Responsive co-agency in educational accompaniment: a relational model integrating agency, personalism, and the pedagogy of alterity

1 Introduction

A secondary school tutor meets a student who has repeatedly missed written assignments. The tutor has prepared a study schedule, while the student explains that the instructions are difficult to understand and that family responsibilities restrict study time. An effective educational response requires judgment concerning both accounts. The tutor needs to clarify the learning requirements, examine the reported obstacles, and determine which supports are feasible. The student needs an opportunity to influence that process and undertake a manageable portion of the work. Listening, expertise, and responsibility become connected within a decision whose educational quality cannot be assessed through agreement alone. This hypothetical situation introduces the problem examined in this article.

Educational accompaniment is understood here as sustained, nonclinical support through which an educator helps a learner interpret their experiences, engage with educational requirements, and participate in decisions affecting their learning. The term draws on scholarship that examines accompagnement across professional and educational practices (Paul, 2009). Related research addresses instructional tutoring (Wood et al., 1976), mentoring in higher education (Crisp and Cruz, 2009), and parental participation in negotiating school support (Koskela, 2021). These fields have different purposes and relationships of authority. Bringing them into dialogue requires identifying their common educational problem without treating their practices as interchangeable.

This article develops a conceptual framework for educational accompaniment. The primary scope of the proposed framework encompasses tutoring and mentoring for adolescents and university students, together with school–family collaboration concerning adolescent learners. Throughout, the term “educator” designates a teacher, tutor, mentor, or adviser acting within an educational role. Parents enter the analysis when they participate in the learner's education. Adult family mediation and long-term caregiving fall outside the framework's developed applications. Section 7.3 explains possible adaptations for younger learners and adults requiring additional support; these adaptations indicate limits to transferability rather than establishing a model valid across the lifespan. Psychotherapy, clinical assessment, and specialized protection procedures remain distinct professional responsibilities.

Three possible failures organize the inquiry. A learner can be treated primarily as a performance problem; an educator can settle on an interpretation before considering the learner's contribution; and an institutional obstacle can be attributed entirely to the learner's motivation. These are analytical risks selected for this argument, not an exhaustive taxonomy or a finding about their prevalence. Their selection connects personalist criticism of instrumental treatment, work on opportunities for participation, and accounts of agency as context-dependent (Biesta and Tedder, 2007; Koskela, 2021; Lundy, 2007; Wojtyła, 2013, ch. I, part one). The opening example would exhibit the third risk if limited access to study time were immediately classified as an unwillingness to learn.

Research on relational agency and autonomy support already offers substantial resources for addressing these problems. It recognizes the importance of understanding others' perspectives, providing structure, and enabling participation (Edwards, 2011; Reeve and Cheon, 2021). The question pursued here concerns the coordination of these resources within a particular educational judgment: How should an educator evaluate a decision when learner participation, professional knowledge, shared purposes, and unequal responsibilities pull in different directions? This is a problem of integration and justification. This focus does not imply that existing approaches lack ethical commitments.

This article proposes responsive co-agency as a framework for examining how educators and learners shape educational action together while retaining distinct responsibilities. The term “Personal authorship” refers to a learner's supported capacity to initiate, contribute to, and progressively take responsibility for action; it has no specific connection to writing or literary authorship. Authorship may be expressed by selecting an example, requesting help, attempting a task, or questioning a proposal. The ability to offer a fully articulated justification is one developed expression of agency, not a precondition for possessing dignity or having one's participation taken seriously.

This article examines which aspects of educational decisions require joint consideration and how the pedagogy of alterity and Wojtyła's personalism can help articulate them. It develops four criteria, explains their philosophical grounding, and tests their conceptual usefulness through hypothetical educational scenarios. The intended contribution is an explicit relationship among recognition of the learner, supported participation, shared educational purposes, and protective limits. Whether using the framework improves practice or identifies something distinguishable from existing constructs remains a question for research.

2 Agency and the educational problem of joint judgment

2.1 Agency within relationships and material conditions

Agency concerns individuals’ capacity to influence action and its conditions. Bandura (2001) distinguishes among personal, proxy, and collective agency, allowing reliance on others to be understood as a mode of action. Ecological accounts similarly consider what individuals can achieve through the resources, expectations, and circumstances available to them (Biesta and Tedder, 2007). An adolescent who asks a tutor to explain an assessment criterion can therefore exercise agency through dependence on expertise. The important issue is what such assistance enables the learner to understand and do.

