Agency
Agency – Human Agency
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 1-26.
“The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness.
These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one’s capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one’s life pursuits.
Personal agency operates within a broad network of socio-structural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems.
Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one’s behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort.
Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.”
(Bandura, 2001, Abstract)
“What, then, is human agency? We define it as the temporally constructed engagement by actors of different structural environments—the temporal relational contexts of action—which, through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, both reproduces and transforms those structures in interactive response to the problems posed by changing historical situations. This definition encompasses what we shall analytically distinguish below as the different constitutive elements of human agency: iteration, projectivity, and practical evaluation.”(Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 970)
“The iterational element.—The first of these dimensions, which we term the iterational element, has received perhaps the most systematic attention in philosophy and sociological theory, most recently from that tradition of thought that Ortner (1984) describes as theories of practice (see also Turner 1994). It refers to the selective reactivation by actors of past pat[1]terns of thought and action, as routinely incorporated in practical activity, thereby giving stability and order to social universes and helping to sustain identities, interactions, and institutions over time. (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971)
The primary locus of agency for the iterational dimension, we argue, lies in the schematization of social experience. It is manifested in actors’ abilities to recall, to select, and to appropriately apply the more or less tacit and taken-for-granted schemas of action that they have developed through past interactions. Schemas are corporeal and affective as well as cognitive patterns; they consist in the interpenetration of mental categories, embodied practices, and social organization (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 975)
The projective element.—The second dimension of agency, the projective element, has been largely neglected in recent sociological theory, al[1]though it does receive attention in the writings of Alfred Schutz and his followers, and, indirectly, of rational choice theorists. Outside of sociology, concern with projectivity can be found in phenomenological and existential philosophy, psychoanalysis, narrative psychology, and dramaturgic anthropology. Projectivity encompasses the imaginative generation by actors of possible future trajectories of action, in which received structures of thought and action may be creatively reconfigured in relation to actors’ hopes, fears, and desires for the future.” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971)
The practical-evaluative element.—Finally, the practical-evaluative element of agency has been left strikingly undertheorized by socio[1]logical thinkers, although intimations of it can be found in a long tradition of moral philosophy extending from Aristotelian ethics to more re[1]cent theories of critical deliberation, as well as certain feminist analyses. It entails the capacity of actors to make practical and normative judgments among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the emerging demands, dilemmas, and ambiguities of presently evolving situations. (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971)
Agency – Other Agencies
Academic Agency – grades, qualifications, status
Matusov, E., von Duyke, K., & Kayumova, S. (2016). Mapping concepts of agency in educational contexts. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50, 420-446.
“Student agency is a cluster of academic mindsets and learning strategies that have been demonstrated to advance learning and achievement. Academic mindsets are more evident in students who feel a sense of belonging in a certain subject, class or school; believe that they have the capacity to learn, and see value in their participation.”Matsov, Duyke & Kayumova, 2016, p. 440)
Winne, P., & Azevedo, R. (2022). Metacognition and self-regulated learning. The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, 3, 93-113.
“Calibration is the match between a learner’s judgment about performance and their actual performance on the task.” Winne & Azevedo, 2022, p, 97)
Agency – Epistemological Agency – learning about learning and belief systems
Olson, D. (2015). A case for epistemic agency. Logos & Episteme, 6(4), 449-474.
“[E]pistemic agency denotes the motivation and ability to refine and alter one’s belief-forming methods and subsequent belief-forming practices – these methods and practices can collectively be understood as a doxastic disposition or belief forming abilities, which can also be characterized as one’s propensity to form true or false or coarse-grained or fine-grained beliefs within different domains.” (Olson, 2015, p. 450)
Agency – Effortful Agency
Matusov, E., von Duyke, K., & Kayumova, S. (2016). Mapping concepts of agency in educational contexts. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50, 420-446.
