Agentic Engagement 1

Running head: AGENTIC ENGAGEMENT

What It Means to ‘Take Charge of One’s Own Learning’

in a Self-Determination Theory Analysis

Johnmarshall Reeve

Australian Catholic University

Author notes. Correspondence may be addressed to Johnmarshall Reeve, Institute of

Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, North Sydney Campus,

33 Berry Street, 9th floor, Sydney, Australia 2060. Email: johnmarshall.reeve@acu.edu.au.

 Agentic Engagement 2

Abstract

In a self-determination theory analysis, what it means to take charge of one’s own learning is

to be agentically engaged with one’s surrounding environment to render it more

motivationally supportive. Agentic engagement is the learner’s personal initiative to change

his or her circumstances for the better. Recognizing the potential importance of this

explanatory concept for learning outside of the classroom, the chapter explains how the

following three concepts interrelate—learner autonomy, environmental autonomy support,

and agentic engagement. When these three elements support each other, learner autonomy

fuels agentic engagement, agentic engagement fuels environmental autonomy support, and

autonomy support satisfies and further fuels learner autonomy. The result is a learner-

environment synchrony that enables a productive learning trajectory.

Keywords: agency; agentic engagement; autonomy; autonomy support; learning environment;

self-determination theory.
 Agentic Engagement 3

What It Means to ‘Take Charge of One’s Own Learning’

in a Self-Determination Theory Analysis

“Individual development for students cannot be administered by a teacher—it

has to be based in the students’ own awareness of what they want to learn and

how they can go about it” (Eriksson, 1990, pp. 22-23).

To bear fruit, language learning depends on two favorable conditions: (1) the learner’s

willingness to take charge of his or her own learning and (2) access to learning environments

that support and are responsive to the learner’s inputs and initiatives. The first condition

emanates out of the learner’s autonomous motivation and depends on qualities of the learner,

while the second emanates out of the environment’s capacity to meet the learner’s needs and

depends on the qualities of the surrounding environment. But like two ships that pass

unaware in the night, these two conditions often miss each other. Many autonomous language

learners fail to find or create richly supportive environmental surroundings for themselves,

just as many supportive learning environments open their doors each day hoping to host

absent autonomously-motivated language learners. Recognizing this, the purpose of the

present chapter is to identify the bridge that connects autonomous learners with their sought-

after supportive surroundings. That bridge is the learner’s agency, or agentic engagement.

Autonomy

In self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), autonomy is not a way of

behaving or a way of managing one’s environment (e.g., making a plan, observing an expert

role model, conversing with a partner, keeping a diary). Instead, autonomy is a motivational

state that energizes and directs such ways of behaving and managing the environment. It is an

inherent, ever-ready source of motivation that, when supported by environmental conditions,

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is fully capable of invigorating learners’ interest-taking, challenge-seeking, information

assimilation (learning), volitional internalizations, and proactive engagement with potential

learning opportunities. Specifically, in SDT, autonomy is a psychological need. With a

psychological need, what the person needs is a particular psychological experience—an

experience that yields need satisfaction and, in doing so, fuels initiative, personal growth,

healthy development, and well-being (i.e., what the person needs to be well and thrive; Ryan

& Deci, 2017, Vansteenkiste, Ryan, & Soenens, 2020).

Autonomy is the need for personal ownership during one’s behavior. It is the

psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation

and regulation of one’s behavior. When deciding what to do, the learner wants the idea for

the behavior to originate from within him or her and to express his or her personal interests

and preferences. The learner wants to be the one who determines his or her actions and

circumstances, rather than have someone force or make the learner do something. The learner

wants to be the one who decides what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to stop doing

it, and when and whether to do something else. The learner wants the choice to put himself or

herself in one situation rather than in another.

The tell-tale signs that one is experiencing autonomy satisfaction are the emergent

feelings of volition and self-endorsement. Volition is an unpressured willingness to engage in

an activity, one that centers on how free (vs. coerced) the learner feels while acting (e.g.,

playing, studying, attending school) and while putting oneself in one situation rather than in

another (e.g., “I want to do x but not y”). Personal endorsement is a heartfelt sense of

ownership over the action. It is an affirmative answer to questions such as, Is this my choice?