The relational character of agency also requires attention to institutional contexts. A schedule, assessment rubric, digital platform, or language of instruction can make a contribution possible or render it difficult to express. Wertsch's account of mediated action helps identify how individuals act with cultural tools (Wertsch, 1998, ch. 2). In the opening scenario, revising the written instructions may be as important as changing the tone of the conversation. The framework accordingly examines the conditions of participation alongside the interpersonal dynamics. It should not assign to individual goodwill a problem that requires organizational change.

Barad's agential realism offers an additional relational account that deserves explicit comparison. Through the concept of intra-action, she understands distinct agencies as emerging within relations rather than existing as fully independent starting points (Barad, 2007, pp. 33–34). This perspective directs attention to how material arrangements and practices shape who can act. Responsive co-agency shares this concern, but its personalist argument retains the irreducible worth of each learner as a normative commitment that does not depend on successful participation. However, it does not adopt agential realism as its foundational ontology. In a school meeting, for example, seating arrangements, forms, and control of the agenda can configure whose contributions count, while the student's entitlement to respectful consideration remains a reason to examine and revise those arrangements. The comparison thus identifies a relevant affinity and a philosophical difference.

2.2 What the neighboring approaches already contribute

The OECD's account of co-agency describes mutually supportive relationships among learners, peers, teachers, families, and communities (OECD, 2019). Edwards (2005, 2011) explains how relational agency involves expanding an understanding of a problem by engaging with what matters to other participants and coordinating responses. These accounts support joint interpretation in educational practice. When a parent describes a difficulty not observed at school, the teacher may gain information that changes the support proposed. Recent work continues to examine relational problem-solving and the contextual character of educational agency (Edwards, 2025; Emans et al., 2025).

Autonomy-supportive teaching explains how educators can take learners' perspectives into account, offer meaningful rationales, and provide opportunities for initiative while remaining actively involved. Reeve and Cheon (2021) review intervention evidence demonstrating the learnability and educational benefits of this approach. Their account already incorporates structure alongside an understanding interpersonal tone. A meta-analysis also reports relationships between autonomy support and positive learning outcomes (Mammadov and Schroeder, 2023). Those findings support the relevance of these practices; they cannot establish the effectiveness of the framework proposed here, which has not yet been empirically evaluated.

Participation scholarship further cautions against equating an opportunity to speak with meaningful influence. Lundy (2007) identifies conditions under which children's views can be expressed, heard, and given due weight. Critical accounts of agency also examine the transformation of unequal practices (Stetsenko, 2019). Responsive co-agency therefore enters an established discussion of power and inclusion. Table 1 summarizes these contributions and the particular decision-making questions brought together in the present analysis. These questions are offered for consideration rather than as deficits attributed to entire research traditions.

Table 1. Established approaches and questions coordinated in responsive co-agency.

The questions identify uses within this synthesis. They do not claim that neighboring approaches omit these issues.

The proposed framework coordinates four questions about the same decision: what relevant information about the learner has been considered; how the learner can contribute; which educational goods justify the proposal; and whether its demands respect legitimate limits. Considering them together matters because a favorable answer to one does not settle the others. For instance, a student might willingly accept an excessive share of group work, while a well-designed support plan might be introduced without an accessible explanation. The resulting distinction is between a learner's endorsement of a plan and its educational justification of that plan. Endorsement deserves consideration, while justification also requires examining purposes, conditions, and responsibilities. Conversely, professional justification must address how the learner can understand and participate in the proposed action. This reciprocal requirement explains the value of examining the four questions together. Its practical usefulness remains to be compared with established approaches.

3 Analytical approach

This is a conceptual analysis using theory synthesis and critical comparison. Conceptual research can contribute by relating bodies of scholarship, clarifying distinctions, and developing a framework for further inquiry (Jaakkola, 2020). Accordingly, this analysis does not report a systematic review, an empirical intervention, or newly collected data. Its conclusions are arguments concerning educational judgment, supported by published scholarship and illustrated through hypothetical scenarios.