“We have found three major types of effortful agency in the literature. One form of effortful agency involves the issue of motivation: how to socially generate the desired motivation in the individual. From the work of Freud (1933), Vygotsky (1978), and Deci and his colleagues (e.g., Rigby, Deci, Patrick, and Ryan 1992), there has developed a sophisticated theory of how to achieve the internalization of socially desired motivation by individuals. Deci and his colleague define 4 phases of extrinsic motivation that progressively lead to autonomous self-determination: 1) external regulation by punishments and rewards, 2) introjected regulation by duty and guilt. Progressive education involves utilization of students’ past and present experiences for meaningfully teaching curriculum predefined by the society (Dewey 1956). 428 Integr Psych Behav (2016) 50:420–446 3) identified regulation by personal importance,10 and 4) integrated regulation by a harmonious negotiation between person’s wants and somebody else’s demands.” Matusov, Duyke & Kayumova, 2016, p. 428-429
“The second aspect of effortful agency involves the issue of will when desire/ motivation is already present: how to preserve the individual’s desired action in the face of some internal and external adversaries” Matusov, Duyke & Kayumova, 2016, p. 429)
“The third type of effortful agency is focused on people’s commitment to their action” Matusov, Duyke & Kayumova, 2016, p. 430)
Agency – External and Internal Motivation
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.
“The most basic distinction is between intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome.” (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 55)
Rutenberg, I., Ainscough, L., Colthorpe, K., & Langfield, T. (2022). The anatomy of agency: Improving academic performance in first‐year university students. Anatomical Sciences Education, 15(6), 1018-1031.
“Whereas motivations within the external regulation and introjection domains reflect behaviors that are done to ease a pressure—either external (such as approval seeking) or internal (such a guilt avoidance)—and are therefore clearly extrinsic.
(Rutenberg, Ainscough, Colthorpe & Langfield, 2022, p. 1019)
“Intrinsic, identification, and integration motivations can be characterized as autonomous, meaning that students with these motivations have a sense of freedom or control over their learning (Ryan & Deci, 2000”
(Rutenberg, Ainscough, Colthorpe & Langfield, 2022, p. 1019)
Agency – Intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation
Rutenberg, I., Ainscough, L., Colthorpe, K., & Langfield, T. (2022). The anatomy of agency: Improving academic performance in first‐year university students. Anatomical Sciences Education, 15(6), 1018-1031.
“Intrinsic motivation – Student is motivated to learn for enjoyment
Personal endorsement – Student is motivated to learn for the value they place on the task [product]
Introjection – Student is motivated to learn to satisfy self-esteem or relieve intrinsic pressures such as guilt or pride
External regulation – Student is motivated to learn to satisfy an external demand or to obtain an externally imposed reward or contingency”
(Rutenberg, Ainscough, Colthorpe & Langfield, 2022, p. 1021)
Constructivism – Empowerment
Larochelle, M., Bednarz, N., & Garrison, J. W. (Eds.). (1998). Constructivism and education. Cambridge University Press.
“Accordingly, constructivism may be viewed as a lever of social empowerment which goes beyond the here and now by devoting attention not only to the beliefs and social relationships which often appear “immobilized” (Amerio’s expression), but also to the means precisely by which they may be “mobilized” and, potentially, transformed .. . by acting subjects.” (Larochelle, Bednarz & Garrison, 1998, p. 20)
Metacognition
“Metacognition also can be modeled by forms of thinking. Again, three distinctions can be made:
Metacognitive monitoring is processing information to generate awareness about the match between a particular instance of metacognitive knowledge to standards for that knowledge.
Metacognitive control takes action on results of metacognitive monitoring by generating an intention to direct further cognition or behavior toward a goal.
Self-regulated learning spans multiple instances of metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control to shape and adapt cognition or behavior within a complex task or reaching forward by planning for future tasks.” ( Winne & Azevedo, 2022, p. 95-96)
Fleming, S. M., & Lau, H. C. (2014). How to measure metacognition. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 443.
Metacognition – “The ability to recognize one’s own successful cognitive processing, in e.g., perceptual or memory tasks, is often referred to as metacognition.”
