Introduction: The Man Who Watches Himself Live

Fernando Pessoa's Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet) presents one of modern literature's most unusual figures: Bernardo Soares, a modest assistant bookkeeper whose apparently insignificant existence becomes the material for an immense meditation on consciousness, solitude, boredom, desire, memory, identity, and the difficulty of living. Soares does not pursue conventional forms of success. He does not aspire to wealth, political influence, social prestige, heroic achievement, or even sustained romantic fulfillment. He works, observes, walks through Lisbon, returns to the office, and writes. His world is deliberately narrow. Yet from that narrowness emerges a consciousness of extraordinary breadth.

This paradox has made Bernardo Soares an enduringly fascinating figure. He appears to possess everything necessary for reflection and almost everything necessary for suffering. He sees the world with unusual precision, but his perception rarely develops into sustained participation. He observes other people rather than becoming deeply involved with them; he examines emotions rather than simply surrendering to them; he converts ordinary places into psychological landscapes; and he transforms everyday experience into literary meditation. His life is therefore not empty in any simple sense. It is saturated with thought. The deeper problem is that thought increasingly seems to substitute for living.

This essay, my 594th blog post on this blog, proposes that Erich Fromm offers a particularly productive framework for understanding this paradox. Freud can help illuminate the psychic consequences of loss, repression, and sublimation; Lacan can clarify the instability of the subject and the impossibility of complete self-coincidence; Nietzsche can illuminate the crisis of inherited values and the problem of nihilism. Yet Fromm makes it possible to ask a question that moves beyond individual pathology: What kind of society produces a human being who can think so profoundly about existence while becoming increasingly incapable of participating fully in it?}

The question is particularly important because Pessoa scholarship has repeatedly situated Livro do Desassossego within problems larger than Bernardo's individual psychology. Adorno (2022), for example, reads boredom in the work as a symptom of modernity and associates it with a loss of meaning. Raabe (2014) emphasizes the work's interrogation of identity and alterity, while Giménez (2016) places its prose within the material and urban experience of modernity. Ferraria (2016), meanwhile, draws attention to the relationship Soares constructs between external perception and internal emotion. Stoker (2013) demonstrates that the very textual construction of Livro do Desassossego is inseparable from questions of modernism, fragmentation, memory, and editorial instability. These approaches suggest that Bernardo should not be read merely as an isolated melancholy personality. He is also a literary representation of a historically situated form of consciousness.

The argument developed here is therefore deliberately Frommian but not reductively psychological. Bernardo Soares can be understood as a cultural symptom: a person whose profound sensitivity reveals the alienating structures of modern existence. His tragedy is not that he possesses no life. It is that he experiences his life increasingly from the outside. He becomes, above all, the man who watches himself live.

From the Psychological Individual to the Cultural Symptom

One of the most important contributions of Erich Fromm's humanistic psychoanalysis is his insistence that individual psychology cannot be separated from social conditions. Human beings are not shaped exclusively by unconscious drives or private histories; they are also formed by the economic, cultural, interpersonal, and ideological structures in which they exist (Fromm, 1947, 1955). Mental health, accordingly, cannot be defined simply as successful adaptation to whatever society happens to consider normal.

This distinction is crucial for reading Bernardo Soares. Bernardo is, in a conventional sense, functional. He works. He fulfills his responsibilities. He maintains routines. He inhabits a recognizable social role. He is not presented as someone incapable of performing the basic functions expected of him. Yet his interior life is profoundly estranged from the world in which that functionality takes place.

To comprehend Bernardo Soares, Fromm's concept of alienation provides a useful vocabulary for this contradiction. In The Sane Society, Fromm (1955) argues that modern social arrangements can produce individuals who experience themselves as separated from their own capacities, from other people, and from meaningful participation in the world. What appears socially normal may therefore conceal a deeper condition of human impoverishment.

This insight changes how Bernardo's withdrawal should be interpreted. His isolation is not simply a personal defect. It emerges within a world of commercial transactions, repetitive work, anonymous encounters, social roles, and externally defined measures of usefulness. His occupation as a bookkeeper places him inside a system of economic rationality, but it does not necessarily connect him with a sense of purpose.

Adorno's (2022) analysis of boredom becomes particularly useful here. She interprets boredom in Livro do Desassossego not merely as a private emotional state but as a symptom of modernity's crisis of meaning. Bernardo's tédio therefore becomes more than melancholy. It is the affective expression of a world in which conventional activities continue even when their existential significance has become uncertain. The problem is not that nothing happens. The problem is that what happens does not necessarily feel meaningful. Bernardo is therefore not simply bored with life. He is confronted with the question of whether the available forms of life deserve to be lived. And that is a very different problem.

Modernity, Fragmentation, and the Unstable Self

Pessoa scholarship reinforces the importance of reading Bernardo as a modern subject rather than simply as a psychologically unusual or impaired  individual. Raabe (2014) argues that Livro do Desassossego participates in Pessoa's sustained questioning of modern identity and alterity. The heteronymic system itself makes stable identity problematic. The subject is not necessarily one coherent interior entity but something divided, multiplied, and mediated through language.