Source selection follows the problem defined in Section 1. Studies of agency, autonomy support, mentoring, and school–family participation establish the educational context and neighboring explanations. Primary texts by Levinas and Wojtyła provide the philosophical concepts examined, while the pedagogy of alterity develops their educational relevance. Care ethics, Barad, Bakhtin, and mediated-action scholarship serve as interlocutors where the argument encounters questions of power, answerability, and material conditions. Selection is purposive: a work is included based on its relevance to an identified claim or distinction. The resulting corpus is not exhaustive, and its concentration on particular traditions limits the scope of its conclusions.

The analytical procedure first distinguishes the concepts and the level at which each operates. It then compares their implications for an educational decision, examines possible tensions, and develops criteria for professional judgment. The scenarios function as conceptual checks: they ask whether a criterion permits legitimate instruction, recognizes supported participation, and identifies an unreasonable demand. For instance, the framework must explain why retaining an assessment standard after hearing a student can be justified, whereas ignoring inaccessible instructions is harder to defend. These scenarios clarify the proposal's implications; however, they provide no empirical evidence regarding frequencies, effects, or implementation feasibility.

The analysis separates the interpretation of a source from the present educational reconstruction. It does not attribute contemporary mentoring procedures to Levinas, Wojtyła, or Bakhtin. Textual fidelity, coherence across examples, and differentiation from neighboring concepts guide the argument. References to books include page or chapter locators appropriate to the specified edition. The proposed criteria and research questions remain open to criticism, alternative explanations, and revision through work in different educational and cultural settings.

4 The pedagogy of alterity and educational responsiveness

4.1 Recognizing the learner beyond an initial interpretation

In Totality and Infinity, Levinas uses the term “face” to describe the other person's expression as exceeding the representation one forms of that person (Levinas, 1969, pp. 50–51). The term concerns an encounter with another person, rather than an inference from facial appearance. Applied to educational accompaniment, the face is that of the learner whom the educator meets. The term “categories” refers to the educator's interpretive classifications, such as capable, unmotivated, or disruptive. Their usefulness does not authorize treating them as a complete account of the student. The ethical point is a limit on reducing another person to one’s understanding of that person; it is not a claim that a physical face disrupts a lesson.

Levinas (1969, pp. 197–201) relates expression to responsibility and explicitly distinguishes ethical resistance from force. The pedagogy of alterity develops an educational orientation of welcome, attention, and responsibility toward a situated learner (Ortega Ruiz, 2004, 2016). In this reconstruction, ethical responsibility is part of how the educator understands the relationship from the outset. This claim concerns the foundations of educational judgment, not the possibility of completing scientific knowledge or producing a final anthropology. It asks the educator to consider the individual student before treating a professional classification as sufficient.

The tutor in the opening scenario may reasonably begin by considering study habits. Once the student describes difficulty with instructions, however, the tutor has a reason to investigate that possibility. The initial classification can be refined, retained with better evidence, or replaced. The educator's responsiveness consists in taking relevant information seriously and explaining the resulting decision. A student is entitled to this consideration even if unable to formulate a philosophical claim, present a polished narrative, or identify the appropriate remedy.

4.2 Answerability and responsibilities of the educational role

Two meanings of responsibility must be distinguished. Ethical answerability concerns how a person responds to another and owns the significance of an action. Responsibility attached to a role concerns identifiable duties, such as explaining an assessment, maintaining an appropriate learning environment, and arranging support within one's competence. Bakhtin’s (1993, pp. 40–42) account of the answerable act helps clarify why general knowledge does not relieve the acting person of responsibility for a concrete decision. His account provides a point of comparison, rather than a synonym for all Levinasian claims about responsibility.

An adviser who follows an institution's progression rules must still explain their educational relevance and consider the student's situation. Likewise, concern for a student does not grant the adviser the authority to promise an exception that belongs to another institutional body. Ethical answerability calls for attention and justification; the institutional role specifies the decisions the adviser can make. Both dimensions can be examined critically. An inadequate rule may need review through the appropriate route, while immediate support remains bounded by the educator's actual responsibilities.

The pedagogy of alterity gives this attention biographical and social contexts. Learners participate through their particular histories, languages, relationships, and material circumstances (Mínguez Vallejos et al., 2016; Ortega Ruiz and Romero Sánchez, 2018). In a meeting about attendance, a parent's account of transportation or work schedules may change which action is feasible. Asking for this information can improve the interpretation without requiring disclosure of every private difficulty. The educator should request what is relevant, explain its purpose, and avoid making intimate disclosure a condition of ordinary educational consideration.

