Agentic Engagement: A New, Important, and Progress-Enabling Educational Construct

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Agentic engagement (one type of engagement) is the proactive, purposive, and educationally constructive action students initiate to catalyze their own learning. Using mixed methods (i.e., classroom-based longitudinal studies, laboratory experiments, interventions, qualitative interviews with teachers and students), four papers will introduce agentic engagement as a new, important aspect of engagement and identify its motivational origins and educational benefits. Overall, what these studies collectively show is that when students use their academic motivation (i.e., self-efficacy, autonomy need satisfaction) to communicate their interests, express their preferences, and ask questions to help them learn, they create a fourth engagement-based pathway (beyond behavior, emotion, and cognition) to make significant academic progress, achieve highly (grades), satisfying their motivations, and recruit greater autonomy support.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Motivation in Education

Chair

• Johnmarshall Reeve, Australian Catholic University

Papers

• Agentic Engagement Explains Independent Variance in Students' Achievement and Perceived Autonomy Support - Johnmarshall Reeve, Australian Catholic University; Hyungshim Jang, Hanyang University

• The Benefits of Experimentally Manipulated Student Agentic Engagement - Jiseul Sophia Ahn, Laval University; Hye-Ryen Jang, Australian Catholic University; Stephanie Hyewon Shin, Michigan State University

• Promoting an Agentic Engagement Orientation: Results of an Intervention in Introductory College STEM Courses - Jeanette Zambrano, University of Southern California; Erika Alisha Patall, University of Southern California

• From Research to Schoolwide Intervention: Authentic Voices From the Field of Education - Haya P. Kaplan, Kaye Academic College of Education; Nir Madjar, Bar-Ilan University

Discussant

• Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia, Michigan State University