This becomes particularly important in the case of Bernardo Soares because his status as a semi-heteronym already destabilizes the relationship between author and character. Casa Fernando Pessoa explains that Pessoa described Bernardo as a semi-heteronym, a "simple mutilation" of himself, and that the later texts attributed to Soares acquire a diaristic and confessional character. The character is therefore neither simply Pessoa nor entirely separate from him.

The instability of identity is consequently not merely one of Bernardo's themes. It is embedded in the formal construction of the work. Stoker (2013) is particularly important in this regard. His study of Livro do Desassossego demonstrates how difficult it is to establish the work as a stable textual object because Pessoa's manuscripts, attributions, and editorial arrangements do not yield a simple, definitive book. The work's fragmentation is therefore simultaneously thematic, psychological, and material.

This observation strengthens the Frommian interpretation. Alienation is not represented only through Bernardo's thoughts; it is reproduced in the very form of the work. The reader encounters fragments rather than a completed narrative, impressions rather than a conventional plot, consciousness rather than a stable sequence of events.

Bernardo's life is not narrated as a progression toward resolution

It accumulates.	He thinks.	He observes.
He remembers.	He returns to the same streets.	He returns to the same questions.
	He does not arrive.

This is why Livro do Desassossego can be understood as the literary form of an unlived life: its fragments resist the conventional expectation that life should develop toward completion.

Fromm's Alienated Human Being

Fromm's theory becomes especially powerful when we consider Bernardo's relationship with activity. For Fromm (1955), productive activity is not reducible to economic productivity. Human beings become more fully themselves when they engage their capacities creatively and meaningfully. Alienation occurs when activity becomes something external to the self, something performed without genuine participation.

Bernardo's professional life embodies precisely this contradiction. He works, but his work does not constitute the center of his identity. His office provides structure, repetition, and economic necessity, but his deepest activity occurs elsewhere, in observation and writing. His employment belongs to the world of necessity; his consciousness attempts to escape it.

Yet his writing creates another paradox. Literature becomes his productive activity, but literature itself is generated from alienation. This means that Bernardo's creativity is both resistance to and product of his condition where he transforms his alienation into language, converts boredom into reflection, converts routine into aesthetic experience, and turns loneliness into prose.

This is one of the reasons that diagnosing him simply as "unhealthy" would be inadequate. His withdrawal has pathological dimensions, but it also produces an extraordinary form of creative perception. His inability to participate normally becomes the condition through which he can describe the experience of modern non-participation. The artist and the alienated individual therefore become difficult to separate.

Having, Being, and the Third Position of Observing

Fromm's distinction between "having" and "being" offers perhaps the most original way of approaching Bernardo. In To Have or to Be?, Fromm (1976) contrasts an orientation toward possession, acquisition, and control with an orientation toward active existence, presence, experience, and participation. Bernardo clearly resists the orientation toward having. He does not define himself through wealth, does not pursue status, is not obsessed with possessions, and has little interest in conventional achievement.

But this does not automatically mean that he has achieved the orientation of being. Instead, Bernardo seems to inhabit a third position: observing. This is the conceptual contribution I would place at the center of a Frommian reading of Livro do Desassossego. In other words, Bernardo does not simply have; he does not fully be. Bernardo observes, watches other people living, viewes himself feeling, witnesses how Lisbon changing, tracks his own thoughts, beholds desire without necessarily acting upon it, and watches the world from the threshold of participation.

This position explains the strange vitality of the book. Bernardo is extraordinarily alive at the level of consciousness and extraordinarily absent at the level of participation. He is present enough to perceive everything and distant enough to remain untouched by almost everything. Fromm's distinction therefore allows us to identify the central tension of Bernardo's existence: he rejects possession without achieving presence. His consciousness is active, but his life is comparatively passive. He thinks intensely, but he acts little. He feels deeply, but he often converts feeling into reflection before it can become relationship. And he possesses an enormous interior world, but that interiority does not necessarily produce the relatedness Fromm regards as essential to human flourishing.

Outer Perception and Inner Emotion

This is where Ferraria's (2016) scholarship becomes especially important. Her analysis of Bernardo focuses on the relationship between external perception and internal emotion. Soares does not simply describe the external world as an objective environment. The external world becomes inseparable from his emotional and perceptual state. This explains why Lisbon matters so much. The city is not merely where Bernardo lives; it is where Bernardo's consciousness becomes visible. Giménez (2016) similarly situates Livro do Desassossego in relation to the materiality of modern urban experience, placing Pessoa's Lisbon alongside broader European modernity. The city becomes a space of movement, commerce, visual stimulation, anonymity, and fragmented perception.