4.3 Planning for responsiveness

Responsiveness can be designed into ordinary teaching. A teacher can clarify aims in advance, invite questions about instructions, offer appropriate ways of contributing, and schedule a review of difficulties. These arrangements create opportunities to learn about students before a problem becomes a conflict. In the present model, “priority” means that relevant needs and expressions deserve consideration in judging the plan. It does not describe a chronological event that every relationship must pass through before learning begins.

The philosophical language of interruption is therefore used only to explain the background concern with closed interpretations. Its educational implication is a standing willingness to reconsider the educator's assumptions. Responsive co-agency requires neither conversational interruption nor any form of injury, disruption, or aggression. It is compatible with continuity, orderly discussion, and a teacher's decision to retain a justified plan. When student behavior threatens others, the educator must protect the learning environment and use the appropriate institutional response. The ethical standing of the student and the need to address harmful conduct remain jointly relevant.

5 Personal dignity and participation in educational action

5.1 Professional knowledge in the service of the learner

Wojtyła's personalist norm grounds a prohibition on treating a person merely as a means and connects that prohibition with the positive affirmation of the person's good (Wojtyła, 2013, ch. I, part one, especially pp. 24–28). Its educational relevance lies in what professional success is taken to mean. A tutor should not treat a student's performance primarily as evidence of the tutor's own importance. An assessment can serve learning while the learner's worth remains independent of its outcome. This is an educational application of the norm, rather than a claim that the original text supplies a theory of tutoring.

An interpretation becomes reductive when it treats one feature of a student as representing the whole person. Recording a missed deadline is a legitimate observation. Concluding from this alone that the student lacks commitment closes off relevant alternatives. Professional concepts, tools, and assessment criteria remain necessary. Cultural tools can extend action, as mediated-action scholarship explains (Wertsch, 1998, ch. 2); by contrast, instrumentalizing a learner concerns how that person is treated. Using a rubric to teach a skill and using a student to protect an institutional image are ethically different practices.

5.2 Supported authorship and the reception of help

Wojtyła (2021, chs. 3–4, pp. 207–292) examines self-possession and self-governance within the personal structure of self-determination and relates action to the person's fulfillment. These represent philosophical analyses of action. Translating them into an educational context requires distinguishing a normative account of the person from a developmental description of what a particular learner can presently do. No direct deduction takes us from this anthropology to an age at which a child should justify decisions independently.

The account of the gift used here also recognizes that learners act within conditions they have received: a language, previous teaching, relationships, and opportunities they did not create. This reconstructive reading builds on an earlier study of the donative dimension in Wojtyła (García Casas, 2018). Its educational claim is modest. Receiving help can foster initiative, while reflection allows a learner to question inherited expectations. Receptivity neither implies that every inherited practice is good nor that freedom is an ability to act without conditions.

A student who accepts an explanation from a knowledgeable teacher may be participating appropriately. The relevant educational concern is that such assistance expands the student's possibilities and remains responsive to the learning task. Dependence is not inherently a failure, and continued support may be necessary. The scaffolding described by Wood et al. (1976) illustrates how a tutor can manage aspects of a task that exceed a child's present capacity while enabling the child's contribution. In the present framework, responsibility is adjusted when the learner is ready; independence is not imposed as an outcome regardless of need.

5.3 Participation and shared educational purposes

Wojtyła’s (2021, ch. 7, pp. 377–414) discussion of participation examines how a person acts with others while remaining the subject of action. His later account of the person as subject and community develops the interpersonal and communal dimensions of that problem (Wojtyła, 2021, pp. 467–513). Dancák (2021) explicitly discusses participation as a dimension of philosophy of education. These sources support a connection between philosophical anthropology and educational relationships, whereas the practical realization of this connection must be argued in relation to teaching and learning.

Within Wojtyła’s (2021, ch. 7, pp. 377–414) account, solidarity and principled opposition can express participation, whereas conformism and evasion undermine it. In a group assignment, a student may contest an unequal allocation of work while remaining committed to the group's learning. The educational question is whether the objection can be examined and the arrangement justified. Disagreement acquires value through its underlying reasons and relation to the activity; it is not automatically a superior form of agency. Likewise, accepting a proposal after receiving an explanation need not amount to conformity.

