Enactment Of Agency Research Articles

Sources contributing to engineering students' academic well‐being: An exploration using the Q methodology

AbstractBackgroundRecent literature has identified students' academic well‐being as an indicator of their persistence in their current study and competence development. While prior literature has focused on measuring students' academic well‐being from psychological and mental health perspectives, limited studies have explored the ways in which the learning environment provides diverse sources (e.g., supervision and peer support) to support students' academic well‐being.PurposeThis study aims to explore sources that foster students' academic well‐being from the perspective of two different student groups, namely first‐year engineering students and senior engineering students, in a PBL (project‐based learning) environment.MethodThe Q methodology was applied, connecting both qualitative and quantitative research characteristics. Two student groups, including 23 first‐year engineering students and 19 senior engineering students, participated in this study to illustrate various viewpoints of different student groups and offer prospects for analyzing data from a new comparative angle via second‐order factor analysis.ResultsIn the first‐year engineering student group, three viewpoints were identified, namely the emphasis on enjoyment through study–life balance, personal values and aspirations, and academic agency. The senior engineering student group focused on internal sources related to professional development, including two viewpoints pertaining to their goal‐oriented academic development and enactment of agency through self‐management. Practical suggestions are proposed to optimize engineering curriculum design to better support students' academic well‐being.

US black women’s pregnancy communication networks: A qualitative network analysis

The ongoing Black maternal health crisis necessitates a closer examination of how Black women in the United States utilize communication to mitigate the dangers racism poses for pregnancy, delivery and the postpartum period. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of supportive networks to Black women's wellbeing during pregnancy. However, few studies utilize a qualitative network approach to explore communication about pregnancy and related risks within a social network. Twenty-eight Black women from 12 US states who self-identified as previously, currently or recently pregnant, were recruited to participate in this study. Following data collection, participants' networks and related commentary from the interview were qualitatively analyzed for composition and context of networks (who is in the network and why?) and the content of communication (what is discussed and how?). This study found that Black women's perceptions of pregnancy risk and enactment of agency in response to risk was influenced by communication with individuals within their communication networks. The findings of this study also demonstrate that emotional support and guidance for navigating the dangers of the healthcare system constituted an important component of communication with strong ties, including partners, family members and close friends. Additionally, Black women enacted agency in response to pregnancy risk by leaning on trusted experts (healthcare providers) within their networks. However, this study also found limitations to the role of pregnancy communication networks. First, negative ties (relations) with alters (individuals with whom Black women have communication ties) and unwanted advice or guidance was found to be a source of stress. Furthermore, although mothers were an essential source of support for many women, differences related to generation, culture and the circumstances of pregnancy limited the relevance of the advice Black women receive from their mothers. Finally, immigrant women faced an additional challenge, as their support networks were sometimes geographically distant from them.

Power relations within division of labor – the key to empowering learners from marginalized backgrounds in mathematics classrooms

ABSTRACTBringing Bourdieu and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) together, I present, here, a methodology for pedagogic interventions that are developmental for non-dominant learners. Drawing on a Year 8 mathematics classroom (UK), I demonstrate how learners’ positioning, and position-takings in the division of labor of a teaching-learning activity (following CHAT) are mediated by objective power relations that perpetuate an inequitable educational system (following Bourdieu). Here, teachers recognizing and valuing learners’ non-dominant forms of capital, and peer relations is key to non-dominant learners’ enactment of agency and empowerment of their voices, and this can create opportunities of resistance, development, and change.

Intertextuality as semiotic mediation for youth’s enactment of agency and identity in everyday digital literacy practices

Intertextuality as semiotic mediation for youth’s enactment of agency and identity in everyday digital literacy practices

Jamming power: Youth agency and community‐driven science in a critical technology learning program

AbstractIn dialogue with science education and learning sciences research, in this article we develop a disciplinary‐specific view on youth and community agency for community‐based technology education. Cultivating agency is a central principle in our design and empirical study of the Young People's Race, Power, and Technology Program (YPRPT), a program designed to engage youth in critical inquiry about the technologies impacting their local communities. In this article, drawing from our multiyear partnership with a community‐based youth organization, we examine how agency was supported and constrained as a function of the practices we engaged in as a research team committed to participatory and justice‐centered education. Our findings illustrate ways that the emergence and enactment of agency, at both individual and community levels, works to interrupt, subvert, and creatively “jam” systems of power. We argue that cultivating agency in community‐driven science and technology learning requires an honest reckoning with the deeply entrenched racial and economic oppression in the United States. We contend that it is equally essential to commit to learning from, co‐designing with, and working in solidarity alongside the youth and communities that are most impacted by technologies that mediate our experiences—toward unveiling, resisting, and reimagining their powerful roles in our collective lives.