Bernardo's famous relationship with Rua dos Douradores should therefore not be reduced to sentimental attachment to a particular address. Casa Fernando Pessoa identifies the street as both the place where Bernardo lives and works and the physical environment that repeatedly generates his reflections. It describes his perception of Lisbon as a kind of personal cartography in which the external landscape becomes inseparable from his states of mind.

Bernardo himself gives the street an almost metaphysical significance:

"Sim, esta Rua dos Douradores compreende para mim todo o sentido das coisas, a solução de todos os enigmas..."

The statement is revealing because the street becomes the opposite of transcendence. Bernardo does not need a distant sacred landscape. His metaphysics occurs within the ordinary. This is precisely what makes the urban setting so important to the Frommian interpretation. The alienated subject does not necessarily escape modernity. He inhabits it more intensely.

Rua dos Douradores and the Gilded Surface

The name Douradores offers another interpretive possibility. A dourador is a person who gilds surfaces, applying gold to an object without necessarily transforming its underlying substance. We should be cautious here: nothing requires us to assume that Pessoa deliberately constructed the street name as a symbolic key. The connection is best treated as an interpretive hypothesis rather than authorial intention.

Nevertheless, the metaphor is remarkably productive because gilding changes appearance. It creates value at the level of surface and makes something ordinary appear precious. The metaphor corresponds strikingly with Bernardo's relationship to modern existence since modern society presents itself through surfaces: professional identities, social conventions, economic roles, manners, ambitions, respectable routines.

Bernardo sees through many of these surfaces. He recognizes their artificiality. Yet he also becomes a gilder, takes the ordinary street and makes it luminous through language, takes boredom and makes it beautiful, takes loneliness and gives it form, takes the meaningless routine of a commercial office and transforms it into literature.

This produces an extraordinary paradox: Bernardo both exposes and performs gilding. The world gilds reality socially. Bernardo gilds reality aesthetically. The difference is that social gilding can conceal alienation, whereas literary gilding can reveal it. This is where literature becomes ethically significant. Pessoa does not simply decorate Bernardo's suffering. He makes its structure perceptible.

Love, Relatedness, and the Problem of the Other

Fromm's The Art of Loving offers another essential dimension to the interpretation. For Fromm (1956), love is not merely an emotion that happens to an individual. It involves care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. Mature love requires the capacity to recognize another person as an independent subject rather than merely as an extension of one's own desire.

Bernardo's reflections on love repeatedly expose the difficulty of such reciprocity. One of the most striking formulations attributed to him states:

"Nunca amamos ninguém. Amamos, tão-somente, a ideia que fazemos de alguém."

The statement is devastating because it reduces romantic experience to the projection of one's own concept onto another person. The beloved becomes less a person than an idea. And Fromm allows us to see why this matters. To love an idea is safer than loving another person because an idea can be controlled, does not contradict us, cannot leave us unexpectedly, and cannot demand reciprocity. But a real person can.

Bernardo's intellectualization of love can therefore be understood as a defense against vulnerability. His problem is not that he lacks emotional sensitivity. It may be precisely that he possesses too much sensitivity without sufficient capacity for relational risk. Ferraria's (2016) distinction between external perception and internal emotion helps illuminate this pattern present in this character; Bernardo continually converts external encounters into internal experience. The world enters him, but it does not necessarily lead him outward toward other people.

This is where Fromm's notion of relatedness becomes decisive. Bernardo knows humanity, but he does not necessarily participate in humanity. Bernard can analyze people without becoming intimate with them. He can also imagine love without surrendering to its demands and can recognize suffering without necessarily allowing another person to transform his existence. His loneliness therefore cannot be explained merely by the absence of companionship. It is a problem of relatedness.

Literature as Sublimation, Compensation, and Creation

Freud would help us understand Bernardo's literary activity as a form of sublimation: psychic energy that cannot find direct expression is transformed into cultural production. That insight remains useful. But Fromm allows us to go further by asking whether Bernardo's writing is productive in the humanistic sense.

The answer is complicated. It clearly is productive insofar as Bernardo transforms experience into something meaningful. His writing is not merely repetitive suffering. He creates, but the writing also compensates for what it cannot replace. Literature can give him expression without giving him companionship, can also give him beauty without giving him intimacy, can give him a voice without giving him social belonging. And it can make his existence meaningful without necessarily making his existence more participatory.

Thus, literature occupies an ambiguous position between liberation and compensation. This ambiguity should not be treated as a weakness of Pessoa's work. It is precisely the point. Bernardo's writing is both the evidence of his alienation and his most powerful response to it. He is alienated, but not silent. He is isolated, but not creatively empty. He is unable to live conventionally, but he can transform conventional life into an object of extraordinary perception. Fromm's notion of productive activity therefore allows us to avoid romanticizing Bernardo's suffering while still recognizing the creative power that emerges from it.