The language of self-gift supplies a philosophical orientation toward contributing to goods that others can share. The connection between personal worth and self-gift is also expressed in Gaudium et spes, paragraph 24 (Second Vatican Council, 1965). In pluralistic educational settings, the present proposal translates this orientation into examining how a goal affects learning together, fair participation, and the contributions of others. It does not make religious assent a requirement of educational participation. A student can support a peer's understanding, acknowledge another's contribution, or accept a fair share of group work for reasons accessible within the educational activity itself.

5.4 Contribution under fair conditions

Care ethics directs attention to the distribution of responsibility and the conditions under which care is provided (Noddings, 2013; Tronto, 1993). This becomes educationally salient when a capable student is repeatedly expected to support classmates at the expense of that student's own learning, or when an institution relies on unpaid family work without examining its demands. These examples identify possible unfair arrangements, not claims about the frequency of such practices. A worthwhile contribution should be compatible with appropriate limits, access to support, and recognition of the contributor's own educational needs.

The learner's account provides relevant evidence in judging such arrangements, alongside observation, learning outcomes, professional knowledge, and the perspectives of others. It is neither the sole measure of educational quality nor something that must be expressed through sophisticated speech. A young child's repeated withdrawal from a task may warrant closer observation and an adapted explanation; it does not, by itself, establish the cause. Teachers remain responsible for interpreting information carefully, testing assumptions where possible, and considering the interests of other learners.

6 Four criteria for educational judgment

The integration concerns educational decisions rather than a merger of philosophical systems. Levinas emphasizes the other person's claim upon the self; Wojtyła analyzes the person who acts and participates with others. Their accounts of subjectivity retain substantive differences. In the present reconstruction, attention to the learner informs what needs consideration, while personal participation informs how the response should be developed. Neither philosophical account alone determines classroom procedures. The proposed criteria mediate their educational implications through the research and scenarios discussed above.

The first criterion is attention to the learner's situation. Before determining a response, the educator considers relevant expressions, needs, resources, and barriers. This gives the learner's situation priority over the convenience of an unexamined interpretation. Priority does not mean that every preference overrides the curriculum, another student's needs, or the teacher's judgment. An educator can conclude that a planned task remains appropriate after addressing a student's concern and explaining the decision.

The second criterion is supported participation. The learner has an accessible opportunity to contribute to understanding the difficulty, considering relevant alternatives, and taking part in action. The appropriate contribution depends on the decision and available support. A tutor can provide an explanation, model a strategy, or require a revision while inviting the student to identify which part is difficult. Consultation is meaningful when the educator considers what is expressed and gives an appropriate account of its influence on the decision.

The third criterion is contribution to shared educational goods. A proposed goal is considered in relation to learning, fair cooperation, and the conditions that enable others to learn. This is the practical formulation of the gift-oriented horizon. The criterion applies to collective work and to individual study whose demands occur within a shared institution. It does not require every assignment to become an act of service, nor does it justify demanding exceptional sacrifice as evidence of a student's maturity.

The fourth criterion is justice and professional boundaries. Decisions must respect dignity, safety, fair demands, and the educator's competence and authority. These conditions operate throughout the relationship. They can require an immediate limit, an alternative arrangement, or referral to an appropriate service. When urgent protection is necessary, action may precede consultation, with explanation and review to follow when appropriate. The framework is not a substitute for applicable institutional procedures.

Table 2 summarizes how the four criteria inform educational decisions. Each asks a different question about the same situation. They are proposed as considerations to be assessed together, not as a checklist whose completion certifies an intervention or yields an overall numerical score.

Table 2. Four criteria for judging educational decisions.

The criteria apply together throughout a relationship. They do not constitute a validated scale, decision algorithm, or guarantee of an appropriate outcome.

Conflicts among criteria require reasons, rather than a fixed ordering that resolves every case. In the opening scenario, the student may prefer to avoid written work, whereas learning to construct a written argument remains a legitimate educational objective. The tutor can preserve that purpose and adapt the instructions or support. If the assignment itself is inaccessible, the institution must consider an appropriate response. If a proposed adjustment transfers an unreasonable burden on classmates, it needs further revision. The decision becomes defensible through deliberate attention to these competing considerations and through an account of who holds the authority to resolve them.

