Five theoretical propositions concerning research on studentsManja KlemenčičDepartment of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and SciencesHarvard University

6th International Conference on «Rethinking Students: Ideas and New Research Approaches», Moscow, 15-17 October 2015

I Are students objects or subjects of higher education?- students’ autonomy, efficacy and self-regulation

II What are students’ purposes in higher education?- individual and collective purposes

III What is student agency?- student agentic possibilities- student agentic orientations

IV Student university citizenship

V Student’s sense of belonging to the university/university communities

Outline

Conception of students as passive recipients of or active participants in higher education provides the most fundamental tension in research on students.

- Are students people to whom things are done, or people who are learning to do things and doing things for themselves? Are they subjects or masters of their own learning and self-formation?

- How students meet their ample desires, how they become, how they construct their studentship while embedded within their respective higher education institution and its communities?

This conception is directly linked to the questions of students’ autonomy, efficacy and self-regulation.

I Students: objects or subjects of higher education?

Students’ autonomy: when a student’s behavior is experienced as willingly enacted; when student fully endorses the actions in which engaged and/or values expressed by them (cf. Deci and Ryan 1985)

Students’ efficacy: students’ judgment of and belief in their capabilities to exercise control over their own functioning and over events that affect their lives (cf. Bandura 2001)

Self-regulation (Zimmerman 2010): the process by which a student controls (makes conscious decisions about) own learning trajectory in higher education and it comprises:

- forethought (task analysis - goal setting/strategic planning, and self-motivation beliefs – goal orientation/self-efficacy/interest);

- performance (self-control – time management/help seeking, and self-observation – metacognitive self-monitoring/self-recording) and

- self-reflection: self-judgement/self-evaluation/self-satisfaction)

Ia Students’ autonomy, efficacy and self-regulation

SELF-FORMATION AND INDIVIDUAL WELLBEING: Studentship is a rite of passage to some new role, status or life condition; oriented towards the formation of the projected future self, towards “becoming”.

- take care of oneself- know how to develop and maintain relationships- develop distinct styles and tastes – a unique individual- how to balance academic responsibilities with the rest- to gain knowledge, develop skills, - join profession, find a job

As members of academic community, as university citizens are students also contributing towards FORMATION of their institutions and COLLECTIVE WELLBEING?

II Students’ purposes in higher education

Student agency (individual, proxy or collective) is capacity of students to critically shape their responsiveness to higher education environment for the purposes of self-formation and wellbeing (revised from Klemenčič 2015)

Student agency encompasses variable notions of agentic possibility (“power”) and agentic orientation (“will”).

III What is student agency?

Students’ agentic possibilities are students’ real opportunities and positive freedoms to do and to be what they reason to value within university context and to achieve well-being.Sen (1999): 1. freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance; 2. understood in terms of freedoms to do and to be what [students] have reasons to value

- students’ legal status, institutional pathways (spaces, formal structures and processes) and university culture (relationship shemata invoking different conceptions of students , university “tool kit” or repertoire for constructing identities, navigating studentship and planning life projects cf. Swidler 1986)

IIIa Students’ agentic possibilities

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Students’ agentic orientations refer to students’ willingness to self-reflective and intentional action and interactions within university context.

- Students face competing demands on their time; default option is instrumental behavior.

- Norms of appropriate behavior lead to dutiful observance of norms and rules to avoid sanctions or shaming, but do not necessarily motivate students to act beyond their self-interest.

- How to invoke students’ university citizenship?

IIIb Students’ agentic orientations

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Students’ university citizenship implies voluntary contribution to make a positive impact on their university and its communities beyond self-interest, for “collective benefits” and following communal interests; based on feelings of mattering, psychological ownership, identification, belonging.

IV Students’ university citizenship

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Students’ sense of belonging refers to students’ perceptions of intimate association with the university as demonstrated through perceived insider status, psychological ownership and organizational identification; students have invested themselves in the university and consider it to be a personalized space (cf. Stamper and Masterson 2002).

Insider status: ‘I am an important part of my university’Psychological ownership: ‘This is my university’; ‘I own my universityOrganizational identification: ‘I am defined by my university’

- is essential for students’ positive student experience and academic engagements (Astin, 1985; Thomas, 2012), student retention (Reay et al., 2010; Thomas, 2012; Tinto, 1993) and – more generally – for a person’s subjective sense of well-being, intellectual achievement, motivation and even health (Walton and Cohen, 2007).

V Students belonging to university/university communities

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A university is built on strong interdependencies between internal actors which nurture collective spirit and naturally enable collective behavior.

The expressive individualism in consumerist culture and choice-based values potentially inhibit students’ sense of civic commitment to one’s own university.

Student agency towards collective formation and collective wellbeing can be strengthened through university culture based on reciprocal relationships, sense of shared responsibilities and collective commitments to mutually agreed goals; a strong collective identity and sense of collective belonging

THANK YOU. manjaklemencic@fas.harvard.edu

By a way of conclusion

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