The social outcomes of schooling : subjective agency among Tasmanian adolescents

Australian schools, like schools elsewhere, have long assumed responsibility for the personal and social development as well as the intellectual development of young Australians. However, one of the more enduring but not particularly endearing ironies of Australian schooling is that despite the breadth of the educational aspirations of Australian schools they have been noticeably slow to develop and utilise effective measures of personal and social development of students. In this article, the authors draw upon research of a state wide sample of Tasmanian adolescents to argue for the importance, viability and utility of developing and measuring a key generative capacity, what the authors term 'subjective agency', that facilitates the exercise of social agency through participation in valued social practices.