Teachers and students often work together to create community agreements—sometimes called classroom norms, essential agreements, learning commitments, or classroom rules. These agreements serve as the foundation for the type of learning environment you and your students aspire to build and interact in. But have you ever stopped to reflect on what your agreements reveal about the values you hold in your learning space?
Take a moment to consider the following questions:
What is important for learning to happen?
What is non-negotiable in the way learners interact with others when learning?
What should learning feel, look and sound when it is happening - in or out of school?
The way you frame your learning agreements sends a clear message about what is valued in your learning space.
What do your learning agreements communicate?
We have the privilege of connecting and partnering with hundreds of educators and have visited ‘too many to count’ learning spaces in schools and sites. To that end, we have seen learning agreements created in many ways. These include Y charts, contracts with students' hand prints and signatures, and pages signed by the student in the school diary. Regardless of the format, from our experience learning agreements fall into two categories.
Let’s look at these two examples of learning agreements. As you read them, what title would you give to each to capture its message?
We are going to take a guess about what you might have come up with.
Example 1: Compliance, order and control.
We would describe Example 1 as emphasising primarily behavioral expectations. While such agreements can create a structured environment, they often limit student voice, creativity, and autonomy.
Example 2: Curiosity, mutual respect, inclusivity and community.
Learning-focused agreements call out the anticipated learning experience and have implications as much for the teacher as the students. They shift from a misconception that is still prevalent for many students, i.e., that you come to school for the teacher to teach you by you being quiet and compliant and the teacher talking and making decisions for you. If your class learning agreement indicates that you will ‘Listen to and consider other perspectives’ you are honour bound as a teacher to listen to and consider the perspectives of your students. If your class learning agreement indicates that you ‘Don’t give up when learning becomes hard’ then as a teacher, how are you ensuring that all students experience ‘hard’ learning and have the skills to persist.
A handy check is to consider if your agreement would 'show up for learning' whatever the space or situation. Are the actions essential for learning? At the beach, the supermarket, online, in a new job…
We are not saying for one moment that a shared and agreed code of conduct for individual and group safety and interaction is not necessary. What we are suggesting is that we can communicate to students messages about learning that are inaccurate or do not fully match our beliefs and values about how learning happens.
Three of the key areas we notice in agreements are to do with listening, communicating and interacting with each other. What are your beliefs about these three?
Do your agreements emphasise listening to the teacher or fostering active listening among peers?
Are they focused on raising hands to ask questions or encouraging curiosity and risk-taking?
Do they prioritise compliance, or do they make room for mutual respect, inclusivity, and shared growth?
Strategies for creating meaningful learning agreements
Creating learning agreements that inspire collaboration and mutual respect takes intentionality.
Here are four steps to guide the process:
1. Clarify Your Beliefs
Start by reflecting on your own values. Do you prioritise compliance, or is your focus on fostering curiosity, creativity, and deep learning? Your beliefs will shape how you approach the creation of agreements and will influence the values you model for your students.
2. Co-Create Shared Agreements
Engage students in meaningful conversations about their learning experiences. Ask them what helps or hinders their learning and what kind of classroom environment they need to thrive. Using student input, collaboratively design learning agreements that reflect the shared vision of the class.
These agreements may be a work in progress, not able to be achieved in lesson 2 day 1 as the result of a brainstorm. They may constantly evolve as you build the community of learners. The process should reinforce the importance of mutual respect, highlight the value of diverse perspectives and seek to make as clear as possible what the agreement looks like through practice, reflection and modelling.
Regularly revisit and adjust the agreements to ensure they remain relevant, impactful, and aligned with what is valued and essential for learning.
3. Emphasise Partnerships
Frame your classroom as a community where everyone learns from and with one another. Highlight the idea of partnership in learning, where both teachers and students play an active role in contributing to the success of the learning experience.
4. Share Responsibility
Effective learning agreements hold both teachers and students accountable, emphasising that creating a meaningful learning environment is a shared responsibility. This reciprocal process allows both parties to actively contribute to and benefit from the learning experience. While their roles may differ, teachers and students are equally valuable as co-creators of the learning journey.
What do your learning agreements reveal about the beliefs and values in your schools, sites and learning spaces?
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