Nietzsche: The Failure of Self-Overcoming

Nietzsche (1974) provides a useful counterpoint to Fromm because Bernardo confronts a problem central to Nietzsche's philosophy: what happens when inherited systems of meaning lose their authority? Bernardo does not appear convinced by conventional social ambitions. He distrusts the promises of achievement and success. He does not find salvation in ordinary forms of progress. In this sense, he belongs to the modern crisis of value that Nietzsche analyzed. Yet Bernardo does not respond to the crisis in a Nietzschean manner.

Nietzsche's response to nihilism ultimately demands transformation, self-overcoming, and the creation of values. Bernardo instead remains fascinated by the absence of sufficient values. He sees the problem, but he does not overcome it. He writes about the void, but he does not fill it. This distinction makes Fromm more useful as the principal framework. Nietzsche helps explain Bernardo's confrontation with meaninglessness; Fromm helps explain why the response to meaninglessness becomes paralysis rather than productive transformation. Bernardo lacks neither intelligence nor imagination. What he lacks is existential integration. His consciousness outruns his capacity to act.

Lacan: The Fragmented Subject

Lacan (1977) offers another complementary perspective. Bernardo's uncertainty about identity is consistent with a conception of subjectivity in which the self is never completely transparent to itself. Pessoa's famous formulation, "Não sei quem sou, que alma tenho," could almost serve as an epigraph for the fragmented modern subject. Raabe (2014) demonstrates how questions of identity and alterity occupy a central place in Livro do Desassossego. Pessoa's heteronymic practice makes fragmentation not merely a psychological theme but a principle of literary creation.

From a Lacanian perspective, Bernardo's problem is therefore not simply that he has failed to discover a stable inner self. The modern subject may never possess such complete unity. Yet again, Fromm adds something essential. The question is not only whether Bernardo possesses a coherent self. The question is whether his fragmented self can enter into meaningful relationships with other human beings. Lacan helps explain the instability. Fromm helps us ask what kind of life might nevertheless be possible within that instability.

Is Bernardo Unhealthy, or Is the World Unhealthy?

This question brings us to the heart of the Frommian interpretation. Bernardo's suffering can certainly be read psychologically. His excessive introspection, withdrawal, loneliness, and inability to act may resemble symptoms of psychological distress. But Fromm's (1955) The Sane Society asks us to reverse the diagnostic gaze.

What if the individual who appears maladjusted is responding rationally to an irrational social environment? This does not mean that every form of alienation is healthy. Bernardo suffers, and his isolation hurts. His inability to participate limits him, and his consciousness does not liberate him completely. But his refusal to embrace conventional success may also reveal something about the conventions themselves. He does not become rich nor seek power. He does not build a conventional career and does not pursue the social rewards that modernity places before him.

Fromm would therefore force us to distinguish between adaptation and health. A person can adapt successfully to an unhealthy society. Conversely, a person who cannot adapt completely may perceive truths that adaptation suppresses. Bernardo occupies precisely this uncomfortable position. He is not a triumphant rebel, nor is he a healthy outsider. He is a suffering consciousness whose maladjustment gives him extraordinary critical perception. This is what makes him culturally significant.

The Unlived Life

The concept of the "unlived life" can now be understood as more than a poetic description of Bernardo's melancholy. His tragedy is not that he lacks experience because he experiences intensely. His tragedy is that experience is continually converted into observation. And for this reason, he does not merely experience the world; he experiences himself experiencing the world.

The additional layer of consciousness creates distance. An afternoon becomes an object of reflection. A person becomes an object of interpretation. A street becomes a metaphysical landscape. A feeling becomes a sentence. A possible relationship becomes an idea. A life becomes a book. This is the central paradox of Livro do Desassossego.

The book is extraordinarily alive because Bernardo is unable to live without transforming life into consciousness. He saves experience by writing it. But he may also lose experience by writing it. That is why the concept of observation is so important. Bernardo's third mode, neither having nor fully being, allows him to remain permanently close to existence without entirely entering it. He becomes the spectator of his own life.

From Rua dos Douradores to the Contemporary Self

The extraordinary contemporary relevance of Livro do Desassossego lies here. Bernardo's world is not our world. His office, streets, technologies, and social conditions belong to another historical period. Yet the structure of his consciousness remains recognizable. Modern individuals increasingly document their experiences, observe themselves, curate identities, monitor productivity, interpret emotions, and perform versions of themselves before others.

The contemporary individual can therefore inhabit Bernardo's third position on an enormous scale. We can observe ourselves living, can photograph the experience rather than inhabit it, and can narrate ourselves rather than encounter ourselves. Additionally, we can turn relationships into representations, can turn emotion into content, can turn identity into performance, and we can become spectators of our own existence.

Fromm's distinction between having and being becomes especially relevant in such a world. The pressure to possess, perform, accumulate, and demonstrate success can coexist with profound alienation. The contemporary individual may have more opportunities for communication while remaining uncertain about genuine relatedness. Bernardo's tragedy thus becomes a warning. The problem is not simply excessive introspection. The deeper problem is the substitution of observation for participation.

