Girls as Agents of Their Learning
What happens when girls are given real power over their own learning? Research Fellows in the ICGS Global Action Research Collaborative have spent the past 18 months exploring just that—studying how student agency can transform engagement, reduce stress, and develop leadership skills.
The ICGS Global Action Research Collaborative on Girls’ Education, brings together educators from around the world to design and implement action research projects that strengthen teaching and learning in girls’ schools. Their findings offer rich, research-backed insights for every classroom.
This year’s cohort is diligently finishing their research reports, preparing a multimedia abstract, and working on their presentations for the ICGS Conference in June, where we will celebrate their 18 months of hard work when they present what they’ve discovered about encouraging student agency. Here, we share a sneak peek of some of the common themes in the GARC ’25 findings.
This year’s topic, student agency, is a very timely topic and a key aspect of student learning that many girls’ schools focus on. ICGS recently released the Raising Her Voice report, a joint project with Stanford University’s Challenge Success that found that student agency leads to greater engagement in school and lower levels of chronic stress associated with academic pressure. The 2025 Global Action Research Collaborative reports provide educators with many ways of supporting student agency in their classrooms. Here are some of the key themes:
No Pain No Gain
Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset emphasizes that when students get out of their comfort zone, they can experience significant learning and develop a growth mindset. GARC fellows found that giving students agency over their learning often makes them uncomfortable as students are used to following plans given to them by their teachers. However, they discovered that this kind of productive struggle leads to growth in their abilities, both within the context where they’re struggling (like Math or History) and in their ability to exercise agency. When students practice agency by having power and autonomy over their learning, they also gain the courage to exercise their agency in new circumstances, which can contribute to growth in those areas as well.
Power in Peers
Helping a peer, whether it’s giving feedback, helping solve a math problem, or facilitating a discussion together, can empower students to develop their agency. In previous years, research fellows explored feedback, but primarily from the perspective of the impact receiving feedback from the teacher has on student learning and how teachers can provide effective feedback. In examining student agency, many fellows explored peer feedback and peer collaboration, including structured peer feedback, peer mentoring, and peer-led discussions. They found that having students take the lead led to a greater sense of autonomy, more academic risk-taking, better persistence when struggling, and more confidence.
Choice Motivates Learning
When students can choose how to show what they’ve learned or even contribute to creating curriculum and lessons, they’re more motivated to learn and try new things. For example, in a language class, students who were choosing activities were motivated to use vocabulary they might not otherwise use. Similarly, when students had the opportunity to choose what history topics held significance, they began to see themselves as historians and understand that historians make choices about presenting history. This led them to think more critically about historical events. They have more confidence and courage to express their own opinions and are more likely to take academic risks, which can lead to academic growth.
Agency Supports Leadership Development
Believing that you can impact an outcome or influence others toward a goal is the centerpiece of leadership. Influencing others requires exercising some agency. Some fellows focused explicitly on developing leadership skills by using a leadership curriculum and putting girls into leadership roles within the classroom or within the school, giving them autonomy and agency. Others found that just by creating opportunities for student agency in their learning, leadership skills such as decision-making, strategic thinking, self-awareness, and goal-setting improved significantly.
The research fellows are still analyzing their data and finalizing their findings. We can’t wait for them to present their final results at the ICGS Conference on June 23-25 in Philadelphia. Their final reports will also be available in the Research Library just before the conference. These reports provide details about the strategies and actions the fellows implemented and the results of their work in ways that you can use in your own classrooms so we can all continue the work of supporting girls’ learning.