Reconceptualizing Civic Agency: An Agentic Analysis of Civic Engagement Practices and Concepts in Higher Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: Understanding Civic Agency and Voice of Higher Education Students

Abstract

In an era marked by political polarization and disengagement, it is unsurprising that college students experience a sense of powerlessness and diminished agency. Inspired by Klemenčič’s (2015) conceptualization of student agency, this article analyzes college students’ agency in the form of civic engagement. I argue that 1) existing interventions enhance students’ civic agency, 2) students’ orientations to the contexts of civic action influence their civic agency, and 3) civic agency is shaped by the social structures that we, as educators, have the agency to transform.

Author

• Jeff Ching-Fan Lai, University of Iowa