Micro Language Planning for Sustainable Early English Language Education: A Case Study on Chinese Educators’ Agency

In language education research, micro-level language policy and planning (LPP) primarily concerns local actors’ decision making on matters in relation to language(s) and its users. Despite a growing body of literature focusing on micro-level language planning in educational settings, there is a scarcity of research examining early childhood education settings as the micro-level LPP context for young English language learners. By adopting a qualitative case study approach and drawing on an ecological approach to LPP, the present study examined the educators’ enactment of agency in micro-planning the English language education policy (LEP) in one Chinese kindergarten and the associated factors shaping their agency. Deploying a grounded theory analytical method, this study revealed that the sustainable implementation of the kindergarten English LEP depended on the principal, native English-speaking teachers, and the Chinese assistant teachers’ different degrees of agency. Additionally, the research findings indicated an array of contextual and individual factors nested in a hierarchical structure that facilitated, guided, and constrained the educators’ agency in a role-and circumstance-dependent manner. This study contributes to the pertinent literature by casting nuanced light on the different educators’ contributions to the micro-level LPP against a national policy that does not endorse early-year English language education.

Resistance and agency in second language academic discourse socialisation: Undergraduate students’ experiences of an EAP course

Resistance is a common issue in academic discourse socialisation (ADS), especially for learners who study in their second language. How learners enact agency to negotiate their resistance can largely determine the outcomes of their ADS. In this article, we report the findings of a case study on four Chinese undergraduate students' experiences of an English-for-Academic-Purposes course in an EFL setting. Data sources of the study consist of individual and group interviews with students, observation notes of students' learning processes, students' written reflections, and instructors’ teaching journals. By comparing the four individual cases, we analyse the processes and conceptual basis for learners to enact their agency in ADS, underlying their resistance and negotiation of resistance. Specifically, we unravel how their existing conceptions of learning objectives and of learning processes frame their enactment of agency, including their identification of affordances and resources, their formation and development of present-directed intentions, and possibilities for them to construct new future-directed intentions.

Conceptualising manifestations and shapers of doctoral student agency: A subject-centered approach

ABSTRACT The growing complexity of doing a PhD necessarily demands candidates to robustly exercise their agency in navigating the doctoral journey. However, the conceptualisation of how students use their agency across multiple facets of their studies has yet to receive due scholarly attention. Drawing on the subject-centred sociocultural view on agency, this study analysed life story interviews conducted with 16 doctoral students in Hong Kong. Findings show that participants’ agency was manifested both in socially and collectively organised enterprises (proactive engagement in a wide array of developmental opportunities, responsiveness to situational research problems, contestation against unsupportive institutional cultures) and as individual-level strategic perspectives and actions (self-management of everyday emotions, imaginative construction of post-graduation prospects). Concurrently, the results shed light on the inextricable and complex linkages between the enactment of agency and the personal, relational, institutional, and broader higher education conditions delimiting students’ lived experiences of candidature. Implications for educational practices and future research beneficial to develop doctoral agency are discussed.

Language teacher agency in emergency online teaching

This article examines the agency of four language teachers, and the affordances and constraints in their achievement of agency, as their routines were disrupted by the sudden shift to emergency online teaching due to the global pandemic, COVID-19. Within this larger shared critical incident, this article discusses the unique critical incidents that prompted each teacher to reflect on their practice, the agency they enacted and factors influencing the actions taken. This study provides further evidence that teachers exercise their agency in line with their professional identities, and illustrates that social structural factors feature prominently in teachers' identities and enactment of agency. The practical-evaluative dimension of agency is also further elucidated with evidence that teachers use their agency to maximise the benefits, evaluating the ‘solution’ adopted as an appropriate response to multiple concerns and goals. This study has important implications for teacher development highlighting the need for professional development programmes to better prepare teachers for the diversity of teaching situations which they may encounter, particularly in relation to differences in the role of the teacher, and the power dynamics and relationships between teacher, learner(s), and parents in different teaching modes.

Malaysian English Language Teachers’ Agency in Using Digital Technologies During the Pandemic: A Narrative Inquiry

With the closure of schools due to imposed lockdowns in many parts of the world, teachers had to make a rapid transition from teaching in physical classrooms to online teaching, even though they had little to no experience teaching online prior to the pandemic. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this study aimsto explore the factors that influence Malaysian English language teachers’ professional agency in adapting to online teaching. Data were collected via interviews with ten secondary school teachers from rural and urban schools. The findings show how factors such as teachers’ perceptions of the affordances of digital tools and existing support structures influence teachers’ enactment of agency in online teaching and learning. They also demonstrate teachers' agentic potential to adapt their lessons to suit their learners’ needs. These findings suggest the need for teacher professional development programs to recognize teacher agency in the design of future training modules. This involves providing a differentiated training curriculum that can support and sustain language teachers’ development organically by taking into consideration their existing technology skills, teaching experiences and work contexts.

