Agency Overview

Why the apples?

A friend of mine taught the older classes in a primary school. Every now and then a child would ask him to do a task for them, “‘cos he was better at it”. So he’d ask, “If you are hungry and there’s an apple on the table, is it any good to you if I eat the apple?” “No, sir.” “Learning is like that, you have to do it.”

In this video, I’m making the case for dyslexic/ SpLD people, and everyone else, to have agency in their learning and in many other situations.

I’ll define agency and outline its usefulness. I’ll speak about individuality, observations, growth and the need to be open to ‘otherness’.

We often have people around us who are our support network, but they can’t guarantee to be there all the time, so the more have agency we have, the more we will be confident we can achieve what we want.

Technology, including AI, has made significant changes for everyone, including dyslexic/ SpLD people, in what they can achieve; but we still need the mental abilities to check that the results are as we intended.

Individuality

Dyslexic/ SpLD people think differently, in unorthodox ways and they don’t all think alike.

Each one of us can find out how we think best; we can learn to stay with those ways of thinking.

What we know about our best ways of thinking will then guide how we approach tasks in front of us and achieve various goals.  In this way we fulfil our individual potential.

Observation

Finding out how you think is a matter of observation, seeing what works well for you and also what doesn’t work well.  You can build up a profile about your ways of thinking with stories to back your knowledge.

Growth

Gradually, you will grow in confidence and then gain further skills much more easily than you did before.

For anyone, there may well be tasks you know you can’t do.  Asking for help is easier with the confidence from what you can do and from how you adapt tasks to achieve your best.

‘Other’

My knowledge of how people think grew as I worked with so many different students.  The great thing about working with adults is their ability to tell me what they knew about the ways they think while doing tasks.  Gradually, a structure of different patterns emerged but I learnt to keep an open mind.  If someone’s way of thinking didn’t fit what I already knew, I would record the description in a ‘box labelled ‘other’’.

To this day, the ’box other’ is an important concept.  You may find you think in ways that seem strange to everyone around you.  It can be hard to be in that position.  But you will have more agency as you gain confidence in how you think; so keep observing and recording your observations.  Gradually, you will be able to convince others this is the way you fulfil your potential.

Connected videos

• Navigation: State of Mind > Know your own mind (Living Confidently with Specific Learning Difficulties)
• Thinking preferences subsection
• Input streams
• Thinking clearly subsection
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