Students' agency in an out-of-classroom setting: Acting accountably in a gardening project

Abstract

This paper explores students' agency in an out-of-classroom setting in a Finnish elementary school and focuses on a curriculum-based gardening project participated in by eight fifth-grade students. The school's pedagogy has a long history of extending its learning environments out of classrooms and into nature and local farms. In our study, we focus on students' agency when they worked on a three-day gardening project. Analysis is oriented towards accountable aspects of agency emerging in learning. The findings suggest that accountability is manifested as various initiatives. First, the initiatives reflected individual accountability. Second, accountable acting involved the construction of mutual accountability. Third, accountability was demonstrated in initiatives connected with relational agency. Those initiatives included utilizing the support given by others, as well as being a resource for others.