Supporting students’ agency and developing teaching practices is significant to respond to the current demands in higher education (HE) and work-life (Eteläpelto, 2013; Jääskelä, 2021). Agency can be seen as a core component of lifelong learning ability and coping with uncertainty (Su, 2011), and therefore significant in successful changes or transitions of conditions in educational path. Student agency is dynamic and contextual and has been theorized in different fields with a different emphasis such as individual choice or intentions, capabilities or capacity for self-reflection, as well as power structures or discourses (Eteläpelto, 2013). In discussions emphasizing actions within historical life-course, temporal aspects of agency have been raised up (e.g., Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Hitlin & Kirkpatric Johnson, 2015) that involve the dynamics of past and present experiences, as well as with future orientation, which are context- and time-specific, also including the aspects of life outside studies. Therefore, the student agency can relate to earlier experiences in educational path, current contexts of learning, as well as future orientations. 

Earlier Jääskelä et al. (2017; 2020) developed a multidimensional scale (AUS) to measure individual, relational and contextual resources of agency in HE course context with an online questionnaire. They defined student agency in HE “in terms of access to (and use of) resources for purposeful action in study contexts, i.e., as students’ experienced or interpreted individual, interactional and contextual resources to engage in intentional and meaningful action and learning”.  As a result of profile analysis, Jääskelä et al. (2020) detected subgroups of students according to their experiences of agency in university courses. They found four different latent profiles of student agency from the data collected from 10 university courses: students with lower than average agency, average level agency, average with low participatory agency and higher than average agency. Jääskelä et al. (2020) concluded that agency experiences of the profile groups were significantly different according to form of instruction in the course, and developing teaching practices fostering participatory role of the student, but also increasing student awareness on agency during studies are needed. Therefore, to increase the student awareness on agency, Jääskelä et al. (2021) utilized learning analytics techniques to the data to visualize the results of the AUS -scale to benefit the learners as a basis for self-reflections. Therefore, AUS scale with agency analytics can be used as a tool in pedagogical development to support student agency. 

While data collected through the AUS questionnaire offer a general picture about student agency experiences in the context, more in-depth knowledge is needed to describe how students themselves explain the changes in the individual, relational and contextual experiences, and how these are associated with earlier experiences in life related to education and learning. Therefore, there is need for research on how students’ agency experiences in HE are related to earlier learning experiences and contexts, to facilitate a fluent transition to higher education and to work, and to support the development of student agency during HE studies. 

The aim of this study is to describe first year students’ perceptions on how experiences in earlier education, starting the studies in higher education and in a course during the first fall of studies in HE are reflected in agency. We will also see how students explain the changes in the dimensions of agency during a course in the first semester of their studies.

This study is part of the StudyAgent –research project funded by the Academy of Finland. The validated Agency of University Students (AUS) scale (Jääskelä et al., 2020) was utilized in the study to measure multidimensional agency. The 11-factor structure contains 54 items at the course level and capture three main domains of agency resources, and their respective dimensions: Personal resources (Competence beliefs, Self-efficacy); Relational resources (Equal treatment, Trust for teacher, Teacher support); Participatory resources of agency (Participation activity, Ease of participation, Opportunities to influence, Opportunities to make choices, Interest and utility value, Peer support). Each dimension consisted of three to seven items rated using a five-point Likert scale (1 = fully disagree; 5 = fully agree). A total of 34 first year HE students were asked to fill in the questionnaire with the AUS scale at three timepoints during the course: at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the course. Of all students, 16 filled in the questionnaire at least twise. Additionally, agency analytics validated in prior research were applied to the AUS questionnaire data to examine the participants’ group profiles and individual agency profiles (Jääskelä et al., 2021; Jääskelä et al., 2020). Teacher and students received visualizations of results in course level through agency analytics after the course. The results show changes in the group level, as well as in individual agency profiles during the course. A total of 6 students were purposefully chosen for interviews based on the individual changes in the dimensions of agency visualized by agency analytics. Finally, 5 students participated in a 2-hour interview reflecting their personal results from agency analytics. Semi-structured interviews were constructed on the dimensions of agency in the AUS scale, also covering earlier experiences and future orientation in their educational path. The interview included reflections on reasons for the change in agency for each of the 11 dimensions during the course. Age of the participants varied from 20 to 28; except for one participant, the participants were women. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis, to examine students’ interpretations of their individual agency profiles and concentrating on the explanations for change from students’ point of view.

Students’ experiences on agency during the course in first semester in HE were intertwined with experiences related to starting studies: transformations of expectations, finding field of own interest, development as a responsible accomplishing student (through self-reflection), and for example overcoming strain of new situations and becoming independent in many areas of life simultaneously. Agency experiences during the course had also associations to previous study experiences. All participants mentioned social support or pressure from peers, family, or earlier teachers as important aspects from earlier study paths: for example, kind and supportive teachers gave hope for learning. Therefore, earlier endorsement that gave belief in self-development was seen important for agency later in studies. On the other hand, some teachers were mentioned to even “crash dreams”, increase fear of failure or made students feel being panned. These emotional experiences were carried on to later studies and toned students’ agency experiences in the beginning of the studies. Overall, the preliminary analyses of interviews link the changes in agency during the first semester of studies to situational course-specific reasons, but also aspects related to starting studies: self-efficacy beliefs, social support, and growth as HE students. Altogether, the temporal accumulation of experiences affecting the agency was evident, and social encounters before and at the start of the studies were of high importance for student agency.

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