The development of agency in first generation learners in higher education: a social realist analysis

Luckett, Kathy; Luckett, Thembi

doi:10.1080/13562510903186618

Cited by 44 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Student agency cannot and should not be ignored in the teaching and learning process. [16] Students' power (their agency) cannot be ignored as they negotiate their needs, which can be overdetermined by their social background, available resources, campus organisations and external pressures. Agency is seen as an important empowering and disempowering factor, as it enables and constrains the interpretation of actions, society and social interactions with people.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency: Perspectives from a South African university

Roman

Titus

Dison

2016

AJHPE

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Background. One of the more discernible needs that challenges universities is addressing the level of preparedness of students entering the higher education environment. Students expect to participate in active learning, while at the same time adopting a certain level of agency to successfully pass through higher education. Objective. To determine the relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency of students in the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences (FCHS), University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town, South Africa. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 266 (N=578) conve nience sampled 3rd-year students in the FCHS. Data were collected with an instrument constructed from items of evaluation from the departments in the FCHS and other validated instruments. Results. Findings suggest that 3rd-year students perceive themselves as moderately prepared on enrolling at UWC (mean (SD) 13.74 (1.86)); current learning experiences are favourably indicated (94.04 (15.32)). On average, students perceive themselves to be agents of their own learning (51.56 (8.79)). Furthermore, a significantly positive relationship was found between learning experiences and agency. Conclusion. This study broadens our understanding of the Vygotskian perspective of the zone of proximal development, where students bring their own knowledge, interact with lecturers who scaffold their learning, and then become agents in their own learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency: Perspectives from a South African university

Roman

Titus

Dison

2016

AJHPE

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“…Archer herself uses the notion of corporate agency (2003, p. 133) to refer to the way that a group of individuals articulate their aims and develop organisation to realise these aims. In our setting, corporate agency can be said to involve the pursuit of learning communal projects, as Luckett and Luckett () saw in relation to first generation learners in higher education. Dialogue within the group is required in order to articulate, prioritise and act upon shared concerns.…”

Section: Charting a Course Through The Unknownmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorising student engagement in higher education

Kahn

2013

British Educational Res J

146

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Student engagement has become problematic following the rise of mass and universal forms of higher education. Significant attention has been devoted to identifying factors that are associated with higher levels of engagement, but it remains the case that the underlying reasons for student engagement and, indeed, the notion itself of 'student engagement' remain weakly theorised. In this article, we seek to develop the theoretical basis for student engagement in a way that highlights the student's own contribution. We explore how learning involves students taking responsibility for action in the face of uncertainty, whether in pursuit of personal or communal concerns. Drawing on perspectives primarily from realist social theory, we suggest that student engagement may be shaped by extended, restricted and fractured modes of reflexivity and co-reflexivity. In this way student engagement in higher education is theorised as a form of distributed agency, with the impact of a learning environment on this agency mediated by reflexivity. Reflexivity itself is further influenced by the tasks and social relations encountered by students in a given learning environment. The role that social relations play in students' responses to learning specifically offers a means to strengthen the moral basis for education. Our account provides an explanation as to why specific educational practices, such as those termed 'high impact', might lead to higher levels of student engagement within the wider context of a knowledge society. We thus offer insights towards new forms of educational practice and relations that have the potential to engage students more fully. education institutions evidently stand to gain a good deal from any capacity to foster an engaged student body.Research has also begun to identify specific educational practices that are particularly effective in engaging students. Studies using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the US, for instance, have been able to establish a set of practices that have a high impact on student engagement (Kuh & Schneider, 2008). While such an approach may assist in selecting educational practices, though, it leaves the underlying concept 'student engagement' relatively weakly theorised. Kuh and Schneider (2008), for instance, identified ways in which the level of academic challenge, the presence of active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction and a supportive campus environment contribute to student engagement, but without seeking to theorise how these elements work together to effect gains of various kinds. Such studies tend to emphasise the way in which student engagement is linked to given institutional or student characteristics, but Carini et al. (2006, p. 23) emphasises that only a relatively modest proportion of the variation in learning outcomes can be accounted for through measures of student engagement based on survey instruments. Coates (2006, p. 57) has argued that this framework from Kuh and Schneider (2008) is the most advanced exi...

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“…Here, agency is understood as an individual's capacity to act purposively to make choices about how they wish to live and to act upon those choices (Walker 2006). In this reasoning, educational success and failure are influenced by "structures of opportunity" as well as individual motivation, effort and ability to reflect at a meta-level (Christie 2008: 8; see also Luckett and Luckett 2009).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

Pym

Kapp

2013

Studies in Higher Education

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This article describes a successful academic development programme in a Commerce faculty at a relatively elite, historically white university in South Africa. The writers argue that the programme has managed to achieve good results in recent years by moving away from deficit models of academic development for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The article draws on five years of data to illustrate how students' home discourses have influenced their negotiations of institutional discourses. It is argued that many of the students have shown considerable agency in gaining admission to university despite their social backgrounds, but experience a crisis of confidence and self-esteem in the new environment. The article describes how the new model of academic development has responded to this context by providing a more flexible approach to the curriculum, which attempts to harness students' agency as well as foster a sense of belonging to a learning community. Also described are the range of interventions that have been put in place specifically to develop a culture of learning and to promote social connectedness, identity and agency.

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The development of agency in first generation learners in higher education: a social realist analysis

Cited by 44 publications

References 9 publications

Relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency: Perspectives from a South African university

Relationship between student preparedness, learning experiences and agency: Perspectives from a South African university

Theorising student engagement in higher education

Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students

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