“metacognitive sensitivity (how good one is at distinguishing between one’s own correct and incorrect judgments)”
“metacognitive sensitivity, when one is confident, one is more likely to be correct.”
“the degree of association between accuracy and confidence can be taken as a quantitative measure of metacognition”
“metacognitive bias (a difference in subjective confidence despite basic task performance remaining constant”
“metacognitive efficiency (a subject’s level of metacognitive sensitivity given a certain level of task performance”
Metacognition – Self Regulation
Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 1-26.
“The personal level involves phenomenal consciousness and the purposive use of information and self-regulative means to make desired things happen.” (Bandura, 2001, p. 2-3)
Winne, P., & Azevedo, R. (2022). Metacognition and self-regulated learning. The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, 3, 93-113.
“To engage metacognition productively, learners must realize there are alternative paths forward.
First, they need multiple forms of procedural knowledge, that is, various tactics and strategies for learning.
Second, they need knowledge of which tactics and strategies work under which conditions – conditional knowledge.
Third, they need to know what is the case in a particular task – declarative knowledge of conditions.
But just having such knowledge is not enough. Productive learners engage in self-regulating learning.” (Winne & Azevedo, 2022, p. 96)
Willy, L., & Maarten, V. (2012). Promoting self-regulated learning: A motivational analysis. In Motivation and self-regulated learning (pp. 141-168). Routledge.
“Dewitte and Lens (2000b) tested the hypothesis that a stable low or specific level of action identification promotes self-regulated learning, as manifested, for instance, through continued persistence at the learning activity. Focusing on procedural details should enhance persistence in a difficult learning task. It was found that in comparison with students with an intermediate action identification level, students with a low action identification level were indeed significantly more persistent and scored significantly higher on difficult questions requiring creative thinking.” (Willy & Maarten, 2012, p. 7)
Boekaerts, M., & Corno, L. (2005). Self‐regulation in the classroom: A perspective on assessment and intervention. Applied psychology, 54(2), 199-231.
Theorists in educational psychology have narrowed the scope of students’ capability to self-regulate through a focus on the academic side of education, namely on learning and achievement goals. However, the messy world of classroom learning creates a situation in which different goals compete for students’ attention. Boekaerts’ dual processing self-regulation model describes how learning goals interact with well-being goals. We propose that when students have access to well-refined volitional strategies manifested as good work habits, they are more likely to invest effort in learning and get off the well-being track when a stressor blocks learning. (Boekaerts & Corno, 2005, p. 199)
Piaget’s model of mental development
So, I. (1964). Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning. Journal, of Research in Science Teaching, 2, 176-186.
The first is a sensory-motor, pre-verbal stage, lasting approximately the first 18 months of life. During this stage is developed the practical knowledge which constitutes the substructure of later representational knowledge. An example is the construction of the schema of the permanent object.
In a second stage, we have pre-operational representation – the beginnings of language of the symbolic function, and therefore of thought, or representation … the sensory-motor actions are not immediately translated into operations. In fact during all this second period of pre-operational representations, there are as yet no operations.
In the third stage of the first operations appear, but I call these concrete operations because they operate on objects, and not yet on verbally expressed hypotheses.
Finally, in the fourth stage, these operations are surpassed as the child reaches the level of what I call formal or hypothetic-deductive operations; that is, he can now reason on hypotheses.
(Piaget, 1964, p. 177)
Reflexivity
Larochelle, M., Bednarz, N., & Garrison, J. W. (Eds.). (1998). Constructivism and education. Cambridge University Press.
“Only when knowing subjects become aware of the postulates which underlie their usual ways of knowing, and when they place these postulates at some distance, as it were, and thus problematize their own knowledge will they become able to open themselves to other potentialities. Although this intellectual process of reflexivity is often associated with metacognition, it is distinct from the latter in that it does not involve the intellectual operations or strategies used in developing this or that bit of knowledge. Instead, reflexivity draws attention to “that which goes without saying“ – that is, the unspoken assumptions or the unreflected aspects of thought which lead one to assert that something is obvious. It is this examination of what may be referred to metaphorically as the blind spot of a conceptual structure which is a condition necessary for beginning that process whereby thought is complexified and autonomized (Varela, 1989).” (Larochelle, Bednarz & Garrison, 1998, p. 128)
Scripts
Dillenbourg, P., & Hong, F. (2008). The mechanics of CSCL macro scripts. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3, 5-23.