Is this want I want to do?

For decades, language learning educators have recognized that autonomy does not

equate to independent or individualistic learning (Benson, 2011). Autonomy requires a great

 Agentic Engagement 5

deal of environmental support; it is an environmentally dependent source of motivation.

Autonomy exists as a latent potential that energizes and directs volitional action only when it

is environmentally supported (Bartholomew, Ntoumanis, Ryan, Bosch, & Thøgersen-

Ntoumani, 2011). Thus, any analysis of the psychological need for autonomy necessarily

includes a parallel analysis of the environmental conditions that support vs. hinder,

undermine, or thwart it (discussed in the next section). When autonomy is supported, it

vitalizes the learners’ energy and direction, and that energy manifests itself as intrinsic

motivation, intrinsic goals, self-endorsed values, and autonomously motivated types of

extrinsic motivation (e.g., internalization, identified regulation).

Briefly, intrinsic motivation is the inherent desire to seek out novelty and challenges,

to explore new environments, to take interest in activities and new adventures, and to stretch

and extend one’s abilities (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Any goal is a forward-looking desired end-

state, but a goal that affords the goal-striver with frequent and recurring opportunities to

experience need satisfaction is an intrinsic goal (e.g., “This goal pursuit allows me to feel

free to do what I want to do, and to become the person I want to become”) (Kasser & Ryan,

1993, 1996). A self-endorsed value is an internalized and personally-accepted belief as to

what is desirable and attractive (“For me, learning how to speak Korean is a desirable,

attractive, and worthwhile thing to do”). Once integrated into the self-system, internalized

beliefs serve as motivations to guide and inform the learner’s choices, goals, attitudes,

lifestyle, identity, and sense of self (Ahn & Reeve, 2020).

Autonomy is an important motivational state because it predicts positive educational

outcomes, such as learning, development, achievement, and well-being. Experimentally-

based research studies show that increased autonomy satisfaction produces gains in each of

the following indices of adaptive functioning—engagement, agency, learning, skill

development, positive self-concept, achievement, prosocial behavior, and well-being, as well

as declines in each of the following indices of maladaptive functioning—disengagement,

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amotivation, passivity, negative feelings, cheating, problematic relationships, antisocial

behavior, and bullying (for a review, see Reeve & Cheon, 2021).

Somewhat in contrast to the SDT definition of autonomy, the classic definition of

autonomy that has driven decades of research and analysis in language learning has been the

following (from Dam et al., 1990, p. 102):

“Learner autonomy is characterized by a readiness to take charge of one’s own

learning in the service of one’s own needs and purposes.

This entails a capacity and willingness to act independently and in cooperation

with others, as a social, responsible person.

An autonomous learner is an active participant in the social process of

classroom learning, but also an active interpreter of new information in terms of what

she/he already and uniquely knows. Accordingly, it is essential that an autonomous

learner evolves an awareness of the aims and processes of learning and is capable of

the critical reflection which syllabuses and curricula frequently require but traditional

pedagogical measures rarely achieve. An autonomous learner knows how to learn and

can use this knowledge in any learning situation she/he may encounter at any stage in

her/his life.”

The reason to highlight this classic definition is simply to point out that it is actually a

definition of the autonomous learner in action (i.e., “autonomous learning”; Benson, 2011).

As such, the above definition nicely conceptualizes the essence of what the later part of this

chapter will refer to as “agency” or “agentic engagement” (rather than autonomy per se). This

is an important distinction to make because autonomy is the motivational force that energizes
 Agentic Engagement 7

and directs the sort of “taking charge of” and “actively participating in one’s own learning”

described above.

