This article explores how children of Latino immigrants responded to a learning environment where they
could influence how and what they learned. Using ethnographic data from the much larger Agency and
Young Children project in the United States, this article describes how a particular six year old
classroom serving mostly children of Latino immigrants responded in ways that not only increased
content knowledge in subjects such as science and literacy but also increased the amount of shared or
communal agency in the classroom, even affecting the development of social capabilities by the children
and teacher alike. Using a conceptual framework borrowed from development economics and
particularly the work on agency and capabilities by Sen (1999; 2003), this paper counters a strictly
psychological, individualistic version of agency and instead conceptualizes agency as a means to
building individual and communal capabilities.