How students create motivationally supportive learning environments for themselves: The concept of agentic engagement.

TLDR

The study introduces “agentic engagement” as a student‑initiated pathway to greater achievement and motivational support. The authors developed a brief, psychometrically strong Agentic Engagement Scale and collected longitudinal data from 302 middle‑school students across three waves to examine its predictive relationships. The scale predicted course‑specific achievement and, over time, increased students’ perceived autonomy support, demonstrating that agentic engagement fosters motivationally supportive learning environments.

Abstract

The present study introduced “agentic engagement” as a newly proposed student-initiated pathway to greater achievement and greater motivational support. Study 1 developed the brief, construct-congruent, and psychometrically strong Agentic Engagement Scale. Study 2 provided evidence for the scale’s construct and predictive validity, as scores correlated with measures of agentic motivation and explained independent variance in course-specific achievement not otherwise attributable to students’ behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. Study 3 showed how agentically engaged students create motivationally supportive learning environments for themselves. Measures of agentic engagement and teacher-provided autonomy support were collected from 302 middle-school students in a 3-wave longitudinal research design. Multilevel structural equation modeling showed that (a) initial levels of students’ agentic engagement predicted longitudinal changes in midsemester perceived autonomy support and (b) early-semester changes in agentic engagement predicted longitudinal changes in late-semester autonomy support. Overall, these studies show how agentic engagement functions as a proactive, intentional, collaborative, and constructive student-initiated pathway to greater achievement (Study 2) and motivational support (Study 3).