As recognized by Benson (2011), autonomy cannot be taught, learned, or acquired;

instead, autonomy needs to be appreciated and supported. What this means in terms of both

theory-building and practical application is that the existing understanding of “learner

autonomy” needs to be expanded from one overarching concept to three interrelated but

differentiated concepts—namely, autonomy, environmental autonomy support, and agentic

engagement.

Environmental Autonomy Support

Autonomy support is the adoption of a student focus and an understanding

interpersonal tone that enables the skillful enactment of seven autonomy-satisfying

instructional behaviors that serve two purposes—support intrinsic motivation and support

internalization (Reeve & Cheon, 2021). Those seven autonomy-supportive instructional

behaviors are take the student’s perspective, invite the student to pursue his or her personal

interests, present learning activities in autonomy-satisfying ways, provide explanatory

rationales for requested behaviors, acknowledge and accept negative feelings, rely on

invitational language, and display patience. A student focus means that the environment takes

a real interest in the learner’s ideas, preferences, and goals, and that the environment is

willing to bend its offerings to align with the learner’s preferences. An understanding tone is

an effort to understand what the learner wants, needs, and prefers. It is not giving in to the

learner, and is never a “learner vs. environment” interaction; instead, it is the environment

exercising empathy and care to work with the learner to help him or her successfully

accomplish important tasks. Once an environment adopts a student focused and an

understanding tone, then it becomes willing and able to provide the aforementioned seven

autonomy-supportive instructional behaviors.

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Almost all existing research on autonomy support has focused on the teacher (i.e.,

teacher-provided autonomy support), though this research also includes tutors, mentors,

supervisors, coaches, parents, counselors, etc. In an outside of the classroom learning context,

the role of the teacher is not as central as it is in the in-classroom learning context. But

autonomy support is still a very important construct in the study of out of the classroom

learning, and that is because there exist a multitude of additional opportunities for

environmental autonomy support beyond the classroom teacher, including peers, peer

climates, intrinsic goal pursuits, interesting and personally valued activities, and

environmental resources.

Peer-Provided and Peer Group-Provided Autonomy Support. Just as a teacher

can support a learner’s autonomy, so can a peer. This is especially true in those cases in

which learners interact with peers who have similar interests and goals. Peers can be

controlling and autonomy-thwarting, but peers can also engage in all the relationship-

supportive behaviors that teachers do, including perspective taking, encouraging the learner

to pursue his or her personal interests, acknowledging negative feelings, and so forth. These

dyadic peer interactions sometimes occur within a more general peer-to-peer social climate,

as the language learner can interact with an autonomy supportive peer, an autonomy

supportive peer group, or both. In an autonomy-supportive peer climate, the learner can find

(and be supported by) a group of peers who create norms, expectations, patterns of

communication, and group dynamics that emphasize improvement, interpersonal inclusion,

and working together (Ntoumanis & Vazou, 2005). Autonomy support from a peer climate

produces much the same benefits for the learner as does autonomy support from a teacher

(Joesaar, Hein, & Hagger, 2012).

Intrinsic Goal Pursuit. A goal is a future-focused mental representation of a desired

end state that guides behavior. According to self-determination theory, however, “all goals
 Agentic Engagement 9

are not created equal” (Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, & Deci, 1996, p. 21), as some goals are more

energizing, beneficial, and satisfying (intrinsic goals) than are other goals (extrinsic goals). A

goal is intrinsic if it puts the goal-striver on an inwardly-oriented pathway of activity that

opens up frequent and recuring opportunities to experience need satisfaction, especially

autonomy satisfaction. Many learner goals can do this, but examples of prototypical intrinsic

goals are those for personal growth, close relationships, and helping others (Niemiec, Ryan,

& Deci, 2009). Thus, a goal such as “I want to join a club that allows me to pursue my

interests” puts the goal-striver on an autonomy-satisfying pathway of activity, just as a goal

such as “I am going to learn Spanish to connect more closely with my surrounding

community” puts the goal-striver on an autonomy- (and relatedness-) satisfying pathway of

activity. The reason why intrinsic goal pursuits are especially beneficial is because the

autonomy satisfaction they produce provides extra motivational support for greater effort,

more goal progress, and greater well-being (Koestner, 2008). Thus, just as teachers, peers,

and social climates can support autonomy, so can an intrinsic goal pursuit.

