Steering Your Own Learning Process Through Student Agency

Project Goal

To support lifelong professional development in a constantly evolving work environment, students need to be able to take ownership of and direct their own learning process: student agency. In higher education, it is important that we prepare students for this. One way to do so is by creating learning environments that challenge students to take responsibility for their own learning and actively steer their learning process. Examples include open learning environments in which students collaborate on authentic and ill-structured challenges from professional practice.

Research

The PhD research of Janine Haenen, member of the research group Sustainable Talent Development and PhD candidate at the ICLON Graduate School of Teaching at Leiden University, focuses on how open learning environments motivate and challenge students and which factors stimulate student agency.

Student Agency

Student agency refers to the purposeful and reflective management of one’s own learning and the ability to influence the learning environment in order to achieve personal goals. Important aspects of student agency include learning skills such as planning, monitoring, and reflection.

Learning Environment

In open learning environments, students work on authentic and complex assignments and are given the opportunity to direct their own learning. Such environments require student agency. This research focuses on the resources students can draw upon to support their agentic behaviour in open learning environments.

For this purpose, Janine is developing a questionnaire for both students and teachers in collaboration with Inholland University of Applied Sciences and its research group Student Success. The questionnaire explores several sources of agency, including:

• Personal resources (e.g. sense of competence, motivation, self-confidence, and intentionality); 
• Relational resources (e.g. a safe learning climate and support from teachers); 
• Educational design resources (e.g. opportunities for choice and influence over learning goals, learning activities, learning materials, assessment, and guidance); 
• Experiential resources (e.g. experience with planning, monitoring, and reflection). 

The questionnaire also investigates agentic behaviour, such as self-regulated learning and active participation in education.

In addition, focus groups are used to provide meaning and context to the questionnaire outcomes. In this way, students and teachers work together to explore how education can be designed so that students experience themselves as active agents who are prepared for lifelong learning.

Collaboration Partners

This PhD research is a collaboration between the research group Sustainable Talent Development at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and the ICLON Graduate School of Teaching at Leiden University.

The project collaborates with several degree programmes and research groups, both within The Hague University of Applied Sciences and at other universities of applied sciences.

For the development and evaluation of the Student Agency questionnaire, collaboration takes place with the research group Student Success at Inholland University of Applied Sciences. Multiple programmes are involved in researching and applying the questionnaire, including programmes from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, and HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht.

In collaboration with the research group Learning Technology & Analytics, a Student Agency Dashboard is also being developed. Based on the questionnaire, this dashboard visualises the agency resources students experience within their education.

Funding and Intended Duration of the Project

The PhD research has been funded through the PhD voucher programme of The Hague University of Applied Sciences since 1 January 2022. The project is expected to continue until the end of 2026.

Articles, Tools, and Media

• PhD article: Full article: Challenge and learning in honours education: a quantitative and qualitative study on students’ and teachers’ perceptions
• PhD article:  Motivating students with optimal challenge in an open learning environment - ScienceDirect
• Professional journal article: Open and flexible learning environments: breeding ground or trap? (Dutch) in collaboration with Renée Hendriks from the research group Student Success at Inholland University of Applied Sciences. 
• Professional journal article: The STUURkracht Challenge, including accompanying materials, developed in collaboration with several vocational education institutions and HAN University of Applied Sciences. 
• Student Agency Toolbox, developed in collaboration with Sandra Koens, lecturer in the programme Human and Technology | Movement Technology. 
• Student Agency Podcast, featuring a conversation with Romy Koch from the programme Communication and Multimedia Design about student agency in an inclusive learning environment. 

Contact

Are you interested in the outcomes of this research and/or would your programme like to contribute to the project? Please contact Janine Haenen at [email protected].

Team

• Janine Haenen 
• Ellen Sjoer 
• Wilfried Admiraal (Oslo Metropolitan University) 
• Sylvia Vink (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)