Conclusion: Fromm, Pessoa, and the Possibility of Being

Erich Fromm offers an unusually fertile way of reading Bernardo Soares because he allows us to move beyond the temptation to diagnose him. Freud can help explain psychic transformation and sublimation. Lacan can illuminate the fragmented subject. Nietzsche can clarify the crisis of inherited values and the problem of nihilism. But Fromm allows these dimensions to converge around a larger question: What conditions make it possible for a human being not merely to function, but to live?

This question transforms our understanding of Bernardo. He is not simply a melancholy clerk, or he is not simply an existentialist. Is he simply a fragmented modern subject? Is he a human being caught between consciousness and participation. His rejection of conventional possession does not automatically lead to authentic being. Instead, he occupies an intermediate position that we might call observing. He watches the world, watches others, watches himself, and transforms what he sees into language. This is both his weakness and his genius. His alienation prevents him from fully participating in life, but that same alienation allows him to perceive dimensions of modern existence that ordinary adaptation conceals.

The metaphor of Rua dos Douradores therefore becomes especially suggestive. The street of the gilders can be understood as a symbolic landscape of modernity: a world of surfaces, commercial activity, roles, appearances, and transactions. Bernardo sees through those surfaces. Yet he also becomes a literary gilder, transforming the ordinary into something luminous through language. The world gilds life socially. Bernardo gilds it aesthetically. And perhaps the distinction is that his literary gilding does not hide the wound beneath the surface. It makes the wound visible.

This is ultimately why Livro do Desassossego remains so unsettling. Bernardo does not simply tell us that the world is bad. He shows us how difficult it becomes to live when consciousness sees too much, when conventional meanings no longer convince us, and when reflection becomes easier than participation.

His tragedy is not that he cannot find meaning. It is that he can imagine so many forms of meaning that commitment to any one of them becomes almost impossible. He can imagine love without fully risking love, can imagine freedom without fully exercising it, can imagine a different life without fully entering one, and can imagine himself endlessly. But imagination is not yet existence.

Fromm would therefore leave us with a question that extends beyond Bernardo Soares and reaches directly into contemporary life:

What does it mean to be human when a society teaches us how to function, possess, perform, and observe, but not necessarily how to live?

Pessoa's answer is not theoretical. It is Bernardo. And Bernardo's answer is the book itself. He cannot quite live the life he imagines. But he can make us understand what it feels like not to live it.

 

References

Adorno, K. (2022). Tédio e modernidade no Livro do desassossego, de Fernando Pessoa. Interseções: Revista de Estudos Interdisciplinares, 24(2), 253–278. https://doi.org/10.12957/irei.2022.70836

Ferraria, A. (2016). Bernardo Soares: Desassossego e eternidade. Revista Desassossego, 8(15), 165–177. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2175-3180.v8i15p165-177

Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. Rinehart.

Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. Rinehart.

Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. Harper & Brothers.

Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? Harper & Row.

Giménez, D. (2016). Materialidade e modernidade no Livro do Desassossego. Terra Roxa e Outras Terras: Revista de Estudos Literários, 32, 8–22. https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2016v32p8

Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). W. W. Norton.

Nietzsche, F. (1974). The gay science: With a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs (W. Kaufmann, Trans. & Ed.). Vintage Books.

Pessoa, F. (2015). Livro do desassossego (R. Zenith, Ed.). Assírio & Alvim.

Raabe, C. M. (2014). O desassossego da modernidade. Revista Desassossego, 6(11), 113–127. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2175-3180.v6i11p113-127

Stoker, M. (2013). Challenging modernism: Fernando Pessoa and the Book of Disquiet [Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University.

 

	“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking.” — John Dewey, The School and Society (1899)			“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” — Carl R. Rogers, Freedom to Learn (1969)
		“Teaching may open the door to learning, but students must walk through it, make the journey their own, and learn to travel without us.” — Jonathan Acuña Solano (2026)

Introduction

For many years, my approach to online teaching focused on designing meaningful learning experiences, selecting appropriate digital resources, and ensuring that students had opportunities to practice and demonstrate what they had learned. As both a curriculum designer and an online instructor of college young adults and corporate working adults, I have always believed that engagement is essential to successful learning. However, participating in the ISTE+ASCD course Designing Online Learning Experiences – Department of State has challenged me to rethink an important aspect of my teaching philosophy: Who truly owns the learning?

One of the most valuable insights I have gained from the course is understanding that student agency is not synonymous with differentiation. Before taking this course, I often associated offering choices with promoting autonomy. However, I now recognize that meaningful agency goes much further than allowing students to choose between teacher-designed options. Instead, it involves intentionally creating opportunities for learners to influence how they learn and how they demonstrate their understanding without compromising the intended learning outcomes.