Изменяя мир для детей с нарушениями приема пищи: культурно-исторический анализ трансформирующей субъектности

How to bring about positive change is a key concern in cultural-historical theory. There is an urgent imperative to address questions of transformation at the nexus of the individual and the social. One way to approach this is through the concept of agency, the means through which people go beyond coping with problems or adapting to the status quo, instead striving to make the future that ought to be a reality. This paper takes up ideas from Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance (TAS), Sannino’s transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), and Edwards’ relational agency, tracing the emergence and enactment of agency among parents of children with complex feeding difficulties. These children were unable to eat orally, instead using a tube to feed. Each family strived towards, and realised, futures where their child was able to feed orally, without a tube. Parents acted agentically in ways that were contingent upon relevant cultural tools. Such tools are key to futures that are more inclusive, equitable and nurturing for all children and their families. The paper highlights the value of contemporary cultural-historical approaches to agency in understanding and provoking transformation at the nexus of the individual and social.

Sociocultural affordances and enactment of agency: A transactional view

This article argues that when attempting to extend the concept of affordances to encompass action possibilities characteristic of our sociocultural environments, a transactionally informed relational perspective—along the lines formulated by classical pragmatist thinkers (especially Dewey and Bentley but also Peirce and Mead)—proves useful. A transactional perspective helps to reveal the intimate conceptual connections between sociocultural affordances (SCAs) and agency: both are crucially about contextually defined goal-directed doings, and about learning to fluently master particular patterns of habits, skills, and sociocultural practices in culturally appropriate and socially feasible ways. The paper outlines first, critical issues in the conceptualization of SCAs; second, how the concept of SCAs also points towards a transactional conception of agency enactment; and third, how a transactional view helps to make sense of some of the apparently puzzling tensions and fringe areas between various conceptualizations of (sociocultural) affordances and agency.

The enactment of agency in international academic mobility: a case of Chinese female PhD students in Australia

Despite widespread discourse subordinating the female PhD as a third gender in the Chinese media, little is known about how this cohort conceptualises themselves, especially in an international context. Based on a qualitative investigation into 10 Chinese female doctoral students in Australia, this study examines their enactment of agency in international academic mobility. Drawing on the notions of “agency in mobility” and in-betweenness, this article shows that Chinese female PhD students demonstrate three forms of agency. Their agency influences how they judge, utilise, produce and imagine relations, symbols and activities in the in-between space, which in turn gives shape to their enactment of agency. This study challenges the validity of the idea that the Chinese female PhD is a sexless third gender and illuminates the dynamic reciprocity between agency and the in-betweenness in shaping their transformative doctoral student identity.

Language, Emotion, and the Politics of Vulnerability

Previous research on language and emotion in anthropology has demonstrated that rather than being a private, subjective, and prediscursive experience belonging to individuals, emotion is an intersubjective, emergent process that is not only everywhere in language but also everywhere language is. In this review, I discuss how recent research in linguistic anthropology and related fields has continued to build on such insights in investigations of the flow of affect across bodies, the ways in which politically situated ideologies of language and emotion function at various institutional scales, and the role of language and emotion in the enactment of agency. Overall, my discussion is framed in a consideration of how this body of work contributes both theoretically and methodologically to understanding the role that language and emotion play in mediating the dynamic relationship between vulnerability and political agency.

‘Women are tired and men are in pain’: gendered habitus and mental healthcare utilization in Spain

ABSTRACT Beyond differences in need, the gender gap in mental health might also be attributed to differential help-seeking practices between women and men. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, the aim of this article is to interpret how gender influences healthcare seeking and utilization in common mental disorders such as depression or anxiety in Spain. Through thematic analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with healthcare providers and users of services, I reveal how the male/female oppositions in social and mental structures might result in gendered mental healthcare-seeking practices and differential enactment of agency that reproduce power relations between men and women. While men are less willing to seek healthcare, which is shaped by masculinity ideals, women appear to be dominated in the field which is likely to lead to their higher medicalization and, consequently, chronification. The article contributes to the literature analysing gender as a relational phenomenon and the social construction of gendered behaviours in light of Bourdieu’s sociology.

