Agency is inherent in students’ ability to regulate, control, and monitor their own learning. A learners’ effectiveness in regulating their cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes as they interact within the learning environment is critical to their academic success. This article advances a theory of learner agency, or agency for learning (AFL), as an emergent capacity that is intentional, self-generated, and reactive to social factors in the learning context. This article further traces the development of the Agency for Learning Questionnaire (AFLQ) and examines the internal consistency, predictive validity, and psychometric properties covering four dimensions of agentic functioning including intentionality (planfulness, decision competence), forethought (intrinsic and extrinsic motivation), self-regulation, and self-efficacy. Results of this research demonstrate that the AFLQ provides a reliable, valid, multidimensional measure of AFL based on existing theoretical and empirical findings, advancing both theory and practice. Understanding how agency develops and emerges within learning environments is a key factor in identifying why learning occurs enabling educational psychologists to potentially identify, measure, and study agentic processes in the context of learning across a variety of research designs.
Related Projects
ALIVE
Agency in Learning, Immersive & Virtual Environments
The ALIVE project investigates how learners exercise agency in immersive and virtual environments. Grounded in a theoretical framework of learner agency as a capacity shaped by context, the project examines the design conditions — in both digital and physical environments — that enable learners to act with intention, persistence, and critical awareness. The lab brings together graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and community partners at UBC.
NARRATE
Learner Agency Emergence Through Algorithmic Literacy
NARRATE explores the human–algorithm relationship in learning contexts — specifically, how learners develop algorithmic literacy and how that literacy shapes the conditions for agency. As algorithmic systems increasingly govern which content learners see, which assessments they receive, and which paths are recommended, the question of whether and how learners can exercise meaningful agency within these systems becomes urgent.
