Manifestations of Agency Modern learning environments are complex, adaptive systems that respond continuously
to changing contexts (Hase & Kenyon, 2007; Reigeluth, 2012). Students, teachers,
administrators, and staff are actors in these complex, adaptive systems. Agents can act and
through their actions influence outputs of the system. Each type of agent has a set of abilities by
virtue of their role in the system (Reigeluth, 2012). Because all educational systems are part of
larger systems; the ultimate system being the world; as inhabitants of the world, students have
life experiences and future goals. Their life experiences filter how they perceive their exposure to
and participation in a given learning environment. Their conceived future goals manifest
themselves as current motivators and behavior regulators (Bandura, 1989).
During my interviews with participants in this study, I learned of several instances in
which participants practiced agency and self-advocacy as they recounted acts of self-
determination. As part of the data collection and analysis, I looked for instances of agentic
behavior as told by participants and analyzed those accounts using a bifocal view of agency. In
one way, I considered elements of the theory of heutagogy (Hase & Kenyon, 2007), and
conversely, I considered Bandura’s (2006) concept of agency from a social cognitive theory
perspective. The reason for choosing this bifocal lens is there are components facilitated by the
course design, by choices the instructor makes when building a course, and while delivering the
course. Heutagogy accounts for that aspect of agency as it pertains to this study. Another aspect
of agency, as it pertains to this research, is what the students do in HyFlex, both as a result of
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being in a HyFlex course and as a product of their lived experiences in the world. Social
cognitive theory accounts for this latter aspect of agency. This bifocal lens, as I imagine it, takes
inputs from heutagogy and social cognitive theory to shape the notion of agency in this study as
demonstrated in Figure 4.
