Agency in Development through Mobile-Technology-Assisted Interaction: Agentic Learning Behaviours and Emerging Dimensions

Abstract

Discussion on agency has been well documented in language research and recently gaining more ground in the ever-changing learning environment supported by mobile technologies. In such ubiquitous settings, online interaction, as a key catalyst to promote agency, has attracted an increasing attention of researchers and educators. However, a paucity of research has been focused on investigating the way learners exercise their agency in mobile-technology-assisted online interaction and factors that may affect their practice of agency. This research employs a case-study approach to examining how interaction helps enable learners’ development of agency in a mobile social network application (WeChat) assisted informal learning environment. Data were collected through a questionnaire and recorded interaction via discussion activities on WeChat. The questionnaire data indicated that participants had overall positive attitudes towards WeChat-assisted learning and helped gauge the feasibility of implementing subsequent WeChat-assisted discussion activities in this study. Suárez et al.’s (2018) six dimensions of learner agency (goals; content; actions; strategies; reflection; monitoring) were adopted as an analytical framework to guide data analysis and discussion. It was found that towards the completion of discussion sessions on WeChat, except agency in ‘monitoring’ discussion progress, all the other five dimensions were observed and strengthened in terms of initiating discussion ‘goals’, leveraging ‘content’, implementing ‘actions’, employing discussion ‘strategies’, and ‘reflecting’ on the content and interaction. It is argued that even with practice effect, teacher intervention still seemed to be indispensable to help ‘monitor’ the discussion progress in a mobile-technology-assisted autonomous learning environment. Keywords: Learner agency, Learner interaction, Mobile-technology-assisted learning, WeChat DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-5-06 Publication date: February 28 th 2023