Unleashing Student Agency with Nadim Matta, Rafael Parente, Urvashi Sahni, and Rebecca Winthrop | SXSW EDU 2025

At SXSW EDU 2025, education leaders from the U.S., Brazil, India, and Lebanon shared how they are navigating the shift from the age of achievement to the age of agency as a result of AI. Nadim Matta, Rafael Parente, Urvashi Sahni, and Rebecca Winthrop dove into the most impactful innovations, recent research on student agentic engagement, and more.

“If we care about student attendance and chronic absenteeism, we have to care about student engagement. If we care about student achievement, we have to care about student engagement. If we care about kids' mental health and well-being, we have to care about student engagement.”

Rebecca Winthrop
Senior Fellow & Center Director, Center for Universal Education, Brookings

The Shift from Achievement to Agency

With so much focus on test scores to measure success, this session encourages student agency, underscoring the importance of empowering students to take ownership of their learning, voice, and choices.

“What we found is that when you talk to students about things that really matter to them, they are fully engaged. Each one of them, because it's their story, they want to tell it and it's their life. And those are the problems they want to solve.”

Urvashi Sahni
Founder & CEO, Study Hall Educational Foundation

Global Approaches to Student Agency

Each panelist shared insights from their respective regions: Urvashi Sahni discussed initiatives that empower girls and marginalized students to become leaders and advocates; Rafael Parente highlighted programs that integrate student voice into curriculum development, promoting active participation; Nadim Matta emphasized community-based approaches to education, enabling students to take ownership of their learning journeys.

“We're going to see these kids not like the kids of tomorrow, but the kids of today. And we're going to listen to them, to care for them, but mainly to believe that they can be agents of change, that they can transform the world while they transform themselves by being educated.”

Rafael Parente
Executive Director, Instituto Salto

Equity and Inclusion in Education

The panelists want to ensure that student agency is accessible to all learners, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and stressed that fostering agency must go hand-in-hand with addressing structural inequalities in education systems.

“Schools can transform not just their communities, but society at large. Not in the future when the kids grow up and become leaders, but in the moment. And that's sort of been a revelation for us. In fact, we started by ‘let's give schools some hope.’ Now, a lot of us in this work are gaining hope from the schools we're working with. It's quite a shift.”

Nadim Matta
Co-Founder, nafda Lebanon and RE!NSTITUTE

Watch the full Featured Session to learn more.

Watch SXSW EDU 2025 On-Demand Content

Take a look back at SXSW EDU 2025 and relive exciting Keynotes, Featured Sessions, and more, now available to watch on our official YouTube channel, plus listen to hundreds of audio recordings in the schedule.

Stay tuned for more information about registration and participation opportunities for SXSW EDU 2026 coming later this summer.

Photo by Miguel Esparza