Activity-Based Autonomy Support. Activities vary in how interesting and how

personally important they are to the learner. Learners find some activities to be highly

interesting, and one of the defining features of what makes an activity an interesting thing to

do is the extent to which the activity can provide the learner with psychological need-

satisfying experiences (Deci, 1992). If a learner finds language learning or interacting with

fellow language learners or visiting a foreign country to be an autonomy-satisfying thing to

do, then that activity will be experienced as an interesting, enjoyable activity, because the

“satisfaction” in “need satisfaction” is nearly synonymous with an experience of interest,

enjoyment, and pleasure (Reeve & Lee, 2019). To the extent that an interesting activity

enables autonomy satisfaction, then that activity is an autonomy support.

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Similarly, even uninteresting activities can be autonomy-satisfying and hence an

autonomy support. Autonomy is defined via experiences of personal ownership, self-

direction, volition, and self-endorsement. Interesting activities produce these experiences, but

so can uninteresting activities, at least as long as they are perceived to be important, valuable,

and personally useful. The belief that this activity “is a useful, worthwhile thing to do”

supports not intrinsic motivation, but internalization. Internalization is the process of taking

in values, beliefs, and ways of behaving from social sources and transforming them into one’s

own (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Once a value, belief, or way of behaving has been fully

internalized by the learner, it gains the capacity to generate subjective experiences of personal

ownership, self-direction, volition, and self-endorsement (Reeve, Jang, Hardre, & Omura,

2002). Hence, just as pursuing intrinsic goals is autonomy supportive, so is the engagement

of an interesting or internalized (but uninteresting) activity.

Resource-Based Autonomy Support. A final environmental source of autonomy

support occurs in all those opportunities and resources afforded by a surrounding (physical)

environment. Through clubs, organizations, programs, places to go, and technology, the

learner can find sources of autonomy support. Resource-based sources of autonomy support

have not yet been investigated in the self-determination theory research literature, but the

language learner literature seems ripe to investigate this source of autonomy support. Any

journey in learning a foreign language offers many need-supportive places to go (e.g.,

conversational lounges, writing centers, community events, self-access centres, learning

advising/counselling services) and technology-rich resources and tools to interact with, and

the learner’s engagement with these sorts of opportunities and resources likely produce need-

satisfying experiences.
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Agentic Engagement

An agent is someone who intentionally influences his or her functioning and

circumstances (Bandura, 2006). In the context of (formal and informal) education,

intentionally influencing one’s functioning means contributing constructively into and

shaping one’s own learning and developing, while intentionally influencing one’s

circumstances means contributing constructively into and shaping the conditions under which

one learns and develops. By acting on, changing, improving, and negotiating with the

environments in which they learn and develop, learners gain greater capacity to change their

lives for the better.

Agentic engagement is the action, behavior, and personal initiative the agent

undertakes to change his or her functioning and circumstances for the better (Reeve, 2013). It

is what learners do to create more motivationally supportive social and physical environments

for themselves. Its opposite is passivity (or “agentic disengagement”; Reeve, Cheon, & Yu,

2020). The passive learner simply receives and accepts “as is” whatever learning

opportunities, learning partners, instruction, mentors, goals, activities, resources, events, and

circumstances happen to come his or her way. In contrast, the agentically-engaged learner is

full of personal initiative and is constantly striving to improve on and contribute

constructively into the betterment of the learning opportunities, learning partners, instruction,

mentors, goals, activities, resources, events, and circumstances that he or she makes sure

come his or her way.

