Because the goals and criteria for student work are explicit and reflect their input, students can begin to accept and internalize responsibility for their own learning. When educators link literacy to the language, poetry, music, and other cultural forms through which students express their lives, educators validate the power of students' voices and the importance of their stories. For working-class students and students of color to appreciate their own potential, the curriculum must also explore the historical and current contributions of their people to the construction of society and to the creation of knowledge. This approach to instruction requires educators to look at knowledge critically and to make the curriculum problematic. When educators open up the curriculum to connect to students' backgrounds and interests as well as to stimulate questions and challenges and promote classroom discourse characterized by inquiry and debate, classroom knowledge becomes something students own.
Students develop a sense of agency as creators and arbiters of knowledge.
Effective classroom teaching practices are directly influenced by the degree to which the adults in schools are encouraged and supported to develop professional resource and learning communities. This is an issue of educators' agency and of equitable allocation of resources to urban schools to support sustained, high-quality professional development and professional working conditions.