As I reflected in my course journal,

"Taking the ISTE course Designing Online Learning Experiences – Department of State, I have now come to understand the true meaning of student agency and how it differs from differentiation. Making this distinction opens more doors to having students co-create assessments where they can better demonstrate what they have learned in a course. Agency is not giving students more choices of my own, but to allow them to find a way to make their own choices to show teachers what they have learned." (Acuña Solano, personal reflection, 2026)

This realization has encouraged me to reconsider not only the design of my online lessons but also the relationship between teacher expertise and student ownership. Rather than seeing agency as reducing the teacher's role, I now understand it as a thoughtful design principle that empowers learners while maintaining clear academic expectations.

Who Owns the Learning?

One of the guiding questions presented in the ISTE+ASCD course asks a deceptively simple question: Who owns the learning? Although straightforward, the question invites educators to examine how much genuine ownership students actually experience throughout a course. According to the course materials,

"When students have meaningful control over some part of their learning, the effects go well beyond engagement. Research on student voice and agency in digital environments shows consistent connections to deeper motivation, stronger self-regulation, and more lasting learning outcomes… Designing for agency is not about handing over the classroom or dropping structure; it is about making deliberate choices about where student ownership can live without undermining the learning goals that drive it" (Mitra, 2024).

This statement resonates strongly with my own teaching context. My students are not children; they are university students and professionals balancing work, family responsibilities, and academic commitments. Many supervise teams, make important decisions in their workplaces, and solve complex problems every day. Yet, once they enter a virtual classroom, they often encounter highly structured learning environments in which nearly every decision has already been made for them.

Reflecting on this contrast has led me to question whether online courses sometimes underestimate the capabilities of adult learners. Providing meaningful opportunities for students to make decisions does not imply lowering standards or removing guidance. On the contrary, it requires thoughtful instructional design that identifies specific areas where learners can exercise autonomy while still working toward common learning objectives.

This perspective aligns with Mitra's (2024) work on student voice, which emphasizes that agency develops when students are invited to participate meaningfully in shaping their educational experiences. Rather than viewing learners as passive recipients of instruction, educators begin to see them as collaborators whose experiences and perspectives enrich the learning process.

Understanding Student Agency Beyond Choice

Perhaps the most transformative concept introduced in the course is the distinction between choice and agency. The course clearly explains that selecting between two similar activities does not necessarily create ownership. A student may choose between completing Worksheet A or Worksheet B, but if both activities are predetermined and lead to identical experiences, the decision remains largely superficial. Instead, the course defines agency as follows:

"Real agency means students are making decisions that actually shape their learning experience in ways they can feel. The difference matters because many digital lessons offer the appearance of choice without creating the conditions for genuine ownership."

This distinction has significant implications for my own teaching practice.

Previously, I often believed that providing multiple assignment options automatically promoted learner autonomy. After reflecting on the course materials, I now see that authentic agency requires something deeper. The central question is no longer, How many choices can I provide? Instead, it becomes, Which decisions genuinely influence students' learning experiences? This subtle shift changes the teacher's role considerably. Rather than simply expanding the menu of activities, educators become intentional designers of learning environments where students exercise meaningful decision-making while remaining accountable for achieving established outcomes.

This perspective also complements the work of Deci and Ryan (2000), whose Self-Determination Theory identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as three fundamental psychological needs that foster intrinsic motivation. Student agency directly supports autonomy by allowing learners to influence aspects of their educational experiences. At the same time, carefully designed opportunities for agency can strengthen competence by encouraging students to demonstrate learning through formats that reflect their strengths and professional contexts. For adult learners, this connection is particularly meaningful. Corporate professionals frequently make important decisions in their workplaces. Consequently, allowing them to exercise thoughtful decision-making within the learning environment respects the expertise they already possess while increasing their investment in the learning process.

Agency by Design

One of the ideas I appreciated most in the course is that agency does not emerge accidentally. Instead, it results from deliberate instructional design. The course notes state:

"Student agency does not appear in a lesson because a teacher has good intentions. It appears because someone made a specific design decision that created a real opening for students to own some part of their learning."

This statement captures an important reality for online education. Effective digital instruction depends heavily on planning. Unlike face-to-face teaching, where instructors can make continuous adjustments based on classroom interactions, online environments often require decisions to be embedded into the course before students even log in. Consequently, promoting agency becomes less about improvisation and more about purposeful course design.

This idea also reminds me of the principles of backward design proposed by Wiggins and McTighe (2005). Rather than beginning with activities, educators first identify desired learning outcomes and determine acceptable evidence of learning. Student agency can then be incorporated by allowing learners flexibility in how they demonstrate that evidence without altering the intended outcomes themselves. In other words, the destination remains fixed while multiple meaningful pathways become available.

This realization has prompted me to rethink assessment in particular. Instead of asking, What assignment should students complete?, I have begun asking a different question: What evidence would convince me that learning has occurred? Once that evidence has been clearly defined, students may be able to determine the most authentic way to demonstrate it, whether through presentations, podcasts, interviews, business proposals, debates, or other professional communication tasks aligned with the course objectives.