Micro-scripts are dialogue models, mostly argumentation models, which are embedded in the environment (Approach 1 above) and which students are expected to adopt and progressively internalize. For instance, a micro-script may prompt a student to respond to the argument of a fellow student with a counter-argument (Weinberger et al. 2002).
Macro-scripts are pedagogical models, i.e. they model a sequence of activities (a combination of Approaches 3 and 6 above) to be performed by groups. For instance, argumentation can be triggered by collecting students’ opinions and pairing students with conflicting opinions.
(Dillenbourg & Hong, 2008, p. 7)
Self-efficacy
Bandura, A. (1978). Reflections on self-efficacy. Advances in behaviour research and therapy, 1(4), 237-269.
Self-efficacy theory postulates that different modes of influence alter coping behavior by creating and strengthening expectations of personal efficacy. According to this formulation, perceived efficacy can affect behavior in several ways. It influences choice of activities and environmental settings. Any factor that helps to determine choice behavior can have profound effects on the course of personal development. Individuals who shun enriching activities and environments fail to develop their potentialities and shield their negative self conceptions from corrective change.
(Bandura, 1978, p. 237)
Perceived self-efficacy was understandably neglected because animals are not in the habit of undermining their efforts by self-doubts about whether or not they can execute behavior required to produce valued outcomes. In contrast, humans, who engage in considerable self-reflective thought, boost or undermine their efforts by beliefs about their performance capabilities.
(Bandura, 1978 p. 278)
Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American psychologist, 37(2), 122.
“This article addresses the centrality of the self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. Self-percepts of efficacy influence thought patterns, actions, and emotional arousal. In causal tests the higher the level of induced self-efficacy, the higher the performance accomplishments and the lower the emotional arousal. Different lines of research are reviewed, showing that the self-efficacy mechanism may have wide explanatory power.
Perceived self-efficacy helps to account for such diverse phenomena as changes in coping behavior produced by different modes of influence, level of physiological stress reactions, self-regulation of refractory behavior, resignation and despondency to failure experiences, self-debilitating effects of proxy control and illusory inefficaciousness, achievement strivings, growth of intrinsic interest, and career pursuits. The influential role of perceived collective efficacy in social change is analyzed, as are the social conditions conducive to development of collective inefficacy.”
Abstract Bandura, 1982, p. 122
Self Efficacy – Perceived Control
Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American psychologist, 37(2), 122.
“Perceived Self-Regulatory Efficacy – Exercise of influence over one’s own behavior is not achieved by a feat of willpower. Self-regulatory capabilities require tools of personal agency and the self-assurance to use them effectively (Bandura, in press). People who are skeptical of their ability to exercise adequate control over their actions tend to undermine their efforts in situations that tax capabilities.”
Bandura, 1982, p. 129)
Dewitte, S., & Lens, W. (2000). Exploring volitional problems in academic procrastinators. International Journal of Educational Research, 33(7-8), 733-750.
“The study tested the hypothesis that focusing on details of studying (i.e., a low-action identity) would enhance performance and persistence. The data supported this hypothesis for nonprocrastinators. For academic procrastinators, a low identity was found to enhance only task persistence and performance on a creative-response indicator, but to decrease performance on recall questions. Academic procrastinators seem to have diculty maintaining a volitional mind-set. To maintain their study behavior, they have to rely on the self-control strategy of focusing on higher action identities. Further, we tested the extent to which academic procrastinators lack high-action identities when they are not studying. This hypothesis was supported for pessimistic procrastinators only.” (Dewitte & Lens, 2000, Abstract)