The role of agency in the development of a teacher leadership stance among student teachers during the practicum experience

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the way student teachers enacted agency to facilitate the development of a teacher leadership stance during a 12-week practicum experience. Data collection included pre-and post-interviews, weekly journals, mid- and post-reflective essays, classroom observations, and multiple assignments from seven student teachers completing their final semester at the national university in Qatar. Findings revealed three patterns in student teachers’ enactment of agency during the process of developing a teacher leadership stance. By making choices and taking actions, student teachers supported their personal learning, their growth as a teacher, and their commitment to the teaching community. Accordingly, student teachers revealed three manifestations of a teacher leadership stance, namely a clear leadership stance, a developing leadership stance, and no leadership stance. Exploring the potential of a practicum experience with a focus on teacher leadership provided a nuanced understanding of possibilities and limitations, both personal and contextual. Implications for teacher education are further discussed.

Emotions in leaders’ enactment of professional agency

PurposeAlthough there has been an increase in workplace studies on professional agency, few of these have examined the role of emotions in the enactment of agency at work. To date, professional agency has been mainly conceptualised as a goal-oriented, rational activity aimed at influencing a current state of affairs. Challenged by this, this study aims to elaborate the nature and quality of emotions and how they might be connected to the enactment of professional agency.Design/methodology/approachData are collected in the context of a leadership coaching programme that aimed to promote the leaders’ professional agency over the course of a year. The participants (11 middle-management leaders working in university and hospital contexts) were interviewed before and after the programme, and the data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.FindingsFindings showed that emotions played an important role in the leaders’ enactment of professional agency, as it pertained to their work and to their professional identity. The study suggests that enacting professional agency is by no means a matter of purely rational actions.Practical implicationsThe study suggests that emotional agency can be learned and enhanced through group-based interventions reflecting on and processing one’s own professional roles and work.Originality/valueAs a theoretical conclusion, the study argues that professional agency should be reconceptualised in such a way as to acknowledge the importance of emotions (one’s own and those of one’s fellow workers) in practising agency within organisational contexts.

Enabling agency through participatory action research in an honours-level postgraduate class in a school of education

This article argues that it is feasible to use participatory action research to enable agency in a university lecture room. Underpinned by critical pedagogy, this qualitative study, shaped by a critical paradigm, used three cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting with 14 honours-level postgraduate students. After each cycle, data generating methods, including written opinion pieces, open-ended questionnaires, and short written tasks, were used to ascertain the effectiveness of various interventions in facilitating the teachers’ understanding and/or enactment of agency. Findings included, firstly, that explicit teaching about the concept 'agency' is required for full understanding of the concept. Secondly, while participants engaged with the complexities of agency, they displayed increasing independence of thought and confidence in written and oral work. Finally, they understood the need for life-long learning and regular reflection on their professional identities.

Language and learning advisors as a valuable but under-recognised workforce in higher education: a Bourdieuian analysis of their professional development in international education

ABSTRACTLanguage and learning advisors (LLAs) play a vital role in supporting the academic development of a fast-growing population of international students. This paper tackles the professional development practices for LLAs and barriers to their professional development. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, the paper addresses the mutual interactions between the work environment and LLAs’ thinking and actions regarding providing language and learning advice to international students. The analysis of 44 semi-structured interviews with LLAs from 18 institutions shows that there was a scarcity of targeted professional development opportunities for LLAs to improve their expertise directly related to international students and internationalisation of education. Financial shortage, time constraints, casualisation conditions, managerial issues, academic to professional employment re-classification for LLAs and the ongoing marginalisation of LLAs have created unfavourable contexts for LLAs’ professional development. The paper points out the critical need to create better work conditions for LLAs, to ensure more investment in creating targeted opportunities for LLAs’ professional development and to provide more resources and attention to support their enactment of agency and development of professional capacities.

Negotiations of cultural identities by Indian women engineering students in US engineering programmes

The paper analyses the identities of Indian women engineers in the gendered organizational context of US engineering programmes. Participant narratives discuss the ways in which women are subjected to identity struggles in India due to gendered patrifocal norms that impose structural, societal, and familial pressures on women. Subsequently, when these women enter US engineering programmes, they encounter a highly masculine organizational and cultural space. Participants discuss identity dislocations, transformations, and assimilation as they seek to meld into the existing structures and find a career trajectory. I draw upon liminality theory to explore the cultural transitions, identity restructuring, and negotiations of Indian women engineers, navigating the intersections of competing and intersecting cultural norms of gender and engineering in India and the US, work, and family. The findings indicate the layers of gendered ideology that constitute engineering education in India and the US, the societal pressures of marriage and family rooted in patrifocal Indian norms, the barriers to finding an engineering job, the resources within the structures that support women, and the identification of patriarchy as the enactment of agency and as a site for change.