Applying the Four Avenues of Agency in My Teaching Context

The ISTE+ASCD course presents four practical avenues through which educators can intentionally design for agency: pace, path, time, and place. Rather than treating agency as an abstract concept, these dimensions provide a concrete framework for examining where students experience meaningful ownership within a digital course.

To better understand my own practice, I analyzed the online platform used in one of my university English courses. The reflection helped me identify both strengths and opportunities for growth.

Table 1

Reflection on the Four Avenues of Student Agency in Cambridge One

Avenue	Reflection
Pace	The platform is organized around three major submission periods during a 15-week semester. Students generally have about three weeks to complete each set of four units, allowing them to move more quickly through familiar content or revisit activities that require additional practice.
Path	This is the most limited avenue. Students cannot choose different learning pathways to complete the platform successfully. Their primary decision involves determining the order in which they complete individual exercises rather than selecting alternative routes toward the learning outcomes.
Time	Students enjoy considerable flexibility regarding when they engage with the platform. They decide how frequently they log in and how much time they devote to each study session, provided they meet the established deadlines.
Place	Because the platform is entirely online, students may work wherever they have internet access, including at home, on campus, while commuting, or even while traveling.

Analyzing my course through these four dimensions revealed an interesting pattern. While pace, time, and place already provide students with meaningful flexibility, path remains relatively constrained. This observation has encouraged me to consider future redesigns that preserve academic rigor while expanding opportunities for learners to determine how they achieve the established learning goals. Rather than simply adding more choices, the challenge is to create authentic opportunities for students to exercise ownership over their learning journey.

From Differentiation to Authentic Agency

One of the most valuable outcomes of reflecting on the ISTE+ASCD course has been recognizing that differentiation and student agency, while related, are not the same concept. For many years, differentiation has encouraged educators to adapt instruction to accommodate learners' needs, interests, and readiness levels (Tomlinson, 2014). This remains an essential component of effective teaching. However, differentiation generally positions the teacher as the primary decision-maker who selects the options students will receive. Student agency represents a different shift in thinking. Rather than asking, How can I provide better options for my students?, agency asks, How can students participate in making meaningful decisions about their own learning?

This distinction has become particularly relevant in my own teaching. Most of my students are college young adults or professionals who study English while balancing demanding careers and personal responsibilities. They regularly make complex decisions in their workplaces, manage projects, supervise colleagues, and solve authentic problems. Yet, traditional educational models often limit them to following predetermined learning paths designed entirely by the instructor. The more I reflect on this contrast, the more convinced I become that adult learners deserve opportunities to exercise the same decision-making skills inside the classroom that they use successfully outside of it.

This realization has also influenced how I think about assessments. In previous semesters, I often focused on designing a single product that all students would complete. While this approach ensured consistency, it sometimes limited students' ability to demonstrate learning in ways that reflected their professional identities. Today, I find myself asking a different question: What evidence would convince me that learning has occurred?

Once that evidence has been clearly identified, multiple possibilities emerge. If the objective is to demonstrate persuasive communication, one student might prepare a TED-style presentation, another might produce a business proposal, while another records a professional podcast or participates in a structured debate. The learning outcome remains unchanged, but students have greater ownership over how they demonstrate their achievement. This approach aligns with Wiggins and McTighe's (2005) principles of backward design, where assessment begins with identifying desired evidence rather than prescribing identical learning products for every learner.

Student Voice and Shared Ownership of Learning

As my understanding of agency has evolved, I have also found Dana Mitra's work on student voice particularly meaningful. Her framework suggests that authentic participation develops progressively through three levels: being heard, collaboration with adults, and building capacity for leadership (Mitra, 2004, 2024). Initially, I associated student voice with gathering feedback through surveys or end-of-course evaluations. While these practices remain valuable, I now see that they represent only the beginning of a much broader process.

Being heard means students have opportunities to express their perspectives and experiences. Collaboration occurs when teachers and students jointly make decisions about aspects of learning. The highest level, building capacity, positions students as genuine partners who contribute to improving educational experiences for themselves and future learners.

This framework has encouraged me to think differently about the role of reflection in my own courses. For example, after completing a unit, students might identify which activities contributed most to their learning and explain why. Rather than treating those reflections as simple feedback, I could invite students to redesign one activity they believe would better support future classes. Small groups could compare ideas, justify their recommendations, and collaboratively propose improvements. In this scenario, reflection becomes more than an individual exercise; it becomes a mechanism for continuous course improvement.

This idea also connects closely with Donald Schön's (1983) concept of the reflective practitioner. Schön argued that professionals develop expertise through systematic reflection on their own practice. While his work primarily addressed educators and other professionals, I believe the same principle applies to students. When learners analyze their own learning processes and contribute to improving them, they become reflective participants rather than passive recipients of instruction.

