by the participants to be played at home with their own colleagues or students.

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