Agentic engagement is both proactive and reciprocal. Proactively, agentically-

engaged learners take action before a learning experience begins by creating and shaping the

social and physical environment in which the learning will take place. In doing so, the hope is

that the environment will be increasingly supportive and responsive and therefore better able

to help the learner realize his or her goals and plans for the learning experience. Reciprocally,
 Agentic Engagement 12

agentically-engaged learners seek a pattern of interaction with the environment in which he

or she communicates his or her interests, needs, plans, and goals so that the environment will

adapt what it has to offer and, in doing so, become better able to support the learner’s

expressed interests, needs, plans, and goals. When environments are both responsive and

supportive, the learner will tend to be changed by that supportive environment by developing

new and better interests, needs, plans, and goals. Overall, agentic engagement is a learner-

initiated pathway to recruit (and benefit from) a more motivationally supportive learning

environment.

Agentic engagement enables two key outcomes. First, greater agentic engagement

improves the learner’s functioning, as increased agentic engagement predicts increased

learning, skill development, and performance (Reeve, 2013; Reeve & Tseng, 2011). For

instance, agentically-engaged learners make better grades than do their non-agentically

engaged peers (Reeve, Cheon, & Jang, 2020). Agentically-engaged learners simply learn

better than do agentically-disengaged students (Reeve, Cheon, & Yu, 2020). So, the first

reason why agentic engagement is important is because it represents a productive pathway to

build skills and to make academic progress.

Second, greater agentic engagement improves the circumstances under which one

learns and develops, as increased agentic engagement predicts how much the environment

changes to accommodate the learner’s interests, needs, and goals. In a series of studies, we

assessed how agentically engaged students were (in a classroom setting) at the beginning of

the academic year to test the hypothesis that students’ agentic engagement would, over time,

bring out greater autonomy support from their teachers. These studies were all longitudinal in

design, and the consistent findings were that (1) the more agentically engaged students were

at the beginning of the semester, the more autonomy supportive their teachers became toward

them by the end of the semester, and (2) the more agentically disengaged students were at the
 Agentic Engagement 13

beginning of the semester, the less autonomy supportive their teachers became toward them

by the end of the semester (Matos, Reeve, Herrera, & Claux, 2018; Reeve, 2013; Reeve,

Cheon, & Yu, 2020). Of these two reasons why agentic engagement is important, this second

reason—the role that agentic engagement plays in recruiting a more motivationally

supportive environment for oneself—seems to be primary (Reeve, Jang, Shin, Ahn, Matos, &

Gargurevich, 2021).

We have not yet empirically studied agentic engagement in the outside of the

classroom environment, but there are multiple opportunities for agentically engaged learners

to improve the circumstances under which they learn and develop. As mentioned in other

chapters in the book, learning outside of the classroom affords learners with potential access

to a multitude of resources and opportunities, including (1) sources of social support, such as

teachers, advisors, mentors, coaches, role models, counselors, and peer collaborators, (2)

community offerings and authentic settings, (3) physical environments, such as language

laboratories, writing centers, and conversational lounges, (4) technology resources, such as

“how to” audiobooks, apps (smartphone applications), and language software that offers

modeling, feedback, and practice opportunities, and (5) a host of additional resources,

materials, and whatever else the aspiring language learner feels he or she needs to improve

skills and attain goals.

To capitalize on these opportunities and resources, language learners have a multitude

of ways they can ‘take charge of their own learning’. To do so, autonomously-motivated,

agentically-engaged learners can seek out autonomy supportive teachers and peers, set and

pursue intrinsic goals, choose which activities and which materials to spend time with, decide

for themselves how to go about the task of learning and improving, explore the surroundings

to find new ways to learn, find others who share one’s interests and goals, ask competent

others for guidance and support, find expert role models to observe and emulate, develop the
 Agentic Engagement 14

standards necessary to evaluate one’s work, find experts who can evaluate one’s work

objectively and offer constructive suggestions, and basically take responsibility for their own

learning and developing.

Essentially, what agentically engaged learners do is, first, clarify and give voice to

what they want and need, second, problem-solve to understand what resources and

opportunities they need to meet their goals and improve their skills, and, third, take the

initiative to create or put themselves in the environments that will best allow them to fulfill

their interests, develop their skills, learn new things, and surround themselves with the

people, resources, and sources of support they need.