Student Agency in Online Learning for Young Adults and Working Professionals

Teaching online introduces both opportunities and challenges for promoting student agency. One advantage is that digital environments naturally support flexibility regarding time, place, and often pace. Students enrolled in my university and corporate courses frequently study after work, during weekends, while commuting, or even while traveling. These forms of flexibility are already embedded within many online learning environments.

However, my reflection on Cambridge One revealed that flexibility alone does not necessarily produce agency. The platform allows learners considerable freedom regarding when and where they study, and it offers some flexibility in pacing. Nevertheless, students have relatively little influence over the learning pathway itself. The sequence of activities is largely predetermined, and opportunities to personalize learning remain limited.

This observation does not suggest that the platform is ineffective. Rather, it highlights an important distinction between adaptive technology and student agency. Adaptive systems often determine what learners should do next based on their performance. Agency, on the other hand, invites learners to participate in those decisions whenever appropriate.

Recognizing this distinction has helped me identify opportunities that exist outside the platform itself. For example, synchronous class meetings provide space for collaborative problem-solving, student-selected discussion topics, peer teaching, project proposals, and authentic communicative tasks connected to learners' professional experiences. Likewise, assessment design offers one of the greatest opportunities for expanding agency without requiring major technological changes. Instead of viewing digital platforms as complete learning environments, I increasingly see them as one component within a broader instructional design that intentionally creates opportunities for student ownership.

Implications for My Teaching Practice

Perhaps the most significant change resulting from this course is not a new teaching strategy but a new perspective on instructional design. Previously, I often asked myself: How can I make this lesson more engaging? Today, I find myself asking: Where can students genuinely influence their own learning without compromising the intended learning outcomes? This subtle change has important implications for future course development.

Rather than focusing exclusively on delivering carefully planned instruction, I hope to create learning experiences that gradually transfer greater responsibility to students. This does not mean removing structure or lowering expectations. Instead, it involves identifying purposeful moments where learners can make authentic decisions regarding learning pathways, collaborative activities, assessment formats, and course improvement. As Deci and Ryan (2000) explain, autonomy represents one of the fundamental psychological needs that support intrinsic motivation. When learners experience meaningful ownership over their educational experiences, they are more likely to demonstrate persistence, engagement, and self-regulation. These qualities are particularly valuable for adult learners studying online, where independent learning plays such a significant role.

Ultimately, I now view student agency not as an instructional trend but as a design philosophy. It challenges educators to think carefully about where ownership belongs within a course and how thoughtful design decisions can transform students from participants who simply complete assigned tasks into learners who actively shape their own educational experiences.

Conclusion

Completing the ISTE+ASCD course has provided me with more than a new instructional framework; it has prompted me to reconsider the relationship between teaching, learning, and ownership in online education. Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned is that agency should not be confused with simply offering more choices. Meaningful agency emerges when students participate in decisions that genuinely influence how they learn while maintaining clear and consistent learning goals. This distinction has reshaped the way I think about lesson planning, assessment, and course design.

My own reflection on Cambridge One illustrates that many online learning environments already support flexibility in terms of pace, time, and place. Nevertheless, opportunities remain to strengthen students' ownership of their learning path and, more importantly, to involve them in shaping assessments and improving learning experiences. These changes do not require abandoning structure; they require designing opportunities for shared responsibility.

As an instructor who teaches college young adults and corporate working adults online, I believe this perspective is particularly relevant. Adult learners bring valuable professional knowledge, life experience, and decision-making skills into every virtual classroom. Designing learning experiences that acknowledge and build upon those strengths demonstrates respect for learners while creating richer educational experiences.

Looking ahead, I hope to continue exploring ways to integrate student voice into both my classroom practice and my curriculum design work. If learning truly belongs to students, then educators must intentionally create environments where that ownership is not simply encouraged but thoughtfully designed. In doing so, we move beyond delivering content toward cultivating reflective, autonomous learners who are prepared not only to succeed academically but also to continue learning throughout their professional lives.

Ensinar não é simplesmente transmitir conhecimento, mas ajudar outras pessoas a descobrir que podem aprender, crescer e caminhar com as próprias pernas.

 

San José, Costa Rica

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Blog Post #593

 

📚 References

Acuña Solano, J. (2026). Reflective journal: Supporting student agency in the digital classroom [Unpublished course reflection]. ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy, Designing Online Learning Experiences – U.S. Department of State course.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

ISTE+ASCD Learning Academy. (2026). Designing Online Learning Experiences – U.S. Department of State [Professional learning course]. ISTE+ASCD.

Mitra, D. L. (2004). The significance of students: Can increasing "student voice" in schools lead to gains in youth development? Teachers College Record, 106(4), 651–688. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00354.x

Mitra, D. L. (2024). Supporting student agency in the digital classroom. ISTE+ASCD, Designing Online Learning Experiences – Department of State course materials.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners (2nd ed.). ASCD.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.