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Handbook of Research on Student Engagement pp 95–107Cite as

Agentic Engagement

Abstract

Agentic engagement is one type of engagement, but it may be the most important type for students of the twenty-first century. Agentic engagement is what students say and do to create a more supportive learning environment for themselves (e.g., offer their input, express a preference, find interesting things to do). Through their agency and initiative, students personalize and upgrade the quality of their surrounding learning environment. This upgrade (e.g., teachers become more supportive, activities become more interesting, resources surface) catalyzes students’ motivational satisfactions, positive development, and academic progress. Given these benefits, we consider the possible design and implementation of student-focused agentic engagement interventions. We outline what a possible intervention might look like, and we offer our recommendations for how to design and implement such future intervention work.

Keywords

  • Agency
  • Agentic engagement
  • Autonomy-supportive teaching
  • Intervention

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Johnmarshall Reeve

  2. Department of Education, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea

    Hyungshim Jang

Authors
  1. Johnmarshall Reeve
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  2. Hyungshim Jang
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Correspondence to Johnmarshall Reeve or Hyungshim Jang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Amy L. Reschly

  2. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Sandra L. Christenson

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Reeve, J., Jang, H. (2022). Agentic Engagement. In: Reschly, A.L., Christenson, S.L. (eds) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07853-8_5

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