Integrating Autonomy, Autonomy Support, and Agentic Engagement

How a learner’s autonomy, environmental autonomy support, and agentic engagement

fit together can be seen in Figure 1. As illustrated at the lower part of the triangle, autonomy

satisfaction enables high (from need satisfaction) to low (from need frustration) agentic

engagement. Autonomy need satisfaction is agentic engagement’s motivational fuel. Agentic

engagement then recruits greater environmental autonomy support, just as agentic

disengagement minimizes it. Finally, the extent of environmentally-provided autonomy

support explains experiences of autonomy satisfaction (vs. frustration). As represented by the

triangle in the center of the figure, the learner and learning environment become increasingly

in sync with one another when autonomy support fuels autonomy satisfaction, autonomy

satisfaction fuels agentic engagement, and agentic engagement fuels environmental autonomy

support.

If the environment is unresponsive to or frustrates the learner’s need for autonomy,

the likely motivational experience is one of autonomy frustration, rather than one of

autonomy satisfaction. Autonomy frustration leads to agentic disengagement. Showing such

disengagement, the learner fails to take the initiative needed to otherwise pull greater
 Agentic Engagement 15

autonomy support from their surrounding environment. Under these conditions, the learner-

environment relationship dissolves into two independent actors, as little of what the learner

does changes or improves the surrounding environment and the surrounding environment in

turn offers little to support the learner’s need for autonomy. If the environment changes from

need-neglect to outright need-thwart (i.e., a controlling environment), then the learner-

environment relationship deteriorates into conflict (me vs. you).

The triangular relations depicted in Figure 1 have no obvious starting point, as each

element is both cause and consequence to the other two. The environment can change from

non-supportive to autonomy-supportive, and this change tends to increase learners’ autonomy

need satisfaction (Cheon et al., 2019). The learner can experience greater autonomy need

satisfaction, and this change tends to increase learners’ agentic engagement (Reeve, Cheon,

& Yu, 2020). In other words, the learner can initiate greater agentic engagement, and this

change tends to render the learning environment significantly more autonomy supportive

(Reeve, 2013).

Learners can be provided with a brief training experience in how to be more

agentically engaged. Such a training session has been shown to be effective (Reeve et al.,

2021). In this experiment, learners received a brief 10-min training session in how be more

agentically engaged while interacting with a teacher. Learners were encouraged to take the

initiative, speak up, express his or her preferences, make a plan for what questions to ask and

what resources to request, and let the teacher know what he or she needed and was most

interested in. Compared to a control group of learners, learners who received the brief ‘be

agentic’ training session did recruit greater autonomy support from their teachers and,

because of this greater autonomy support, experienced greater autonomy need satisfaction

during the learning experience. The data collected from this experiment provide supportive

empirical evidence for the model depicted in Figure 1. The data further suggest that “greater
 Agentic Engagement 16

agentic engagement” can function as a starting point to set in motion the reciprocal processes

that result in greater learner-environment synchrony.

In looking at the relations depicted in Figure 1, the following take-home message can

be offered. Agentic engagement makes for an excellent starting point to jumpstart the cycle

depicted in the figure, especially since agentic engagement reflects the spirit of the paper’s

title so well (i.e., ‘take charge of one’s own learning’). We suggest agentic engagement as a

starting point because such an intervention experience could be designed and implemented

(in the spirit of the Reeve et al., 2021 experiment). That said, it is an important point to

acknowledge that autonomy-infused agentic engagement is much more fruitful than is

autonomy-empty agentic engagement. Somehow, autonomy, autonomy support, and agency

need to come together in a self-sustaining cycle. How this might be done seems like a

promising challenge to future research and practice in language learning outside the

classroom.
 Agentic Engagement 17

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Figure 1

Interconnections among Autonomy, Autonomy Support, and Agentic Engagement

Environmental
Autonomy Support

In Sync
Learner-Environment
Relationship

Learner Learner
Autonomy Agentic
Satisfaction Engagement