Understanding
Agency
Research and Design Questions for Educational Innovation related to the Origins, Diversity, and Flexibility of Goal-Directed Behaviors
Understanding Agency is an interdisciplinary OpenEvo project working to develop educational innovations related to the scientific and practical understanding of goal-directed behaviors, across humans, non-human organisms, and Artificial Intelligences.
Our innovation research model
Our research model includes all aspects of developing interdisciplinary educational innovations, from scientific clarification and curriculum context analysis, through to participatory co-design and evaluation. Explore the general directions suggested in the questionbase below, and contact us if you are interested in developing these ideas collaboratively.
Learn more about the potential of Understanding Agency as an interdisciplinary concept, and a focus for school improvement!
QuestionBase
We have identified some basic research and design needs for developing this space:
- How are concepts of agency similar and different across diverse communities (academic or otherwise cultural)?
- Mapping the disciplinary and interdisciplinary structures of knowledge related to learning about Agency as an interdisciplinary theme.
- Identification of locally adaptable strategies for integrating the practical application of student agency in educational contexts with conceptual learning about agency in the context of diverse intelligences.
- How do students across grade levels and cultures reason about the agency across domains?
- How do students across grade levels and cultures engage in analogical reasoning (comparison) between AIs, humans, and other organisms?
- How do students across grade levels and cultures reason about the complex interactions within understanding agency, having a sense of agency, and acting as an agent of change?
- Development of introductory materials relating Tinbergen’s questions to the origins and development of individual or collective agency.
- Development of classroom processes for critical reflection on the concept of agency of as an interdisciplinary theme.
- Development of classroom processes for critical comparison of agency and evolution in AIs, humans, and non-human organisms.
- Development of locally adaptable learning trajectories relevant to understanding agency across disciplines.
- Participatory improvement of locally adaptable strategies for integrating the practical application of student agency in educational contexts with conceptual learning about agency in the context of diverse intelligences.
- Use of Community Science Lab approaches to drive students as leaders of interdisciplinary educational innovation.
Contact Dustin Eirdosh (@ MPI-EVA) if you are interested in collaborating on these aims!
