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Agency: Taking Stock of Workplace Learning Research

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Research Approaches on Workplace Learning

Part of the book series: Professional and Practice-based Learning ((PPBL,volume 31))

Abstract

This chapter presents a discussion of the concept of agency. Agency is understood as a multifaceted construct describing the idea that human beings make choices, act on these choices, and thereby exercise influence on their own lives as well as their environment. We argue that the concept is discussed from three different perspectives in the literature—transformational, dispositional, and relational—that are each related to learning and development in work contexts. These perspectives do not reflect incompatible positions but rather different aspects of the same phenomena. The chapter also offers an avenue of insight into empirical studies that employ agency as a central concept as well as discussions about concepts that closely overlap with ideas of human beings as agents of power and influence.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter, we use the term agency to subsume all ideas that have been discussed elsewhere under the labels of professional agency, work agency, personal agency , human agency, individual agency, or epistemological agency (see Billett, 2006; Edwards, 2005; Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Goller, 2017; Harteis & Goller, 2014; Smith, 2017). In this way, we can discuss the whole range of literature pertaining to agency in the context of learning and development at and for work without being too narrow or exclusive. At the same time, however, we decided to focus our discussion only on agency as an individual-level phenomenon, meaning that studies describing agency primarily from a collective perspective have been excluded (see also Edwards, 2005, 2009, 2010; Edwards & Mackenzie, 2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Educational Science, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

    Michael Goller

  2. Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Susanna Paloniemi

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  1. Michael Goller
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  2. Susanna Paloniemi
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Correspondence to Michael Goller .

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  1. Institute of Educational Science, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

    Christian Harteis

  2. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    David Gijbels

  3. Training and Education Sciences, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Eva Kyndt

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Goller, M., Paloniemi, S. (2022). Agency: Taking Stock of Workplace Learning Research. In: Harteis, C., Gijbels, D., Kyndt, E. (eds) Research Approaches on Workplace Learning. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89582-2_1

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