7 The responsive co-agency framework

7.1 Definition and decision responsibilities

Responsive co-agency is an educational relationship in which an educator and learner jointly shape an understanding of a task or difficulty and the action to be taken, with participation supported according to the learner's situation and each participant's responsibilities made explicit. The term “responsive” identifies the educator's continuing attention to the learner and the effects of the response. “Co-agency” identifies the possibility of shaping action together. A responsive educator can enable participation without guaranteeing agreement, equal expertise, or equal decision-making authority. Figure 1 relates the four criteria to a recurring process of educational judgment.

The educator specifies the educational requirements and clarifies which aspects are open to choice, consultation, or institutional review. The learner contributes information, questions, preferences, and action within this decision space. Families can contribute relevant contextual knowledge and carry responsibilities connected to the learner's education. This distribution of responsibility is examined for each particular issue rather than inferred from a general assertion that all participants are equal. For example, a university adviser can explain progression options, while the student chooses among available pathways and the authorized academic body determines whether formal requirements are met.

There is no presumption that educators generally seek to suppress vulnerability or make students dependent. The framework identifies a possible failure when an educator's interpretation becomes immune to relevant information. Rather, it also identifies failures of inadequate instruction and unsupported choice. In both cases, the corrective question is practical: What support and explanation does this learner need, and which decision is the educator responsible for making? These questions can be asked before teaching, during an activity, and at review.

7.2 Five recurring practices

Receiving involves obtaining information relevant to the educational situation before treating an interpretation as settled. The educator may use conversation, observation, the learner's work, or an accessible communication format. In the tutoring scenario, asking the student to work through one instruction can provide more useful information than requesting an elaborate account of motivation. The educator avoids interpreting silence as either agreement or a reliable indication of incapacity.

Affirming involves responding to the learner as a person whose standing is not exhausted by success or difficulty. The educator can state clearly that an assignment is incomplete, explain its consequences, and remain available to teach the required skill. Such affirmation should be evident in the fairness and care of the interaction. It does not require indiscriminate praise or an assurance that every decision the learner makes is sound.

Deliberating involves examining the interpretation, feasible alternatives, and educational reasons with the learner to the extent appropriate. The educator provides the information needed to participate and states what can be decided. The student might choose the order of two tasks while the teacher retains the learning goal. When a decision must be made by the educator, deliberation includes considering the learner's contribution and explaining why the decision is either retained or changed.

Acting involves putting a decision into practice with clear responsibilities and adequate support. The learner may attempt an initial step while the educator models another or arranges access to a resource. Agreement alone does not show that a student understands the plan or can carry it out. A brief demonstration, rehearsal, or accessible restatement can help check what assistance is needed without turning the conversation into a test of the learner's personal worth.

Reviewing involves evaluating learning and the process through which it occurred. The educator and learner examine whether the support was usable, which difficulty remains, and whether the allocation of work was reasonable. This review can lead to maintaining the arrangement, increasing or reducing support, or seeking further expertise. The educational relationship continues across these practices; there is no separate point at which relational work is completed and ordinary teaching resumes. Table 3 relates each practice to an observable feature of a decision-making process.

Table 3. Recurring practices and features that could be examined in research.

These are proposed observation questions, not established indicators. Practices can overlap and recur; no required conversational sequence is implied.

The five practices form a heuristic, not a required conversational script. A teacher can move directly from reviewing work to explaining a concept and inviting another attempt. Receiving and affirming may occur through ordinary instruction rather than through a distinct preliminary meeting. The primary concern is whether the relevant considerations remain open to examination. An effective lesson may already exhibit these practices, and the framework does not require additional documentation for every routine exchange.

7.3 Participation across developmental and support contexts

Age informs expectations, but participation also depends on the task, communication opportunities, prior experience, and available support. Younger learners may contribute through demonstration, gesture, choosing between comprehensible alternatives, or requesting help. Adolescents can increasingly discuss consequences and negotiate aspects of a plan, while educators and parents retain appropriate duties. Adult students generally have greater responsibility for their educational choices, although unfamiliar requirements or communication barriers may still call for substantial assistance. These distinctions concern possible forms of participation, rather than a universal developmental sequence.

Table 4 outlines illustrative adaptations and limitations. This article develops adolescent and university applications most fully. Applications to younger children and adults with extensive support needs require further educational and developmental investigation. Older age should not itself be treated as evidence of reduced capacity. Across all settings, a learner's need for assistance does not reduce personal worth or authorize disregard of that learner's expressions.

Table 4. Illustrative participation and support across educational contexts.

The rows describe possibilities, not age thresholds, diagnostic categories, or a validated developmental progression. Expectations depend on the particular task and available support.

