Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency

Hitlin, Steven; Elder, Glen H.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2007.00303.x

Cited by 421 publications

(388 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Consistent with empirical research and theory on personal agency in the life course (Elder & Shanahan, 2006;Hitlin & Elder, 2007;Shanahan, 2000), C's influence on health is likely contingent on timing and the individual's social context and other attributes of personality. The LCP Model suggests research that contrasts notably with much extant work, which focuses on C and health processes with little or no reference to timing and context.…”

Section: Process Type Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 72%

Conscientiousness, health, and aging: The Life Course of Personality Model.

Shanahan¹,

Hill²,

Roberts³

et al. 2014

Developmental Psychology

188

171

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The Conscientiousness (C) of the self and significant others influences health by way of mediational chains involving socioeconomic attainment, the avoidance and neutralization of stressors, the promotion of health behaviors and the minimization of risk behaviors, and the management of symptoms and diseases. Yet, meta-analyses reveal that these associations are moderated by factors that are not well understood. We propose the Life Course of Personality Model (LCP Model), which comprises a series of hypotheses that suggest how such mediational chains are subject to 2 sources of contingency. First, the mechanisms by which C translates into health and the avoidance of risk change from early childhood to late adulthood, involving processes that are specific to phases of the life course; also, however, C influences health by way of continuous processes extending over many decades of life. Second, C may be more consequential in some social contexts than in others, and when accompanied by some constellations of personality characteristics than by others. That is, the mediational processes by which C translates into health and the avoidance of disease are likely moderated by timing, social context (including the C of others), and other aspects of the individual's personality. We consider methodological implications of the LCP Model.

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Section: Process Type Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 72%

Conscientiousness, health, and aging: The Life Course of Personality Model.

Shanahan¹,

Hill²,

Roberts³

et al. 2014

Developmental Psychology

188

171

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Established role-based routines free up cognitive space and agents' attentional focus can then be on interactional goals that are more about achieving desired social and substantive ends, rather than about re-establishing sustainable interactions. The focus becomes concerned with goal attainment in the future (Hitlin & Elder, 2007). However, the intentional future orientation is deeply grounded by the habitual, unreflected and mostly unproblematic patterns of actions learned in the past (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998), which explains why agentic actions in many cases do reproduce social order and social structures.…”

Section: Agency In Role Enactmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The orientation to the present moment entails the capacity to make practical and normative judgements among alternative possible trajectories of action, in response to the situations at hand. Hitlin & Elder (2007) have also stated that agentic actions involve differential temporal orientations. However, they concentrate only on the present and the future orientations and take the past for granted as a dimension of agency.…”

Section: Agency In Role Enactmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such orientation provides stability and order to social environments and helps to sustain identities, interactions and institutions over time (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). Moreover, Hitlin & Elder (2007) argue that role-related agency (or what they call 'identity agency') is not mainly oriented to the past, but to the anticipated future. Established role-based routines free up cognitive space and agents' attentional focus can then be on interactional goals that are more about achieving desired social and substantive ends, rather than about re-establishing sustainable interactions.…”

Section: Agency In Role Enactmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hitlin & Elder (2007) admit that playing, for example, a teacher's role involves a great deal of the 'taken-forgranted'. Past behaviour and experience guide current role-based behaviour.…”

Section: Agency In Role Enactmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Vocational Teachers between Educational Institutions and Workplaces

Isopahkala-Bouret

2010

European Educational Research Journal

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The aim of this study is to analyze discursively how the relationship between educational institutions and workplaces materializes in the position of a vocational teacher. Several studies have pointed out that the role of vocational teachers is changing as a result of current educational reforms, which can be understood in terms of bringing education and work closer together. Along these lines, the author focuses particularly on the requirement of vocational teachers to work in close collaboration with industry and workplaces, and to serve economic interests. Vocational teachers are asked, for instance, to be networkers outside of educational institutions and to coach students who enter work life in order to enable favourable 'learning at work' experiences. Students' on-the-job learning is a normatively regulated, goal-oriented, guided, and evaluated study practice. The pedagogical responsibility for what happens to students at work remains with vocational teachers; however, the success of educational programmes depends on the willingness of employees to offer learning opportunities to students, and to guide and evaluate student learning according to the rules set by the educational curricula. How do these new practices challenge the traditional position of vocational teachers? How do vocational teachers negotiate and enact their agency in these circumstances?

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Agency as an Explanatory Key: Theoretical Issues

Biernacki

Skotnicki

2015

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

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In philosophy agency designates the inalienable ability of individuals to make choices about their conduct that are not determined by the environment. In empirical social science, however, agency designates not autonomous free will but the launching of patterned action that surpasses constraints in the setting and that directs the course of institutional change. Many social scientists have limited the explanatory task they take on to show that agency is an indispensable part of ongoing social life. They have also reasoned that portrayals of institutional structures alone or even of the cultural resources that accompany them, such as shared scripts for social interaction, are inadequate for explaining important changes. It is typical therefore to feature agency as a logically necessary contributor. Study of agency can be improved by specifying affirmatively when and how action is in decisive ways organized independently of the constraints in the setting and this sense transcends them. This sharper requirement for positive demonstration of how agency brought about change is satisfied by reconstructing the actors' independent invention of a new master problem that guides their conduct. This promising approach to explaining transformative action has disseminated from study of artistic and scientific innovation to that of institutional change.

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Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency

Cited by 421 publications

References 91 publications

Conscientiousness, health, and aging: The Life Course of Personality Model.

Conscientiousness, health, and aging: The Life Course of Personality Model.

Vocational Teachers between Educational Institutions and Workplaces

Agency as an Explanatory Key: Theoretical Issues

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