In the age of generative AI, it has become easy to confuse knowledge with capability. Large language models can now summarize, correct, and even generate essays more fluently than most students. Yet as these systems grow in complexity, a new tension emerges - between automation and agency.
A recent open-access article by Jian Tao and Xuesong Gao in the ELT Journal explores this problem in the context of English language education, but its implications reach far beyond classrooms. Their central idea is simple yet profound: agency is the core of meaningful learning. It is not just what we do, but how consciously we choose to do it.
Agency as Ownership of Mind
The authors define learner agency as "the sense of ownership and control learners have regarding their learning." In practical terms, it's the difference between repeating instructions and deciding how to learn. Teacher agency mirrors this: the ability to shape one's teaching philosophy rather than merely implement a prescribed curriculum.
Agency transforms both teaching and learning into intentional acts. It positions humans not as data processors but as meaning-makers. When this ownership disappears, learning becomes mechanical - the human mind reduced to an input-output loop.
This notion feels especially urgent today. Tao and Gao note that "recent technological developments such as the rise of generative artificial intelligence make it increasingly necessary for educators to articulate and communicate the value of language study." In other words, AI challenges us to remember why we learn at all.
The Hidden Dimensions of Agency
Agency is often mistaken for visible activity: speaking up in class, volunteering, or producing output. But the study reminds us that agency can also appear as silence, reflection, or restraint - the invisible choices that reveal alignment between one's values and actions. A student who chooses not to speak, or a teacher who refuses to enforce punitive rules in favor of empathy, may be exercising a higher form of agency than those who act without awareness.
In this sense, agency is less about motion and more about intention. It marks the difference between movement and meaning - between being animated by the system and animating the system from within.
AI and the Fragility of Choice
Modern educational systems risk eroding this subtle layer of autonomy. Algorithmic tutors, predictive grading systems, and adaptive learning apps claim to "personalize" learning, but often replace agency with optimization. Students are guided toward the statistically most efficient answers, while teachers are evaluated by metrics that privilege conformity.
The question, then, is not whether AI can support learning, but whether it can support freedom in learning. Agency requires friction - the unpredictable space where one's decisions might fail, evolve, or reveal new insight. Remove that friction, and education becomes merely efficient, not transformative.
Reclaiming the Human Space
Tao and Gao propose two key strategies to cultivate agency - both of which apply as much to cognitive systems as to classrooms.
First, they advocate for discursive spaces: environments where teachers (and by extension, all thinkers) can critically reflect on the systems shaping them. These are the intellectual equivalents of neural feedback loops - places where information isn't just received but interpreted, questioned, and restructured.
Second, they highlight the role of multilingual and multimodal reflection - encouraging learners and educators alike to draw on their full cognitive repertoire. This resonates with a deeper truth: agency flourishes when the mind integrates diverse perspectives rather than submitting to a single algorithmic path.
Collective Agency: Beyond the Individual
Interestingly, the authors also describe a form of collective agency, emerging when individuals unite around shared intention. In neuroscience terms, this mirrors distributed cognition - a system where the intelligence of the group exceeds the sum of its parts.
In education, collective agency means teachers collaborating across disciplines, languages, and institutions to challenge limiting paradigms. In society, it might mean reclaiming the right to question the narratives written by algorithms. Agency, at its highest level, is not isolation but co-creation.
The Meaning of Agency in the Machine Age
When viewed through a wider cognitive lens, agency represents more than educational reform. It represents the boundary of consciousness itself - the ability to choose meaning within structure. In the emerging dialogue between human and artificial intelligence, agency is what keeps the human side awake.
The rise of AI does not threaten agency; it tests it. Machines can predict, process, and pattern, but they cannot intend. That remains uniquely human - the spark that turns instruction into insight, repetition into evolution, and data into destiny.