In certain instances, an educator must reject a learner's preferred option. A student may request a task exemption that is incompatible with the learning objective, or a group may choose a method that excludes another member. The decision should be based on an educational reason within the educator's authority, explained accessibly, and accompanied by a feasible route for continued participation. When appropriate, the learner can seek clarification or review. These conditions do not guarantee that the decision is correct, but they identify features that can be examined and challenged.

8 Educational applications and questions for research

8.1 Tutoring after missed assignments

Returning to the hypothetical secondary-school student who has missed assignments, the tutor begins with the learning objective: producing a short argument supported by evidence. The student works through an instruction and identifies unfamiliar vocabulary. Their discussion also reveals that the proposed study period conflicts with family responsibilities. The tutor reviews relevant information and distinguishes what can be adjusted from what the student must learn. The response includes explaining the vocabulary, modeling one step, and agreeing on a feasible time for the first attempt.

The student remains responsible for attempting the work and indicating where help is needed. The tutor remains responsible for instruction and assessment within the school's arrangements. At review, completion matters alongside evidence that the student can now understand and apply the instructions. If the initial schedule was already feasible, the tutor may retain it with an accompanying explanation. This scenario illustrates how participation can inform a decision without predetermining that the educator must change it. It also shows why requesting compliance and offering unrestricted choice are insufficient accounts of educational judgment.

8.2 University mentoring and collective work

In a hypothetical university group project, a mentor learns that one student is completing most of the work to preserve the group's grade. The student endorses this arrangement, and the group is meeting its deadlines. Attention to participation alone could miss a concern about fairness or unequal learning opportunities. The mentor asks how responsibilities were allocated, whether each student is learning the required skills, and what changes are possible within the assessment rules. The students can agree on a revised distribution, while the mentor explains how contributions will be assessed. The framework directs attention to the educational quality of an apparently successful arrangement; it does not establish in advance that any unequal division of labor is unjust.

When the mentor also assesses work or controls access to opportunities, that authority should be made clear. Students must understand which choices remain theirs, what information will be used in assessment, and how to raise concerns. Trust develops through transparent explanations and fair treatment. It does not require presenting the relationship as friendship or promising a degree of confidentiality that the role cannot support. These are proposed conditions of the scenario, rather than an empirical claim about the motives of mentors.

8.3 A school meeting with a family

A hypothetical meeting concerns an adolescent's incomplete work. The shared educational purpose is to support the student's learning and participation in school. The teacher's initial explanation is difficulty organizing tasks, the parent describes limited study space, and the student reports uncertainty about instructions. These are accounts actually expressed in the meeting, not hidden interpretations attributed to participants. Distinguishing the educational purpose from each account prevents one explanation from silently determining the solution. The teacher can then ask what evidence supports each account and which practical steps would help clarify the difficulty.

Before the meeting, the student can receive the agenda in accessible language and choose an appropriate way to contribute. During the meeting, the teacher explains the learning requirements, the parent contributes relevant information, and the student identifies difficulties or preferences. The agreed-upon record distinguishes the student's task, the support the school will provide, any feasible family contribution, and the review date. If the teacher retains an initial interpretation, the record explains why and acknowledges any unresolved disagreement. Research on parental agency shows why opportunities and institutional positions are critical in such negotiations (Koskela, 2021; Rautamies et al., 2019). The present scenario adds a focused examination of the learner's role within the collaboration.

8.4 Limits and referral within education

An educational relationship may reveal student needs that exceed the educator's professional competence. The appropriate response can include using the institution's support or protection arrangements while continuing educational assistance within the educator's role. The framework does not authorize teachers to diagnose a clinical condition, conduct family therapy, or promise outcomes controlled by other services. It asks what the educator can responsibly undertake, what requires another professional, and how the learner can be informed and supported throughout that transition. Safety and the appropriate handling of information remain fundamental conditions of participation throughout.

8.5 Questions for empirical inquiry

The framework proposes a way to examine decisions; its effectiveness and distinctiveness are untested. Six questions translate the argument into a future research agenda. They concern adolescent and university education first, before transfer to other populations. None should be construed as a demonstrated relationship or a claim that the framework outperforms existing practices.

First, do learners experience greater recognition when educators examine relevant context and explain how it affects a decision? Second, do accessible opportunities to contribute predict participation in subsequent learning, after accounting for perceived autonomy support? Third, can observers distinguish justified instructional authority from control using evidence about reasons, opportunities to contribute, and available support? Fourth, does explicit discussion of shared educational goods identify unfair demands that satisfaction or goal-attainment measures miss? Fifth, when contextual barriers are recognized, do educators make more appropriate adjustments to instruction or to the coordination of resources? Sixth, does professional review of decisions improve the utilization of support and reduce unreasonable burdens? Each question permits negative findings and enables comparison with alternative explanations.

Initial studies could employ interviews and observations of educational meetings to assess whether the distinctions are intelligible to participants and can be applied consistently by independent analysts. Subsequent research could compare a framework-informed approach with an established autonomy-supportive model, examining feasibility as well as learning and adverse effects. Measures should distinguish perceived participation from observed influence and retain cases in which disagreement persists. Existing operational work on the pedagogy of alterity can inform this development without validating the present proposal by extension (Osuna Lever et al., 2016). Any future study involving participants will require appropriate ethical review and informed consent arrangements.

9 Discussion

Responsive co-agency integrates four considerations into the examination of a single educational decision. Its primary contribution lies in the explicit coordination of these considerations and in providing an account of how participation can coexist with distinct responsibilities. A student can have meaningful influence without controlling an assessment, while a teacher can retain authority and remain answerable for its exercise. Whether this formulation offers additional explanatory or practical value beyond existing work on relational agency, autonomy support, and learner voice is unresolved.

The framework treats autonomy as compatible with help and dependence on expertise. Personal authorship does not require a learner to originate every reason independently or justify every action verbally. An educator may support a student's understanding, make a decision belonging to the professional role, and leave room for questions and later revision. This interpretation preserves the philosophical concern with acting as a person while avoiding an adult-centric ideal of self-explanation as a universal entry requirement for participation.

The criterion of contribution to shared educational goods also raises a substantive question regarding who defines these goods. The framework cannot eliminate disagreement concerning educational aims. Rather, it requires educators to identify the purpose at issue, explain its relationship to learning and the institution's responsibilities, and consider objections from affected participants. The personalist source gives a reason to resist instrumental treatment, but it does not supply an uncontested answer to every curriculum dispute. Educational reasons and arrangements remain open to public scrutiny.

Several limits follow. The synthesis draws substantially on European philosophical traditions, including a Christian personalist inheritance. Its educational translation needs examination in cultural contexts where relationships, autonomy, and family responsibilities are understood differently. In addition, the primary applications concern adolescents and university students, while the developmental adaptations remain preliminary. The examples demonstrate possibilities within an argument; they establish no causal effect, prevalence, or general implementation standards. The four criteria are not a validated scale, and “responsive co-agency” should not be presented as a distinct psychological construct without appropriate evidence.

Practical limits also matter. Educators have responsibilities to entire groups and operate under constraints of time, curriculum, staffing, and access to services. Extensive individual deliberation is not feasible for every decision. The framework should help identify when additional attention is warranted, rather than requiring a separate procedure for routine instruction. It can also reveal problems that interpersonal adjustments alone cannot solve, such as inaccessible materials or an unreasonable distribution of support responsibilities. In such cases, responsibility includes considering organizational change through the appropriate institutional channels.

10 Conclusion

Educational accompaniment requires educators to connect attention to the learner with instruction, participation, and defensible decisions. Responsive co-agency offers four criteria for this task: attention to the learner's situation, supported participation, contribution to shared educational goods, and justice and professional boundaries. The pedagogy of alterity and Wojtyła's personalism help articulate why the learner matters and why assistance should preserve opportunities to act. Their educational application requires explicit attention to development, expertise, and institutions. Through routine planning and continuing review, an educator can listen carefully, retain justified requirements, and adapt support when the learner's situation warrants it. The framework's value now depends on whether researchers and practitioners find these distinctions useful and whether they add to what existing approaches already explain.

Generative AI statement

During manuscript preparation and revision, the author used ChatGPT, provided by OpenAI, to assist with conceptual comparison, organization of the argument, English drafting, and language editing. AI assistance also supported the preparation of responses to the reviewers. No original empirical data were generated or analyzed. Responsibility for the argument, source interpretation, references, and final text remains with the author.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Alessio Surian, University of Padua, Italy

Reviewed by: Mika Simonen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Philip Montgomery, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan