Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education (Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education) 3031448847, 9783031448843

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN GLOBAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education Edited by Yusuf Ikbal Oldac Lili Yang Soyoung Lee

Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education Series Editors

Roger King School of Management University of Bath Bath, UK Jenny J. Lee Centre for the Study of Higher Education University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA Simon Marginson Department of Education University of Oxford Oxford, UK Rajani Naidoo School of Management University of Bath Bath, UK

This series aims to explore the globalization of higher education and the impact this has had on education systems around the world including East Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and the US. Analyzing HE systems and policy this series will provide a comprehensive overview of how HE within different nations and/or regions is responding to the new age of universal mass higher education.

Yusuf Ikbal Oldac  •  Lili Yang Soyoung Lee Editors

Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education

Editors Yusuf Ikbal Oldac School of Graduate Studies Lingnan University Tuen Mun, Hong Kong SAR

Lili Yang Faculty of Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

Soyoung Lee Department of Education University of Oxford Oxford, UK

ISSN 2662-4214     ISSN 2662-4222 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education ISBN 978-3-031-44884-3    ISBN 978-3-031-44885-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Students  at the Heart of Higher Education: An Introduction  1 Yusuf Ikbal Oldac, Lili Yang, and Soyoung Lee Part I Conceptualising Student Self-­Formation in Higher Education  27 2 Antecedents  of Student Self-Formation in Social Theory and Educational Philosophy: What Do They Tell Us About Structure and Agency? 29 Simon Marginson 3 Agency  and Student Development in Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-­Disciplinary Exploration 67 Lili Yang, Soyoung Lee, and Yusuf Ikbal Oldac 4 The  Mechanism of Student Agency in Self-­Formation Through Knowledge Engagement in Higher Education 89 Soyoung Lee

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Contents

Part II Depicting Student Agency in International Higher Education 115 5 Student  Agency and Becoming in International Programs in Vietnamese Universities117 Phuong Minh Luong, Ly Thi Tran, and Huyen Thi Thanh Nguyen 6 Conceptualizing  the Employability Agency of International Graduates143 Thanh Pham, Denise Jackson, and Peter McIlveen 7 The  Role of Higher Education Institutions in Fostering Students’ Cosmopolitan Agency and Self-Formation167 Kazuhiro Kudo Part III Linking Student Agency in Higher Education with the Wider Society 191 8 The  Civic Aspect of Student Self-Formation in International Higher Education: Apprenticeship in New Worldviews193 Yusuf Ikbal Oldac 9 New  Spaces for Agency in Doctoral Education: An Ecological Approach217 Kelsey Inouye and Søren Bengtsen Index241

Notes on Contributors

Søren  Bengtsen is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Philosophy and General Education, Danish School of Education at the Aarhus University, Denmark. Also, at Aarhus University, he is the co-director of the research centre “Centre for Higher Education Futures” (CHEF). Bengtsen serves as the chair of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES) and as the vice-chair of the Danish Network for Educational Development in Higher Education (DUN). Bengtsen’s recent books include Culture and the University. Education, Ecology, Design (2022, co-authored with Ronald Barnett and Rikke Toft Nørgård); Transformation of the University. Hopeful Futures for Higher Education (2022, co-edited with Ryan E.  Gildersleeve); The University Becoming. Perspectives from Philosophy and Social Theory (2021, co-edited with Wesley Shumar and Sarah Robinson); Knowledge and the University. Re-claiming Life (2019, co-authored with Ronald Barnett); and The Thinking University. A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education (2019, co-edited with Ronald Barnett). Kelsey Inouye  is a research associate in the Department of Education at the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, University of Oxford, UK. Kelsey completed her DPhil in Education from the University of Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar in November 2020. Since then, she has held several roles in the field of higher education, including a senior researcher position at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland.

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Denise  Jackson  is the director of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University, Australia. Denise focuses on preparing students for future work, particularly through WIL and career development learning. Her work has been recognised by several research and learning and teaching awards, including two national teaching awards and the James W.  Wilson Award for Outstanding Contribution to Research in the field of cooperative education. Denise is a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy and president of the Australian Collaborative Education Network, the professional association for WIL in Australia. Kazuhiro  Kudo  is an associate professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Dokkyo University, Japan. He is also an executive director (global engagement) of the Intercultural Education Society of Japan. He has written on intercultural interactions, policies, and practices of intercultural and international education and contributed to Educational Research Review, Higher Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Language and Intercultural Communication, and Journal of Intercultural Studies, among others. He has also co-edited two Japanese books on strategies to mitigate prejudice and discrimination through dialogue. His most recent research interests focus on the intersection of intercultural interactions, cosmopolitanism, conviviality, and agency in higher education contexts. Soyoung Lee  is a PhD candidate in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, and a member of the Global Higher Education Research Group in the department. Soyoung’s doctoral research is fully funded by the University of Oxford. Her research interests centre on student agency in higher education with broader interest in student formation through international education and engagement with disciplinary knowledge. She is working on her doctoral project, “Academic SelfFormation in Local and International Higher Education: Evidence from South Korean Students”. Phuong Minh Luong  is a lecturer in the Faculty of International Studies at Hanoi University, Vietnam, and a senior researcher at the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences. She achieved her PhD in Educational Sciences and Social Pedagogy funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Germany, in 2015. Her expertise and works focus on securing human rights, social justice, wellbeing, teacher education, and

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full potential development for children and youth through theories of empowerment, recognition, social emotional learning, and ecosystem design thinking. She has led/co-led some international large-scale interdisciplinary projects such as “Research on Improving System of Education (RISE) of Vietnam” (6 million GBP pounds) funded by DFID (2017–2022); a longitudinal study on “Empowering Minority Women in Agriculture and Tourism” funded by Australian Government (2019–2021) (US $1 million); and research on “Empowering Ethnic Minority Youth in Viet Nam to Re-vision the Future of Decent Work (‘Re-WORK’)” by British Academy (2020–2022) (267,000 GBP). She has been a trainer for teachers and educational managers for the past 15 years for many international non-government organisations such as Plan International, Childfund Australia, Save the Children, ActionAid International, and Aide et Action. Phuong has written several materials on intercultural competence for educators and some articles related to teaching quality in the educational sector. She is the reviewer of some journals such as European Journal of Educational Research; Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning; Journal of Work Applied Management; Journal of Educational Practice; Vietnam Journal of Educational Sciences; and Journal of Foreign Language. Particularly, she is an observer of Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization - Center for Early Childhood Care Education and Parenting Governing Board Members; contributor of SEAMEO-DAAD lecture series of ASEAN region; and member of Selection Committee of the DAAD Scholarship Programme In-Region/In-Country. Simon Marginson  is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford and director of the ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE); joint editor-in-chief of Higher Education; and professorial fellow at the Melbourne Centre for Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is a member of Academia Europaea and a fellow of the Academies of Social Science in each of the UK and Australia. Peter  McIlveen, PhD  has expertise in career development, vocational psychology, and counselling psychology. Peter serves on the editorial boards of several international journals, such as the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Career Assessment, The Career Development Quarterly, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, and the Australian Journal of Career Development. He is a registered psychologist and a member of the Australian Psychological Society, the College of

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Counselling Psychologists, and a fellow of the Career Development Association of Australia. Peter’s teaching is focused on postgraduate coursework within the Master of Education and supervision of PhD candidates at the University of Southern Queensland. Huyen Thi Thanh Nguyen  is a lecturer at Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam, where she specialises in the fields of education, policies and governance, and East Asian studies. She is a co-investigator in various research initiatives supported by international NGOs and the Vietnamese government. These include an examination of student adaptability competence within internationalised higher education programmes (funded by the Ministry of Education and Training), an exploration of online education quality and challenges during the early 2020 COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam (funded by ActionAid Vietnam), and an investigation into the circumstances of ethnic girl students during school closures amid the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic (funded by Plan International Vietnam). Yusuf Ikbal Oldac  is a Hong Kong Research Grants Council Post-Doc Fellow based at the School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is also a core centre fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies of the same university. He recently graduated from his funded PhD study at the University of Oxford. His overall research focuses on international student mobility, agency and self-­ formation, and global science. Thanh  Pham  is Senior Lecturer in Education at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests are in higher education, graduate employability, and internationalisation. She is currently researching how international graduates in different contexts including Australia and Asian countries like Japan, Vietnam, China, and Singapore utilise recourses obtained in the host country and further developed in the home countries to navigate the labour markets. She is currently focusing on exploring forms of agency that graduates in different contexts and disciplines enact to negotiate employability. She has developed comparative models/typologies about the usefulness of these resources in different contexts. Thanh has also used her research to develop employability teaching units for postgraduates at Monash University. Ly  Thi  Tran is a professor in the School of Education at Deakin University, Australia. She is a member of the Academic Board and an affiliated faculty member of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation

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at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy. Ly’s research focuses on internationalisation of education, international students, student mobilities, international student graduate employability, geopolitics of international education, staff professional learning in international education, and Vietnamese higher education. She has a strong track record of writing high-quality research that has attracted a significant number of readers in Australia, Asia, and internationally. She has authored and edited twelve books for Routledge, Springer, and Palgrave Macmillan. Ly’s books and articles have won a number of awards, including the award for being among the most-read articles for journals and magazines. One of her articles has been awarded Readers’ Choice, the most-read article in the education section of the Conversation in 2020, reaching over 215,000 readers. Her work has been featured in multiple languages and media outlets in Australia and internationally. Lili  Yang  is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. She has strong interests in Eastern-Western comparison in higher education. More broadly, her interests include higher education, comparative and international higher education, and educational and political philosophy. Previously, Lili was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, where she also received her DPhil in Education. Her recent book is titled Higher Education, State and Society: Comparing the Chinese and Anglo-American Approaches (2022).

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 8.1

I-world concept in Anglo-Saxon idealist understanding. (Authors’ own conceptualisation) 71 I-world concept in Chinese Confucian understanding. (After Tu, 1985) 72 I-world concept in Islamic Sunni understanding. (Authors’ own conceptualisation) 74 Theory building with conceptual and empirical domains. (Inspired by and adapted from Archer, 1995, p. 309) 95 Conceptual employability agency framework of international graduates157 Cyclical augmentation of cosmopolitan agency and selfformation through intercultural interactions and cosmopolitan capital amid institutional affordances/constraints 170 Study’s framework for apprenticeship in new worldviews in IHE 198

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List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 8.1

Summary of participant information International programs in the research sampling (2021) Participants of the study (2021) List of universities the participants obtained their degrees from with regard to country locations

97 125 125 202

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CHAPTER 1

Students at the Heart of Higher Education: An Introduction Yusuf Ikbal Oldac , Lili Yang, and Soyoung Lee

Background Higher education is becoming increasingly crucial for governments, businesses, civic organizations, students, parents, and the society at large. According to the World Bank, 40% of the youth population attended universities in 2020, the highest percentage in history (Cantwell et al., 2018). This surge in interest in higher education has led to discussions regarding its purpose. However, understanding the purpose of a sector that garners substantial attention from various stakeholders is challenging. Each stakeholder has their own priorities and often advocates for a purpose that aligns with their interests. For instance, the business sector might

Y. I. Oldac (*) School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong SAR e-mail: [email protected] L. Yang Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR S. Lee Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_1

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emphasize the importance of employability, whereas civic organizations may highlight the need for fostering social changes. Higher education is a multifaceted sector: universities serve numerous functions for society at large and entities within it (Kerr, 2001). This edited book does not disagree with the argument that higher education has multiple functions. However, the main argument highlighted in this book is that students should be at the heart of higher education. As we discuss in the following section, this perspective aligns with the historical case. However, in recent times, a rhetorical shift to the prioritization of economic considerations in arguments regarding higher education has been noted (Ashwin, 2020). This shift indicates the importance of the mission presented in this book. Student agency and self-formation constitute the core focus of higher education. We iterate this argument with theoretical and conceptual elaboration and new empirical evidence obtained from different regions of the world. This book positions students at the center of higher education, emphasizing two key concepts: student agency and self-formation. Each chapter focuses on these key concepts and applies them to diverse contexts and circumstances, such as academic knowledge, civic formation, and employability. These two concepts are defined here, in this introduction, to the extent that they do not limit the ensuing discussions in subsequent chapters. To begin with, what is meant by student agency? This concept acknowledges students as the subjects who hold agency, incorporating the aspects of general human agency while also highlighting distinct features specific to students in higher education. Human agency is a broad concept that often appears in the literature without specific definitions (Inouye et al., 2022). Generally, human agency refers to individuals’ capacity and autonomy to act with their self-determined objectives in mind. Agency stems from human consciousness and critical thinking, which facilitate reflexive deliberations and actions in the forms of active engagement and negotiation with the environments, whether challenging or resourceful and facilitating. Thus, agency is associated with freedom, particularly through the enablement and empowerment of human capability. Student agency differs from general human agency, particularly because of the impact of education. On the one hand, education is believed to enhance student agency by fostering well-being, skill development, critical thinking, human capability, and, thus, freedom (e.g., Yang et al., Chap. 3 in this volume). On the other hand, the effectiveness and success of

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education depend on the presence of student agency, which is essential for initiating student engagement in the form of self-motivated, self-­regulative, and self-reflective thinking and behaviors (e.g., Tran et al., Chap. 5). The association between reflexive agency and education concurs the argument that higher education is a process of student self-formation. Higher education can enhance students’ self-forming capacities. However, the potential of higher education can only be activated by students’ active agency. The other core question asked in this book is what is meant by self-­ formation? Student self-formation is a multifaceted concept with deep historical roots. This concept combines both ancient and modern philosophies, drawing from both Eastern and Western educational traditions (cf. Yang, 2022) while incorporating the contemporary notions of agency and reflexivity in higher education (Marginson, 2018). Student self-formation is a rich concept that continues to evolve in modern times. The manifestation of this concept varies from context to context, as highlighted by the historical account provided in the following section and the chapters of this collection. Generally, self-formation emphasizes the role of students as the masters of their educational experiences in higher education. They are active learners who shape their holistic development through active agency. The concept of self-formation goes against reducing students to consumers, income maximizers, or passive information receivers (Marginson, 2018). In this background section, agency and self-formation are highlighted as key concepts for positioning students at the heart of higher education. The following section discusses from a historical perspective how students have always played a central role in higher learning.1 In the subsequent section, we discuss the shifting rhetoric on the role of students in higher education in recent times. Then, we present an overview of the current empirical literature focusing on agency and self-formation and we articulate the overall purpose of the book. Finally, we introduce the chapters of this book.

1  “Education, learning, or scholarship on the collegiate or university level,” according to Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2023).

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Students Have Historically Played a Central Role in Higher Education Universities and higher learning institutions have a long history. The university as we recognize it today originates from medieval European universities (Östling, 2018). These medieval universities highlighted the formation of students to become lawyers and clerics (Välimaa, 2019). A key distinction of the medieval university was its emphasis on the dialogic relationship between masters and students rather than the creation of knowledge and research. The dialogic relationship between the masters and students required active participation by both parties, hence positioning students as active knowledge-seekers. The students and masters were positioned as scholars who possessed knowledge on many topics (Lowe & Yasuhara, 2017; Välimaa, 2019). During the enlightenment era, the notions of “Bildung” (Östling, 2018) and liberal education (Newman, 1907) rose to prominence, and they continue to be influential in shaping higher education. The notion of Bildung provides universities with a vision of holistic development and personal growth, emphasizing the understanding of moral and ethical matters to ensure that students can become responsible citizens in the society (Biesta, 2002; Östling, 2018). Kant’s essay on the meaning of enlightenment is widely read and cited (Kant, 1784). Kant’s arguments largely revolve around the idea of freeing a man “from his self-incurred tutelage.” In this context, tutelage refers to individuals’ inability to utilize their understanding by themselves. This draws attention to students’ own role in learning. Bildung, at its core, argues for the development of a person into a subject, focusing on “a human being’s attempt to overcome external determination and infancy” (Kivela et  al., 2012, p.  304). Perspectives from the enlightenment era on human development and self-­ making in education remain highly relevant for higher education, especially in terms of student agency and self-formation. Bildung is an evolving concept. It was previously considered as learning a set of knowledges and theories (Biesta, 2002). However, this perspective has changed recently. Bildung is now perceived more as a process of personal formation instead of learning static concepts (Biesta, 2002). It is more similar to a process of “activating potential than a process of learning” (Sjöström & Eilks, 2020, p. 56). The notion of Bildung highlights that education goes beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge and skills. It emphasizes the perspective that education involves more than only

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teaching what is “right.” Bildung focuses on nurturing the formation of a complete human being (Biesta, 2002). Bildung is a reflexive process that shapes and forms the self. It is a complex process of meaning-making (Schneider, 2012). Agency is always active in this process, and the process of self-formation is there (Sjöström & Eilks, 2020, p. 56). Östling (2018) argues that Bildung as a pedagogical concept is not new and relates to the concepts that are significantly older. He explains that the background of Bildung can be traced back to Greek Paideia. Greek Paideia is an early pedagogical program aimed at the holistic formation of a human being, involving spiritual, physical, and aesthetic aspects. This program emphasized the formation of complete and harmonious citizens (Östling, 2018). Humboldt is a key figure who considerably influenced the history of higher learning. Humboldt and his contemporaries presented a new perspective on Bildung by highlighting the duality of thought. On the one hand, the self-formation process of any student should be an unrestricted journey of development in which agency plays a crucial role. On the other hand, the self-formation process has a dynamic relationship with history and surrounding culture (Östling, 2018). In this context, self-formation is in a dialectical process involving interaction between the self and the culture and teachers, in which students use their active agency to navigate their journey in higher learning (Marginson, 2018). With the progress of the nineteenth century, although higher education increasingly involved knowledge creation and the application of existing knowledge to meet societal needs, the aspect of student formation was not neglected (Martin, 2003; Anderson, 2004). For example, Newman (1907) famously argued for the holistic formation of students through liberal education. Newman believed that students should become “good” members of society. The holistic development of a student has a humanizing effect that emphasizes agency and self-formation (Halstead, 1996). In this regard, both Humboldt’s and Newman’s views are encapsulated in the notion of agentic self-formation. Liberal education refers to “the combination of the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of how one learns as a whole person” (Roth, 2014, p. 5). Liberal education is against the idea of students arriving at campuses similar to consumers. Students should not be positioned to have specific demands and detailed plans for the following years during their degree education. Liberal education challenges the idea that students should

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follow a predetermined structure of education, which positions them as consumers (Nussbaum, 1997, 2016). Liberal education underscores holistic formation, ethical self-reflection, and critical approaches to everyday life and cultural traditions (Sjöström & Eilks, 2020). The main objective of liberal education is to create enlightened and self-forming citizens rather than efficient workers (Nussbaum, 1997, 2016). According to Roth (2014), liberal education enriches students’ lives by augmenting their capability for self-formation. Drawing from this tradition, American pragmatists introduced the concepts of experience- and inquiry-based approaches to higher education that promote the formation of holistic individuals and avoid narrow utilitarian views (cf. Dewey, 1916). Roth (2014) contends that higher education is not “a bureaucratic assignment of skill capacity … or training for specific vocations to which [students] are destined” (p. 8). Instead, it is an intellectual and experiential adventure of agency-driven self-formation. This view aligns with the argument presented in this book. This section discussed how students have historically played a central role in higher learning, using the medieval university as a starting point. Although the medieval university is considered the root of the modern university, this discussion is not meant to be exhaustive. The concept of higher learning and the central positioning of students in various formats also existed in other cultures and earlier timeframes. Examples include “jamis” in Islamic societies that combine higher learning and prayers and the Confucian teaching traditions in Sinic cultures (Lowe & Yasuhara, 2017). These cultural traditions are strongly connected with agency and self-formation in higher learning. Further discussions on these cultural traditions can be found in Chap. 3. The historical perspective provided in this section indicates that the concepts of agency and self-formation are not new and are built on a rich history. However, the rhetoric on how students are positioned in higher education has shifted in recent decades. This topic is discussed in the next section.

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The Shifting Rhetoric on the Role of Students in Higher Education in Recent Decades The previous section highlighted the importance of agency and self-­ formation in higher education, arguing that these concepts have always been crucial in the realm of higher learning. However, this discourse has undergone changes in recent decades. Overall, thinking and policy discourses are progressively being dominated by economically oriented arguments regarding higher education, including skills rhetoric and human capital approaches (Ashwin, 2020). This shift has started to position students as self-calculating benefit maximizers, resulting in the gradual relegation of the holistic development of students and their agency to the background (Marginson, 2019). A rhetoric that has become increasingly dominant in current discussions on higher education is the fetishization of skill acquisition and the increased focus on job attainment (Wheelahan et al., 2022). This rhetoric is underpinned by an assumption regarding the economic return on investment in higher education, that is, money spent on higher education and money not earned due to foregoing employment during this period (Becker, 1993). The limitation of such an approach is that it reduces the value of higher education to only economic terms, overlooking the broader picture. Under this perspective, graduates who obtain the purchase power that can pay back the expenses of their higher education are considered the ideal “output.” Ashwin (2020) argued that this rhetoric has become so dominant in policy discourses and stakeholder thinking that we have lost the sense of the educational purpose of universities. The psychological and sociological aspects of higher learning also merit consideration. With such a shifting perspective on the role of students, higher education is increasingly seen as predetermined set of educational practices designed to prepare students for prespecified professions (Roth, 2014). However, several fallacies exist within this emerging rhetoric. For example, finding a job is usually not as straightforward as it is often portrayed, an argument discussed by Thanh and colleagues in this volume (Chap. 6). Many graduates do not work in predetermined roles, and securing a desired employment opportunity requires an agential practice from the student side. Part of this shifting rhetoric is related to seeing students as empty vessels to be filled during higher education (Marginson, 2023). The student is considered a passive receiver who needs to be taught the necessities of

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their predetermined occupation after higher education. Biesta’s (2009, 2020) three functions of education are helpful. Arguments concerning economic terms highlight the “qualification” function of education through which a degree is obtained for future employment. However, “subjectification” function, which is becoming more unique in society, and “socialization” function, which is being integrated into the surrounding culture, are largely overlooked. An increasing number of studies have indicated that this highly economized view on higher education is not working. For example, in their book, Brown et al. (2011) depicted weakening private returns and declines in graduate outcomes in unequal societies. Piketty (2014) highlighted inequalities created in society when the rate of return on private property is higher than economic growth. In other words, investing in private property might be a better investment than returns on higher education when economic growth is not adequate. When only economic returns and human capital perspectives are considered, they fall short in explaining higher learning. The chapters in this book collectively argue that there is more to higher education than the rhetoric on skills and human capital perspectives highlighted in the literature. Historically, students have always been at the center of higher education, and this book re-emphasizes their active role in higher education. This is parallel to the increasing appeal for return to humanistic approaches that foreground the agency and self-formation of students in higher education (e.g., Jabbar & Menashy, 2022; Tan, 2014). The emphasis on agency and self-formation is not associated with a static set of educational content (i.e., a set of knowledge, ideas, and values). Instead, it pertains to an approach to higher education as a process of holistic development. Students are always becoming, whether through their interaction with academic knowledge (Lee, in progress), institutional dynamics (Kudo, Chap. 7 in this volume), external community and civic values (Oldac, 2021), or opportunities outside of school after graduation (Thanh et al., Chap. 6 in this volume). Higher education is a process of self-formation. The subsequent section provides an overview of the empirical literature on agency and student self-formation.

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Overview of the Literature on Students in Higher Education Our attempt to position students at the center of higher education is not entirely new. Numerous studies have focused on student experiences, particularly in terms of their formation through college life (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Although these previous studies have not necessarily highlighted agency in students’ development and experiences in higher education, various studies have emphasized the different aspects of student formation. Teaching and learning scholarships generally aim to inform curricular and pedagogical decisions that will enhance student achievement in university classrooms. Psychological studies have examined individual differences in student development throughout their higher education, whereas sociological studies have often adopted a broader perspective to explore how universities can mediate the effects of external factors, such as socioeconomic backgrounds, on students’ life trajectories. In these diverse perspectives, student formation assumes different meanings and purposes. This book provides insights into the important meanings and purposes of student formation in higher education by questioning who the students are and what they really do. The chapters in this book discuss diverse aspects of student life, including engagement with academic knowledge, career-related activities, international study-related experiences, and doctoral research. However, these chapters present a common argument that students are agents whose development in higher education involves a process of their active self-formation. Research on College Students’ Experiences Previous studies have mostly explained student formation by discussing the impact of universities. The seminal reviews of studies on student experiences are titled “How college affects students” (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) and “The impact of college on students” (Feldman & Newcomb, 2020). According to these reviews, the typical pattern of student development in higher education appears to evolve from impulsiveness to self-­ control, from dependence to autonomy, and from externally to internally determined identity. These trends collectively indicate the growth of personal agency.

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As early as the 1960s, the development of students’ self-awareness was suggested as a crucial goal of higher education (Chickering, 1969; Marcia, 1966). Magolda (2008) provided evidence that college student development can be characterized as students’ achievement of self-authorship, which is defined as “the internal capacity to define one’s beliefs, identity and social relations” (p. 269). Some researchers have analyzed the development of students’ cognitive structure and explored how students perceive the world in terms of its nature and origin (Perry, 1999). Several scholars have similarly theorized that students in higher education become increasingly reflective, transitioning from dualistic worldviews that assume knowledge as either right or wrong to more nuanced perspectives that involve a critical evaluation of different views to establish their own worldviews (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; King & Kitchener, 2004; Magolda, 1992; Perry, 1999). Thus, college leads to an increase in students’ reflexive agency. After identifying individual differences in student development, some researchers have categorized students based on certain characteristics, such as learning styles or personality types (Biggs, 1993; Kolb, 1985; Marton & Säljö, 1976). Such attempts to understand how students are unique individuals whose formation cannot be simply homogenized have been applauded for effectively shifting the focus from teachers and institutions to students (e.g., Case & Marshall, 2009). Some studies have considered the association between personal factors and external or environmental factors in higher education as the determinant of student formation (Holland, 1997; Bronfenbrenner, 1986). This view resonates with the literature on transitional experiences (Schlossberg, 1981) and has frequently been used to examine international students’ experiences as a process of overcoming transitional challenges (Schartner, 2019). Some of the most influential theories in college student development are those proposed by Tinto (2012) and Astin (1984). They conceptualized successful student experiences as achieving greater involvement/integration into the college environment. Tinto (2012) examined the extent of students’ integration as a determinant of their retention/dropout rates. Astin (1984) highlighted that it is not the resources provided by universities that make students successful but students’ active engagement with those resources. These approaches have evolved into the field of student engagement scholarship (Kuh, 2009; Coates, 2005). The concept of student engagement has attracted considerable attention from academic, institutional, and political sectors for decades (Trowler, 2010) and has

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been regarded as a key factor in student success. The National Survey of Student Engagement is adopted internationally as a quality assessment tool for higher education. The engagement approach emphasizes students’ active role in determining their success in higher education. Traditional approaches to student development implicitly limit student agency and self-formation. For instance, student development has often been conceptualized as a linear and unilateral progression (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) toward a superior and more desirable status: from dualistic to reflective worldviews (Perry, 1999), from identity diffusion to identity achievement (Marcia, 1966), from lower to higher involvement/ integration (Astin, 1984; Tinto, 2012), and from external to internal control of the self (Magolda, 1992). It appears that there is a continuum along which students move because they are shaped more by universities than by their own agency. The objective of research on student engagement is to support students’ endeavors to achieve “the desired outcome of college” and to assist institutions to “induce students to participate in these activities” (Kuh, 2009, p. 683), rather than helping students realize their individual outcomes from higher education. The general understanding of student development leans more toward formation by others than to students’ agentic formation of themselves, or self-formation. The limitations of previous studies on student experiences in terms of understanding student agency resonate with criticisms of the portrayal of international students as deficient, where adaptation or assimilation to the host country’s culture is prescribed as a condition for achieving successful student outcomes (Volet & Jones, 2012; Marginson, 2014; Lipura & Collins, 2020). Instead of restricting student formation to the transitional process, a contrasting view emphasizes the transformational nature of student experiences in international education (Volet & Jones, 2012). When focusing on the transitional aspect, it is easy to reduce international student experiences to merely overcoming barriers and difficulties in crossing borders. In addition, the transformational approach highlights the benefits of international education in terms of exposing students to diversity and providing opportunities for exploration (Marginson & Sawir, 2012; Volet & Jones, 2012). Although international students are increasingly seen as active agents in the literature, student agency tends to be used as a buzzword, an ill-defined and assumed concept (Inouye et al., 2022). The paradigm shift toward student agency and self-formation seems to be more accepted in the literature on international students than in the research on general student experiences. This might be a response to the

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explicit neglect of agency when depicting international students as deficient. However, the deficit model is applicable not only to mobile students but also to general domestic students, who are often bound to negative, non-agentic paradigms. For instance, graduates are often blamed for the skill deficit problems of a nation, especially when the economic value of higher education is overemphasized. Thus, the current understanding of student agency and self-formation needs to go beyond describing international students’ experiences, which challenges the previous deficit models. This book thus makes a timely contribution to the literature, advancing the recent movement for foregrounding student agency and understanding higher education as a process of student self-formation. Research on Student Agency and Self-Formation Although the idea of self-formation is not new, having a long-standing history in various traditions, it has received increasing attention in recent years. The initial proposition of self-formation by Marginson (2014) has been influential in sparking further attention on this topic (Bedenlier et al., 2018). Marginson (2014) highlighted the limitations of the dominant deficit models in explaining the empirical observation of students’ agency in navigating their own higher education experiences. Criticizing previous views that reduce international education to a unidimensional and bilateral cultural transition from the home country’s culture to the host country’s culture, Marginson (2014) emphasized the potential for multiplicity and hybridity in student formation, which manifest students’ active agency. He conceptualized agency by drawing on Sen’s (2000) notion of agency freedom, differentiating agency from identity and power. Since this initial summative theorization, researchers have incorporated the concepts of student agency and self-formation in their studies. However, these concepts are not completely new to the literature because there are many relevant ideas that resonate with students’ agentic capacities and their self-forming phenomenon. Psychologists have identified the critical role of student agency in achieving successful college outcomes, which indicate the agentic capacity to reflect on the self and consciously navigate one’s own learning process. Studies on student engagement have similarly emphasized students’ intentional and active involvement as a prerequisite for successful college outcomes (Kuh, 2009; Coates, 2005). Research on students’ development of self-authorship (Magolda, 1992, 2008) has shared its focus on the self as a central phenomenon in higher

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education with research on self-formation. However, these works did not explicitly engage with the idea of agency but only implicitly acknowledged the significance of students’ agentic capacities in higher education. A more explicit focus on agency is identified in works derived from sociology. Regarding conceptualization, Biesta and Tedder (2007) specifically suggested how personal agency can be enhanced through education. Klemenčič (2015) advanced the theoretical discussion on student agency. In these theoretical approaches, agency has mostly been understood in terms of its relation to or its influence on structure, as in sociology. Some studies have examined how students can transcend their given social, economic, and other contextual conditions by exercising agency in or through higher education (Case, 2015; Tran, 2016). Beyond the individual level, there have been attempts to include student voices in institutional decisions (Kay et al., 2010), referring to students as “change agents.” In some cases, student agency has been expected to influence wider society, such as through student activism for social transformation (Altbach & Klemencic, 2014). However, these studies still focused on student agency exercised toward outer contexts rather than agency for personal self-formation. This book echoes the potential contribution of student agency and self-­ formation to the social world beyond higher education in Chaps. 9 and 10 but shifts the focus to students’ work on themselves. Studies that have included the idea of self-formation idea, not only agency, have almost exclusively investigated international student experiences, drawing on self-formation mostly to provide background information or rationale for their studies. First, researchers have frequently cited the study by Marginson (2014) and aimed to align their work with the current literature that has been moving away from the dominant adaptation approaches to acknowledging international student experiences of “living in disequilibrium” (e.g., Anwer, 2022; Chankseliani, 2018; Ploner & Nada, 2020). Attempts to foreground student agency have been echoed by other works building on the self-formation idea (Heng, 2018; Kudo et  al., 2019; Raghuram et  al., 2020; Tran, 2016). Second, studies on international students’ identity development have conceptualized multiple and hybrid cultural identities by drawing on self-formation (e.g., Brooks & Waters, 2022; Freeman & Li, 2019; Yang & MacCallum, 2022). Third, self-formation has been treated as a discourse that seeks the value of higher education beyond economic terms (e.g., Bennett, 2019; Cebolla-Boado et al., 2018; Lipura & Collins, 2020; Tomlinson, 2018), mostly in conceptual discussions. Notably, these studies have only partially engaged

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with self-formation by merely discussing it as part of the literature review or introduction, rather than as a researched phenomenon. Although there are a few exceptions (Lin & Xu, 2023; Kudaibergenov, 2023; Soong et al., 2015; Yu, 2021), their findings on self-formation have been falling short of elaborating what self-formation is and how student agency operates in such processes, both at conceptual and empirical levels.

Purpose of the Book As previously discussed, in the literature, there is a general criticism concerning the reduction of higher education to mere skill acquisition, the downplaying of students’ self-formation, and the under-recognition of student agency in higher education. Calls for greater attention to the holistic development of students and their active agency are becoming increasingly prevalent. However, relevant efforts remain highly sporadic. The following questions remain: How does students’ holistic self-­ formation occur in higher education? What is student agency? How do students exercise their agency in (international) higher education and in relation to society? By positioning students at the center of higher education, this book represents one of the first attempts in the field to comprehensively address these questions. The book explores how students work on themselves in higher education in terms of personal development, aspirations, and projects. It discusses the role of students in universities, why university education serves broader and more important purposes than what the human capital approach suggests, and how students exercise their agency and realize their self-formation throughout higher education. As the book argues, higher education is a process of students’ self-formation. The prerequisite for and the outcome of self-formation is agency, which is defined as the human will and capacity to direct the course of one’s life. Students exercise their agency both during their studentship and after graduation while seeking life opportunities. Fostering the conditions that maximize the potential for agentic self-formation is an essential task of higher education.

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The Chapters The book advances our understanding of students’ holistic development in higher education by conceptually and empirically illuminating this process through varying cultural and disciplinary perspectives within higher education and in intersection with the wider society. Student Agency and Self-formation in Higher Education explores the process of students’ holistic development by conceptualizing student self-­ formation in higher education (Part I), depicting student agency in international higher education (Part II), and linking student agency in higher education with wider society (Part III). Student self-formation and agency are the two key concepts that bind together all of the chapters of this book. The chapters cover diverse topics and aspects, including the theoretical and philosophical antecedents of the idea of student self-formation (Chap. 2); the foundations and manifestations of student agency across cultures and disciplines (Chap. 3); student academic self-formation (Chap. 4); student agency and becoming (Chap. 5); student reflexivity, agency, and employability (Chap. 6); institutional responsibility in fostering student agency and self-formation (Chap. 7); the civic aspect of student self-­ formation (Chap. 8); and student agency and the development of personal and social selves in doctoral education (Chap. 9). Conceptualizing Student Self-Formation in Higher Education (Part I) Chapter 2, “Antecedents of Student Self-Formation in Social Theory and Educational Philosophy: What Do They Tell Us About Structure and Agency,” by Simon Marginson, views student self-formation, a contemporary form of student “subjectification” in Biesta’s (2009) sense, as one of the main functions of higher education. This chapter aims to conceptually understand student self-formation in higher education by exploring the older and contemporary antecedents of this idea in various cultures and civilizations and the works of various thinkers and theorists in diverse fields. Older antecedents include Confucian self-cultivation and the ideas of Kant, Bildung, and the pragmatists. Contemporary antecedents include Amartya Sen’s idea of agency freedom, Lev Vygotsky’s socially embedded self, Anthony Gidden’s structural dualism, Margaret Archer’s ontological solution, and Michel Foucault’s theoretical displacement. The chapter acknowledges that although these various theoretical antecedents may be

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partly contradictory, they all are helpful and constructive in unraveling student self-formation, especially the structure-agency complex. The chapter argues that the theorizations that view human agency as interactive with structure, such as Archer’s and Foucault’s theories, are more explanatory in unpacking the structure-agency complex than relevant theorizations by Giddens and Bourdieu that overemphasize the power of structure and reduce the visibility of agency. This chapter asserts that student self-formation relies on agentic and reflexive individuals who possess agency freedom, are capable of self-directed and conscious action, and are constantly evolving. Despite the influence of structural forces and the conditioning of human agency by structure, self-forming agency plays an essential role in students’ interaction with the structure and their development. Chapter 3, “Agency and Student Development in Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-disciplinary Exploration,” by the book’s editors, utilizes the concept of agency for understanding students’ development throughout higher education. This chapter starts with a cross-cultural exploration of the I-world relations and interactions from German idealist, Chinese Confucian, and Islamic Sunni cultural perspectives. Based on this exploration, the chapter argues that an individual realizes self-formation, transformation, and empowerment through I-world interactions. Despite differences between the aforementioned three cultures in terms of the relationship and interaction between the I and the world, they collectively emphasize three essential elements in the process of individual development: the acknowledgment of the agency of I, the exercise of the agency, and the enhancement of the agency. The chapter further explores these three elements and their manifestations in higher education by delving into the relevant literature from psychology, sociology, and education. The chapter concludes that these three elements—acknowledgment, exercise, and enhancement of agency—together provide the groundwork for understanding student development in higher education and positioning student agency at the center of higher education. This chapter asserts that students possess and continually exercise agency in higher education and that if organized well, higher education can enhance this agency. Chapter 4, “The Mechanism of Student Agency in Self-Formation Through Knowledge Engagement in Higher Education,” by Soyoung Lee, focuses on the academic aspect of student self-formation in higher education, specifically on students’ engagement with disciplinary knowledge. Drawing on both conceptual and empirical evidence, this chapter

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argues that students’ active self-reflexivity is crucial to their academic self-­ formation. Self-reflexivity is an important aspect of human agency and serves as a mediating mechanism in an individual’s interaction with the structure. The mechanism of students’ agency practice occurs through three major aspects of self-reflexivity: effort, self-criticism, and active conformity. The empirical component of the chapter demonstrates that changes occur in individual students’ reflexivity through their engagement with disciplinary knowledge. Knowledge not only enables and enhances student agency but acts as a language for students to have conversation with themselves and society. The term “disciplinary reflexivity” is proposed to refer to students’ individualization of disciplinary knowledge as a language for the conversation. The chapter concludes that academic self-­ formation is both the process and outcome of the agency–structure interaction, which is mediated by students’ evolving disciplinary reflexivity. Depicting Student Agency in International Higher Education (Part II) Part II of the book empirically focuses on student agency in the context of international higher education. This includes students studying abroad as well as international programs in domestic contexts. Chapter 5, “Student Agency and Becoming in Internationalized Programs in Vietnamese Universities,” by Phuong Minh Luong, Ly Thi Tran, and Huyen Thi Thanh Nguyen, draws on the concepts of human agency, intercultural adaptability, and becoming to empirically explore how students exercise agency, while navigating their intercultural adaptability and how they engage in the process of “becoming” in eight international programs in five Vietnamese universities. Using interview data from 80 participants, including Vietnamese and foreign students and university personnel, the authors find that students exercise their agency primarily in four domains: language development, cultural knowledge and communication, learning approaches, and social relationships. Compared with a local environment, a multicultural environment can more easily enable international students to exercise their agency and becoming. The chapter concludes by calling for coordinated pedagogical, institutional, and policy arrangements in and beyond higher education to better support students’ exercise of agency and becoming. Chapter 6, “Conceptualizing the Employability Agency of International Graduates,” by Thanh Pham, Denise Jackson, and Peter McIlveen,

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conceptualizes the employability agency for international students in higher education. It asks two major research questions: “What are the factors that influence international graduates to enact employability agency?” and “What are forms of agency that international graduates develop to negotiate employability?” In responding to these questions, the chapter critically engages with theoretical discussions and empirical insights on student agency and employability. It argues that although graduates’ employability trajectories differ, they all actively engage in their own career and life projects, thus highlighting the agency of graduates. The chapter concludes with the conceptualization of employability agency for international student graduates. This employability agency consists of four forms, namely essential need-responding agency, visa-navigating agency, strength-­ based agency, and relational identity-based agency, and is conditioned by five components, namely contextual structures, subjectivities, host country’s resources, home country’s resources, and agentic features and actions. Chapter 7, “The Role of Higher Education Institutions in Fostering Students’ Cosmopolitan Agency and Self-Formation,” by Kazuhiro Kudo, provides insights into how students develop cosmopolitan agency and self-­ form, and how higher education institutions could better support these processes. Drawing on conceptual discussions and empirical data collected from two Japanese universities, the chapter argues that “cosmopolitan agency and self-formation are cyclically augmented by intercultural interactions and cosmopolitan capital amid institutional affordances and constraints.” Specifically, students’ intercultural interactions rely on their cosmopolitan agency and contribute to their intercultural aspect of self-­ formation. In this process, students accumulate cosmopolitan capital. The dynamic interaction between cosmopolitan capital and institutional affordances/constraints either enables or disables students’ cosmopolitan agency. Simultaneously, students’ cosmopolitan agency can enhance institutional affordances through intercultural interactions. The chapter concludes by offering practical implications for institutional arrangements in higher education. Linking Student Agency in Higher Education with the Wider Society (Part III) Part III of the book extends beyond the confines of higher education, establishing a connection between student agency and the wider society.

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Chapter 8, “The Civic Aspect of Student Self-Formation in International Higher Education: Apprenticeship in New Worldviews,” by Yusuf Ikbal Oldac, explores the development of civic beliefs and attitudes among students studying abroad. The chapter starts by highlighting international students’ beyond-classroom activities and engagement. It argues that studying in a different country enables international students to navigate civic and societal cultures between their host and home countries. Drawing on Margaret Archer’s morphogenesis approach and empirical data from 50 interviews from an international comparative study, the chapter aims to unravel the inner mechanisms of international students’ apprenticeship in new worldviews as part of their civic self-formation. This chapter proposes a temporal framework to comprehend inner processes that occur during apprenticeship in new worldviews. The framework indicates that apprenticeship in new worldviews is a cyclical process involving feedback loops among three temporal stages: encountering the new worldview, interacting with the new worldview, and agential elaboration. Reflexivity is the mediating mechanism throughout the three stages. Chapter 9, “New Spaces for Agency in Doctoral Education: An Ecological Approach,” by Kelsey Inouye and Søren Bengtsen, focuses on doctoral education and explores how an ecological university can create spaces for agency, enabling doctoral researchers to develop their academic, social, and personal lives. This chapter begins by illustrating the evolving nature and purpose of PhD programs and indicating that doctoral education is no longer only for academic development. Acknowledging the growing complexity of PhD programs, this chapter advocates for an ecological understanding of agency that views PhD student agency within a wider and more intricate space instead of only within the institutional learning and curriculum space. Such a space should encompass diverse social and cultural realities and wider societal ecozones. The chapter further explores possible methods to expand spaces for PhD student agency. Four aspects emerging from the growing interconnectedness of doctoral education are explored to unearth new spaces and their expansion, including careers, doctoral writing, citizenship, and justice. The chapter concludes that the formation of PhD students and researchers extends beyond knowledge creation and scientific pursuits, reaching into societal and cultural realms. Collectively, the chapters in this book respond to the increasing interest in student agency and self-formation in higher education. They represent pioneering attempts to advance the conceptualization of these topics and

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illustrate practical examples across different countries. Specifically, to address the limitation of self-formation being restricted only to the literature on international students, the book provides in-depth and broad theoretical foundations for self-formation across disciplines, cultures, and local/international student statuses. It also collates scattered empirical findings on student agency and self-formation, examining these concepts in various contexts and circumstances. Finally, the book bridges the gap between psychological and sociological approaches to student agency and self-formation, including chapters that explore the meaning of self-­ formation at a broader social level beyond higher education. Disclosure  The authors have no special interest to disclose. Funding  Yusuf Ikbal Oldac is a Hong Kong Research Grants Council Postdoctoral Fellow, funded by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong.

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Merriam-Webster. (2023, September 29). Higher learning. https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/higher%20learning Newman, J. H. (1907). The idea of a university. Longmans. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M.  C. (2016). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754x-­1305490. Oldac, Y.  I. (2021). Self-formation and societal contribution: The case of Turkish international higher education graduates [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. The University of Oxford. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl. ethos.830506 Östling, J. (2018). Humboldt and the modern German university: An intellectual history (Olsson, Trans.). Lund University Press. Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students: A third decade of research (Vol. 2). Jossey-Bass, An Imprint of Wiley. Perry, W. G., Jr. (1999). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme (Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series). Jossey-Bass Publishers. Piketty, T. (2014). Human capital in the twenty-first century (A.  Goldhammer, Trans.). The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/1 0.4324/9780429498435-­9. Ploner, J., & Nada, C. (2020). International student migration and the postcolonial heritage of European higher education: Perspectives from Portugal and the UK. Higher Education, 80, 373–389. Raghuram, P., Breines, M.  R., & Gunter, A. (2020). Beyond# FeesMustFall: International students, fees and everyday agency in the era of decolonisation. Geoforum, 109, 95–105. Roth, M.  S. (2014). Beyond the university: Why liberal education matters. Yale University Press. Schartner, S. A. (2019). Intercultural transitions in higher education: International student adjustment and adaptation. Edinburgh University Press. Schlossberg, N. K. (1981). A model for analyzing human adaptation to transition. The Counseling Psychologist, 9(2), 2–18. Schneider, K. (2012). The subject-object transformations and ‘Bildung’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(3), 302–311. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1469-­5812.2010.00696.x Sen, A. (2000). Development as freedom. Development in Practice-Oxford-, 10(2), 258. Sjöström, J., & Eilks, I. (2020). The Bildung theory—From von Humboldt to Klafki and beyond. In B. Akpan & T. J. Kennedy (Eds.), Science education in theory and practice (pp.  55–67). Springer International Publishing. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­43620-­9_5

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Soong, H., Thi Tran, L., & Hoa Hiep, P. (2015). Being and becoming an intercultural doctoral student: Reflective autobiographical narratives. Reflective Practice, 16(4), 435–448. Tan, E. (2014). Human capital theory: A holistic criticism. Review of Educational Research, 84(3), 411–445. Tinto, V. (2012). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. University of Chicago press. Tomlinson, M. (2018). Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market. Higher Education, 75(4), 711–727. Tran, L. T. (2016). Mobility as ‘becoming’: A Bourdieuian analysis of the factors shaping international student mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1268–1289. Trowler, V. (2010). Student engagement literature review. The Higher Education Academy, 11(1), 1–15. Välimaa, J. (2019). The emergence of universities in the middle ages. In A history of Finnish higher education from the middle ages to the twenty-first century. Springer International Publishing. Volet, S., & Jones, C. (2012). Cultural transitions in higher education: Individual adaptation, transformation and engagement. In Transitions across schools and cultures (pp. 241–284). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., & Doughney, J. (2022). Challenging the skills fetish. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43(3), 475–494. Yang, L. (2022). Student formation in higher education: A comparison and combination of Confucian xiushen (self-cultivation) and Bildung. Higher Education, 83(5), 1163–1180. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-­021-­00735-­2 Yang, Y., & MacCallum, J. (2022). A three-dimensional multi-world framework for examining cross-cultural experiences of international doctoral students. Studies in Continuing Education, 44(3), 493–509. Yu, J. (2021). Caught in the middle? Chinese international students’ self-formation amid politics and pandemic. International Journal of Chinese Education, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/22125868211058911

PART I

Conceptualising Student Self-­Formation in Higher Education

CHAPTER 2

Antecedents of Student Self-Formation in Social Theory and Educational Philosophy: What Do They Tell Us About Structure and Agency? Simon Marginson

Introduction One of the main purposes of higher education, if not the most important, is the reflexive self-formation of students (Marginson, 2014, 2023). In higher education students monitor and develop themselves through engagement in knowledges and relational social experiences inside and beyond the classroom (Klemencic, 2023). Student self-formation depends on, and enhances, an epistemically rich student agency that is autonomous and reflexive and which students carry into the rest of their lives as

S. Marginson (*) Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_2

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self-­determining subjects. The potentials of self-formation are shaped by the extent of immersion in higher education (Bilic, 2022), and nuanced by socio-economic and cultural contexts, but in principle can be universalised. Self-formation is both a norm to be achieved and a description of variable existing practices. Student self-formation is an idea both old and new. Biesta (2009) refers to the ‘subjectification’ function of education, meaning the process whereby students emerge as self-determining persons. In educational philosophy and pedagogy the explicit focus on subjectification dates back at least as far back as Confucius (551–479 BCE) in the Spring and Autumn period in China, and to the Greeks and Romans in Western Europe, including Stoics, Cynics and Epicureans. It flourished in the eighteenth-­ century European Enlightenment as Bildung and was central to the educational thinking of Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, JH Newman and later John Dewey and the United States pragmatists. Student self-­ formation is also new in that it reflects and fosters a more modern kind of self-determination, in which there is greater scope for the agency of students themselves and less determination by authority or pedagogy than in the older educational forms. For example, self-formation now implies that the student/graduate ultimately determines her or his own personal and social values, rather than these being imposed by other-formation in learning. This shift in individuality, which has a common worldwide element and a multitude of cultural variations (e.g. for individualism in China see Yan, 2009; for self-making agency in globally diasporic communities see Appadurai, 2014), has a profound importance for the education of adults—young and old—in universities, colleges and other institutions of higher and tertiary education. Higher education has not fully grasped the impact of self-formation. The sector still works with old pedagogical assumptions; or notions of the potentials of students as other-determined by the institutional environment, as in the student experience literature; or relatively recent economic models that are nevertheless rooted, like the older kinds of pedagogy, in an era of more passive agents. Yet we now live in a different world. Anthony Giddens (1991) describes modern life as a never-ending reflexive project of the self (p. 32). Higher education has been central in the generalisation of this kind of self. Individuals with the capability and obligation to form themselves are both an outcome and a condition of the massification in higher education, a feature of society in all but the poorest

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countries. Students enrol in growing numbers across the world not only because advanced education is the gateway to occupations and social status, but because it offers cultural resources and techniques that enhance self-efficacy and growth (Cantwell et al., 2018). No doubt the neo-liberal trope of student-as-consumer and economic self-investor (Tomlinson, 2017; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005) plays to this ubiquitous self-making. However, homo economicus is an attenuated, bounded, basement-level kind of agency. How much power has the single consumer in a mass education market? More significantly, the neo-liberal consumer is essentially non-developmental in terms of self and identity. It scarcely connects with the evolving positive freedoms to be and do that are invoked by self-making modernity. Social theory has much to say about the potentials of personal agency and self-making (though it must be said that most educational research is little aware of this literature). Despite Giddens’s insight three decades ago it is a moot point as to whether theory anticipates social practice or largely just struggles to keep up. However, it is clear that at a time when the universal use of smartphones has made material the ‘i’ in personal identity, both social theory and practice are implicated in a more agentic individuality. The question that is less clear is whether agency now has more room to move in relation to the determining effects of structures: socio-economic, political, cultural and ideational. While the awesome power of networked communications has made personal individuality more visible and potentially more potent, the determining effects of social structures and forces also continue to be apparent; above all in the way that individual and family wealth calibrates many kinds of opportunity, the inherited authority of nation-states and the hierarchy of institutions, and the extension of colonial hierarchies into neo-colonial domination in higher education and elsewhere (Rizvi, 2019; Shahjahan & Edwards, 2022; Stein, 2022). What then is the relation between strongly reproduced social structures and evolving self-aware human agents? Are the larger potentials of agency stunted by structure: by steeper economic inequality, global cultural hegemony and stratifications of gender, race and geographic location (Marginson, 2022a)? Is the relation between structure and agency sometimes or always zero-sum? This chapter foregrounds intellectual resources for tackling these ontological questions. The chapter discusses old and new antecedents of higher education as student self-formation, critically reviewing the works of selected educational philosophers and social theorists. It focuses especially on how the

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different bodies of thought understand and position self-forming agents in the structure/agency relation (which is one of the central preoccupations of theoretical sociology). The discussion traverses a large terrain. A range of educational scholarship and theorisation, diverse and at times contradictory in other ways, has something to say about autonomous and reflexive student agency in higher education. The chapter seeks to open up various strands of thought rather than closing them. However, before reviewing the different strands it will further ground the notion of self-formation. Subjectification as Student Self-Formation What is meant by student self-formation and where does it sit in the missions of education? In a widely cited paper Biesta (2009) distinguishes three ‘functions’ of education which he calls ‘qualification, socialisation and subjectification’ (p.  33). Qualification refers to the provision of the knowledge, skills, understandings, dispositions and forms of judgement that enable students to ‘do something’, in an occupation, in citizenship and in meeting the challenges of life. Socialisation refers the preparation of students as ‘part of social, cultural and political “orders”’, including norms and values. In contrast, subjectification does not subordinate students to society, and it is about the ‘individuating’ effect of education, whereby students become self-realising subjects who make themselves and their lives. ‘Any education worthy of its name should always contribute to processes of subjectification that allow those being educated to become more autonomous and independent in their thinking and acting’ (pp.  40–41). Biesta suggests that subjectification is partly opposed to socialisation. The first is about bottom-up agency. The second entails formation from above. Subjectification can also be contrasted with objectification, as when graduates are reified as units of economic value in human capital theory, currently the most influential approach to the qualification function. As this suggests, Biesta’s three functions vary in the way that students are positioned in the relations between structure and agency. Qualification and socialisation bring prior social structures to bear on the agency-in-­ formation of students. Qualification often takes the form of learning pre-­ given vocational practices. Though professionals and skilled workers are fashioned as autonomous agents proactive in the workplace and (within limits) exercising critical thought, this is a regulated form of autonomy in

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which occupational practices and hierarchies and the routine economic signals which shape activity are taken as given. In both qualification and socialisation students engage with knowledges in higher education. This is another kind of pre-given social structure. Knowledges are akin to networked languages in form, both individualised and collective and continually evolving; and while they are more open to the altering power of individual agents that is, say, the economic system’s circulation of money capital, they install understandings, norms and values that are largely prior to each individual student. While socialisation via knowledge and vocational practices does not negate agency as such it constitutes the other-formation of students as agents. In contrast, the subjectification function, which is centred on emerging student agency in higher education, can be rendered unequivocally as a process of self-formation. Through the development of agentic capabilities that are not just autonomous but independent, students build the capacity to learn self-consciously and critically, to regulate their own other-­ formation: to absorb and re-interpret knowledge, values and behaviours, and, if they want, to reject what they have been given and devise their own. Subjectification is not necessarily self-formation, or entirely so, and in the history of education has often been patterned either partly or wholly in terms of top-down regulated forms of autonomy. The point is that there is potential for it to embody the modern kind of reflexive agency freedom. Within an overarching theorisation of purpose and value in higher education, Michael Tomlinson (2022) also discusses subjectification, though he uses differing terminology to that of Biesta (2009). Like Biesta, Tomlinson critiques valuations of higher education that focus on short-­ term financial returns, and performative measures of personal gain and institutional prestige, neglecting non-pecuniary goals and collective goods. He calls for ‘a broader conceptualisation of the benefits of higher education for individuals, showing its value and impact in many domains of graduate life’ including the personal, social and economic (p. 47). His domain of personal development approximates the subjectification function. Here Tomlinson draws on Amartya Sen (1985) to address ‘the relationship between value, selfhood and substantive freedom’ (Tomlinson, 2022, p.  47). Tomlinson identifies two ‘personal sources of value’ in higher education. First, ‘the role of knowledge and its relationship with personal gain’ (p. 53). Second, education’s role ‘in enhancing self-­identity, which some authors have referred to as a process of self-formation

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(Marginson, 2014), and others, such as Barnett (2017), have referred to as “dispositions”’, including, openness, the will to learn, critical thinking and resilience (Tomlinson, 2022, pp. 53–54). Tomlinson argues that the two elements of subjectification that he has identified—engagement in knowledge and enhancement of the self— ‘provide a set of resources upon which an individual can make purposive decisions about the course of their lives’ (Tomlinson, 2022, pp. 53–54). What Tomlinson (2022) calls ‘agential freedom’1 can be understood both as a means of student self-formation and as an outcome of it. ‘Agential freedom’ in graduates in turn underpins the contributions of higher education to social and economic life (p. 54). However, it is more explanatory to view self-formation as holistic rather than being confined to generic personal attributes as Tomlinson suggests, as if the formation of ‘dispositions’ and engagement in knowledge are two separate strands of self-­ development. Arguably, the imaginative engagement in knowledge is integral to the evolution of the student self. As shown in the study of sociology by Ashwin et al. (2014), when all goes well, disciplinary understandings of the natural world and human society become part of students’ mentalities. In the last decade, following Marginson (2014), the notion of student self-formation has become deployed to explain mobile student agency and its evolution, especially in studies of students who move between different cultural-linguistic zones (e.g. of many Tran, 2016; Ye & Edwards, 2017; Nguyen & Pennycook, 2018; Xu, 2018; Yu, 2021; Kudaibergenov, 2023). Many cross-border students experience sharp contrasts between on the one hand the evolving inner self, and on the other hand old and new social selves. There can be continuous practical challenges, frequent personal changes and heightened (if not hyper-active)  conscious  reflexivity. Self-­ formation, and awareness of self-formation, can be readily observed by researchers and often by the student subjects themselves. Does active and visible self-formation extend beyond the inner struggles of these cross-­ border mobile students to include local student transitions, academic learning and social relations? A smaller number of studies that cover both cross-border and local domestic students find that it does (e.g. Mili & Towers, 2022; Lee, 2021, in progress). Higher education as self-­formation is beginning to be recognised in mainstream higher education studies (e.g. Tomlinson, 2022, p. 53; Adams & Barnett, 2022, p. 13). 1

 Sen (1985) uses the term ‘agency freedom’ rather than ‘agential freedom’.

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It can be argued that the essential elements of higher education as self-­ formation are the autonomy of the learner, reflexive agency, and the will to learn, together with engagement with knowledge and with social relations and activities outside classrooms (Marginson, 2023). Self-formation rests on evolving autonomous persons with agency freedom (Sen, 1985), capable of self-directed and conscious action, who apply their will to their own objectives. Each person’s evolving sense of self and objectives, the ‘who I am’, ‘who I am becoming’ and ‘what I want to be’, is sustained by conscious reflexive agency in the inner self, the continuing processes of critical self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-criticism and self-­ regulation. Reflexive agency is at the heart of not just academic progression but of forming ideas, making things, building social relations and achieving a career. Higher education as self-formation also rests on the irreducible fact that while learning is conditioned by external structurally rich factors—by learner background and resources, by the intersections with higher education and other social sites, and by the institution, curriculum, teaching and learning—only the learner does the actual learning. The learner is not an empty vessel waiting to be filled. The learner is a person with a will, agency and a drive to learn. Otherwise there is no learning. Though the drive to learn can be triggered extrinsically, by the discipline of parents, the example of peers, the inspiration of teachers or the requirements of professional credentialing, there is an essential moment when the learner makes self-formation intrinsic. Self-formation in higher education is distinguished from self-formation at earlier levels of child development and education by the fact that autonomous agency has developed to the level of adults. It is also distinguished from self-formation in other social domains, in two respects: it can entail engagement in ‘powerful knowledge’ in the form of academic and professional disciplines (Young & Muller, 2013; Bernstein, 2000; Ashwin, 2020; Lee, 2021); and also in social experiences within higher education outside the classroom. As noted, knowledge is collective in form and a medium which engages students imaginatively in social relations; and engagement in knowledges can markedly expand the techniques and resources for working on oneself and taking the self into social communications. This offers an open potential for transformation, in that knowledge has no borders. Self-transformation in higher education is also enriched by sharing it with others inside and outside the classroom. Agentic self-formation in education is also an open process with a perpetual ‘element of unpredictability’ (Biesta, 2012, p.  585) that eludes

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formulaic programming (let alone the use of measures of student achievement). At best education can ‘create openings for subjectivity to emerge— openings that always manifest themselves as interruptions of the “normal” state of affairs’ (p.  589). Self-formation should not be sugar coated. Subjectification in education is never guaranteed. It depends on student focus and effort and that is not always enough. Structural conditions are manifestly unequal as will be discussed. Self-formation is endemically incomplete, fragmented and unstable. Much is hidden from the self-­ forming student: reflexive self-consciousness is always partial, disciplinary knowledge is by its nature unknown and personal trajectories always partly uncertain. Emirbayer and Mische (1998) remark on how agents can only focus on a small part of reality at any one time (p.  979). Their goals change, and their expectations of the future often fail and need ‘repair’ (p. 981). At times self-formation can be traumatic. Challenges to identity can trigger fear or despair (Matsunaga et al., 2021). Nevertheless, much of the possibility of higher education is here: its potential to alter persons and to change societies. Open, contingent, multiple, potentially transformative self-formation lends itself to longitudinal research, and to comparisons of the trajectories of students with differing social origins and in varying cultural contexts. From here the chapter proceeds as follows. First, it reviews older antecedents of self-formation, notably Confucian self-cultivation, Bildung and Kant, and American pragmatism. Then it reviews a selection of more contemporary ideas about autopoietic selves (i.e. mentalities that grow themselves through their own efforts) and their interactions with social structures, from Lev Vygotsky to Sen, Giddens, Margaret Archer and Michel Foucault. The chapter works mostly with social theory, sociology and educational philosophy. Given space constraints the discussion has not been extended to psychology after Vygotsky’s social psychology (but see Lee, 2021). The chapter’s mission is essentially conceptual, though always with an eye on the real world. It does not explore the implications of student self-formation for practical pedagogy, curricula, student services, institutional organisation and governance. These are all important matters but require additional and separate treatment. Self-Formation and Related Literatures Despite its many links to educational theory and practice past and present, self-formation is not currently the dominant or even a mainstream

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understanding of the student in higher education. Mainstream approaches place larger emphasis on the other formation of students, by teachers, institutions or economic market forces. They are less focused on subjectification and self-determining agency as intrinsic goals. But dominant ideas are not always right, and no one is obliged to adopt them just because they are dominant—and in this case, following the old paths would inhibit the theoretical and empirical potentials of the new. The chapter does not much work with higher education studies literature on teaching and learning. This is only partly because the bulk of the teaching and learning studies understand higher education primarily through the lens of teaching not student self-development. By no means all of the teaching and learning literature is so readily dismissed. There are numerous cross-overs with the self-formation perspective, for example the Ashwin et  al. (2014) paper referenced in the chapter. A review of the teaching and learning literature through the lens of student self-formation would be salutary. This is a project for the future. Such a review is not attempted here, because of the scale of the undertaking, and because of the logic of sequencing. At this stage the prior need is to ground self-­ formation and to hone its lens. The literatures on student engagement and the student experience, primarily generated in United States’ higher education where the student is modelled as an agent in a market of competing institutions, are further removed from the self-formation perspective in this chapter. Though conditions created by institutional policy and servicing affect the potentials of self-formation they do not directly determine the mental life of students. The downplaying of autonomous student agency in these literatures is deeply problematic (Klemencic, 2015), and the specifically formative effects of student immersion in disciplinary knowledge tend to be lost amid the emphasis on generic institutional policies and strategies. Again, a fuller comparison between the self-formation approach, and the student engagement and student experience research, would be salutary, but is too large to be attempted within the chapter. A longer discussion would expand on different potentials for empirical research using the self-formation lens. As noted, empirical research has hitherto developed primarily in relation to mobile students. There are many other possible lines of research, including academic self-formation (see Lee, 2021, in progress), self-formation through social relations, structured activities and experiences outside the classroom; individual and collective self-formation of graduate cohorts; the implications of the

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self-formation of individual graduates for the societies they enter; and so on. A feature of all such self-formation research is that the empirical bar is high—it requires deep insight into the inner mental lives of students and graduates, preferably on a longitudinal basis, which is much more challenging than, say, collecting evidence on graduate earnings. In the development of methods for researching student self-formation, prior work in anthropology and qualitative sociology (e.g. Archer, 2003 on the ‘inner conversation’), and the psychological inquiries of Ryan and Deci (2000), Bandura (1986) and others, all have potentially fruitful ideas to offer.

Older Antecedents of Self-Formation Student self-formation has roots in pre-dynastic China and in the Greek and Roman world. Arguably the key moment in Chinese civilisation was the span from Confucius (551–479 BCE) and Mencius (372–289 BCE) which has patterned inner thought and social relations since then, so that traditional Confucian self-cultivation is also a modern practice. The Greek and Roman roots also matter and will be discussed below in relation to Foucault’s ideas about self-made autonomy. Arguably, though, in Western self-formation in education, the key moment is much later, with Kant and Bildung in the Enlightenment. This also remains influential, though not a fundamental to social culture as is Confucian self-cultivation. Confucian Self-Cultivation Weiming Tu (2013) states that ‘the great strength of modern East Asia is its … self-definition as a learning civilization’. This is ‘the most precious legacy of Confucian humanism’ (p. 334). For Guoping Zhao and Zongyi Deng (2016), ‘person-making is at the heart of the Confucian heritage of educational thinking’. In this heritage ‘it has long been held that self-­ cultivation is the precondition’ for developing ‘the critical and creative potential of the individual and enabling him or her to fulfil social responsibilities and functions’ (pp. 2–3). Zhao and Biesta (2011) state that the Confucian self is not a finished entity but is always becoming. The Confucian learner is engaged in a continuing and never finished process of self-perfection (p. 13), not just in formal education but in social relations (p.  3). Self-perfection includes learning how to conduct oneself. ‘Confucianism presents a view of identity and the self that is explicitly informed by moral and ethical dimensions’ (p. 9).

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In the Confucian tradition ‘learning is the most important thing in life, it is life’s purpose’ (Li, 2012, p. 14). Here knowledge is seen as essential not so much as a source of utilitarian benefits, though these are important, but as a means of self-cultivation in the journey towards perfection. Knowledge is a medium for working on oneself in the reflexive processes of self-monitoring, self-criticism and improvement. Here both breadth and depth of knowledge are important. The Sinic (Chinese civilisational) tradition also emphasises the contribution of knowledge to society (Li, 2003, p. 265; Hayhoe & Liu, 2010). ‘Autonomy and personal agency’ are integral to Sinic learning (Li, 2012, p. 132). The Confucian Analects establish a clear space for the individual in moral self-cultivation. Li (2006, p.  483) cites Saari (1990), in whose studies Chinese children ‘developed an “inner self” in order to retain a private space of their own’. At the same time, the autonomous Chinese individual is always firmly contained in society. She/he is nested in the successively larger settings of family, local community, state/society and tianxia, all under heaven, which in its largest sense embodies a commitment to the good of all, the global common good (Marginson & Yang, 2022; Yang et al., 2022). The Sinic term ren (loosely, ‘humanity’) is at the heart of Sinic self-formation and ren exists in relationships. Ren combines the words for ‘two’ and ‘human being’. For Qi Sun (2008) the Confucian view of self has three aspects: the ‘I’ undivided with the universe, the ‘I’ in unity with other humans, and the wholeness of ‘I’ with self that enables the work of the self on the self (Zhao & Biesta, 2011, p. 11). Far from society being opposed to or the suppressor of the individual, the Sinic self is emphatically defined as both a social self and an inner self at the core of the autopoiesis. At the same time the expanding scales of social relations, from immediate family up to nation and world, also constitute a structural succession of authorities, rules, economic signals and incentives, discourses and ideologies that combine to colonise the contents of agency. The reflexive Sinic inner self is acutely aware of social expectations and continually absorbed in the responsibility to pilot a way through. Free will resides in zhi, the inner self and liang-zhi is the centred agency that makes moral judgements and determines action (Cheng, 2009), mediating between the private inner self and the outer social self. Persons are free to determine their will but must refrain from enacting that will if there are negative social consequences. Self-determination is absolute but social self-realisation is not. Practising free will is not seen as an absolute right but as a good thing among good things (Chan, 2013).

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Nevertheless, however much the Confucian individual is other-formed in day-to-day social conduct, she/he is reflexively conscious and works within on self-perfection. The inner self always carries the potential to choose which social path to follow; and under some circumstances, particularly in times of difference, alterity and fracture, as in cross-border education, to make a new path. The key here, as with all forms of reflexivity, is the double or multiple coding of the self, which has long been recognised in Chinese scholarship (e.g. neo-Confucianism: Chang, 2015). Cheng (2009) notes that ‘self-cultivation (xiuji or xiushen) in Confucianism implies a self-reflective understanding of the self’; a self that grows ‘in relation to its capabilities’ and value orientations. The self is ‘always engaged in time and the world’. Yet the self is also ‘time-transcendent’ and reflects on itself in the world (p. 125). ‘There are two sides of the self, the temporal and the transcendent, the engaged and the reflective’ which ‘form two aspects of the same self’ (p. 126). This self is also ‘an open self, which can play double roles of creativity and receptivity’ (p. 129). When Sinic students move from a village in the countryside to a big city university, and still more when they move across national and cultural borders for education, this multiplies the mirrors of reflexivity and the potentials of the imagination. The deep well-springs of Sinic self-formation are apparent in the Sinic capacity for immersion in a new culture and associations without ceasing to be immersed in the birth family and culture. In short, in the double structure of outer/inner the self acquires not only identity but also its ‘power for self-transformation’ (Cheng, 2009, p. 126). In the Chinese civilisational zone education is seen as potentially universal, as was argued especially by Mencius. Though individual abilities are unevenly distributed, all can learn and succeed through hard work. The drive to learn is inculcated from a very early age. ‘The starting point for Chinese people’s learning affect is establishing one’s will (lizhi), commitment to learning’ (Li, 2012, p.  163) with the whole ‘heart and mind’ (p. 164), often by the age of six or seven years and primarily in the home not the school. Young children learn that ‘seeking knowledge requires resolve, diligence, endurance of hardship, steadfastness, concentration, and humility’ (p. 14). The concept of hao-xue-xin (passion for learning) is well understood by nearly all Chinese learners. Li (2003) finds that when compared to US college students, Chinese students exhibit a stronger ‘directive force’ in relation to learning tasks (pp. 258, 261–262). Universal Sinic self-cultivation in education also typically serves the state. The Imperial dynasties channelled self-cultivation into training in official

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academies and selection for the state bureaucracy, and the leading universities still play this role. Amid the focus on social status and earnings, the instrumental reading of higher education prevalent in China as in Euro-­ America (Cheng & Yang, 2015), the equation of higher education with public duty retains force and is widely felt (Tian & Liu, 2019), more so than in the West. The foregoing account suggests that the keys to Confucian agency are the double-coding of the inner and outer self, the flexibility in moving between different selves and managing their multiplicity, and the regulatory role of the autonomous agentic centre where the person’s will is exercised and pathways are shaped. These three aspects of agency are not unique to Chinese civilisation. Notions of social relations and the state differ between the civilisational zones, but while the three aspects vary between different contexts they are always present and a part of education. In higher education as distinct from earlier child formation, the double-­ coded self and the agentic centre have become more fully established. Kant, Bildung and the Pragmatists One translation of the German Enlightenment idea ‘Bildung’ is ‘self-­ formation’. Others are ‘development’ and ‘inner cultivation’ (Taylor, 2017, p. 3; Siljander & Sutinen, 2012, p. 2). Self-formation in Kant’s idea of Enlightenment is ‘man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage through the exercise of his own understanding … without direction from another’ (Kant, 1992, p. 90). Autonomous and reflexive agency is foundational to Bildung. Bildung does not occur by itself. Kant sees education as ‘the crucial element for evolving humanity, which takes its place in every individual, but also on the collective level’ (Kivela, 2012, pp. 59–60). Through education humans develop their ‘rational capacities so that they became capable of independent judgment’, which is ‘the basis for agentic and autonomous action’ (Biesta & Tedder, 2007, p. 133). The Kantian aim of education is an active autonomous rational subject who ‘lives in the public sphere among other individual beings’ and uses reason in a public way (Kivela, 2012, p. 59; Kontio, 2012, p. 33). Education forms citizens for emergent civil society (Biesta, 2002a, p.  345). Through particular knowledge in local settings, students come to understand the general and enduring (Biesta, 2002b, p.  379). The universal curriculum of Bildung also

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promises escape from the limiting effects of social background. The pre-­ structured curriculum offers agency an exit from other social structures. Bildung resembles Confucian self-cultivation as a holistic project in which systematic learning practices and learned reflexivity are joined to a strong moral dimension. In contrast with Confucianism, however, in Bildung agency freedom is seen as prior to society (Taylor, 2017, p. 5), and society is understood as civil society rather than the state. The ‘release from self-incurred tutelage’ is release from structuring by the state. Kant wants people to learn to think independently without guidance from the authorities (Kivela, 2012, p. 59). Bildung’s Enlightenment-era promise of liberation from inherited feudal power structures, paralleling Adam Smith’s economic argument in The Wealth of Nations, retains its appeal in Euro-America. It is endorsed by Foucault (2010) in his commentary on Kant (p. 26). Foucault’s own work of the self on the self resonates with Bildung, as he notes (Foucault, 2005, p. 61). Nevertheless, as with Confucianism in China, self-formation in Bildung has often been turned to nation-building and the education of the national elite. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s blueprint for the University of Berlin is a formative curriculum broad and deep, grounded in history, classical languages and literature, linguistics, science and research. Von Humboldt places the University wholly at the service of the state, albeit with institutional autonomy and the freedom to learn and to teach. It is only a little ironic that now, across the world, academic faculty advance their claim to freedom from state coercion by invoking the idea of the Humboldtian university (Siljander & Sutinen, 2012, p. 15); though they mostly give less attention to Lernfreiheit, which was Humboldt’s agency freedom of the self-forming student. Like Confucian self-cultivation Bildung implies an open-ended process of becoming, an evolving human potential in which perfection is never achieved and teaching and learning cannot be exhaustively defined in terms of cause and effect. Bildung opens new horizons as it proceeds, with an ‘an open independent space’ separate from teaching in which the self-­ forming learner’s educability continually expands (Siljander, 2012, pp. 94, 96). Bildung’s vision of educational subjects with agency who are conditioned by context, and who take their educated citizenship to the world, retains influence, though its advocates now emphasise, more than did their predecessors, respect for difference and diversity (Taylor, 2017, pp. 3, 7). Both Bildung and Confucian self-cultivation are premised on the relation of the individual and social, but each configures this relation in a

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distinctive way. Bildung’s individual is not embedded in concentric relational circles. Like most Western thought it momentarily imagines an abstract individual separated from the social and the state; then it moves to construct the individual/society relation as a dialectical process whereby, as Kivela (2012) states in respect of Fichte’s notion of Bildung, ‘self-­ consciousness and interpersonal relations emerge only simultaneously’ (p. 78). Yet though Bildung’s social builds on the base of the prior individual, perhaps the social scaffolding could be dismantled without losing the essence of Bildung. The idea of civil society is more abstract than is the local domain of learning. Von Humboldt is one thinker whose take on Bildung appears lopsided and overly individualistic (Konrad, 2012, p. 120). Some contemporary advocates of Bildung now argue that education should enhance its focus on interdependent social relations (Taylor, 2017, pp. 13–14; Zhao & Biesta, 2011, p. 6). In one respect Immanuel Kant and Bildung offer a more open ontology than does Confucian self-cultivation. As noted, Bildung fosters critically minded autonomous persons who decide matters for themselves. Working together these self-regulating persons are to lead a continuing process of modernisation as transformation, in which no social hierarchies and reproduced norms can be taken for granted. This is Biesta’s qualification function driven by a highly agentic kind of subjectification. Yet all is not what it seems. Kant also wants to programme his free graduates. He knows how they will be socialised and hence what kind of people they will become. He has no reservations about pedagogical other-formation. Kant (1982) shapes an explicit paradox out of teaching learners to form themselves: ‘How do I cultivate freedom by coercion?’ (p. 711. See also the discussion in Kivela, 2012, pp. 66–68). There might be two reasons for this presumptive limitation of freedom in classic Bildung. In the first instance the idea was shaped for children at school not adults in higher education. Second and fundamentally, Enlightenment educators believed that they understood the essence of human nature—this was a key trope in their rejection of feudal authority—and hence believed that they could structure students so as to release this true nature. We now know this is not only impossible but highly undesirable. It divides the world into people who approximate the ideal human and people who do not. Most of the political pathologies of the twentieth century were driven by particular notions of the ideal human person (Biesta, 2012, p. 587). This suggests that is better to foster a more genuinely open kind of subjectification, in which the potentials of agency

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are not subject to pre-setting and limitation on the basis of an ideal person. Arguably, the democratic path is the formation of graduates who consciously make their own life trajectories while respecting the right of others to do the same. This suggests a post-Bildung subjectification in which there is a larger emphasis on reflexive self-formation. The American pragmatists, including John Dewey and G.H.  Mead, agreed with the exponents of Bildung that education’s purpose is the formation of the free autonomous self and this contributes to social formation. For Dewey (1927), the terms ‘social’ and ‘individual’ are ‘hopelessly ambiguous’ but only when they are placed in antithesis (p. 186). It is like the relationship between the alphabet and the individual letters: each cannot be imagined without the other (which is not to say that one determines the other or that they are identical). Arguably Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) is a theory of Bildung, especially where he explores self-discipline. The pragmatists gave self-formation their own twist. Their category was ‘growth’. They saw education as proceeding via inquiry and experience, in natural and cultural environments, through shared language, learned reflexivity and harmony with the environment (Vakeva, 2012). This learning through nature and experience, and idea of lifelong growth, also resonated with Confucian learning. Mead sees individual self-­ formation in social exchange via language. Individuals create shared meanings or solve problems, triggering reflection (Siljander & Sutinen, 2012, pp. 6, 11, 16; Biesta, 2012, p. 248). However, Mead’s conception of the self is critiqued by Archer (2003) as ‘over-social’ in that the private domain is emptied out. This negates the ‘inner conversation’ between private and social selves on which reflexivity turns (pp. 78–92; see below). Arguably, each of Confucian learning, Bildung and the pragmatists incorporate most of the above-listed elements of higher education as self-­ formation, though with varying emphases. Each fosters autonomous reflexivity, the work of the self on the self and engagement in knowledge. The will to learn is emphasised more strongly in Confucianism than in Bildung and pragmatism (Li, 2003, p. 263; Hayhoe, 2017, p. 7). Arguably, all three leave the door wide open to other-formation of core values. As all three of these antecedent schools of thought see it, higher education should be structured by ideational norms. At key moments subjectification is subordinated to socialisation. This weaker notion of self-making in the world limits the scope of creative reflexivity. Still, as noted Bildung’s central goal is an autonomous person, and it fosters a space for independent learning separate from the teacher, while recent interpretations of

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pragmatism have partly shifted the balance from teacher activity to self-­ regulation by the self-forming learner (Kivela et  al., 2012, p.  308). Confucian education is the most radical in developing the reflexive will but also conservative in that it is the least likely to imagine an emergent individual agency that is ontologically separable from pre-given social structures. Here, in different ways, the psychology of Vygotsky (1978) and the sociology of Archer (1995, 2000, 2003) provide a more enabling basis for agency by materially distinguishing between social structure and the agency of persons.

More Contemporary Antecedents The domain of subjectivity in social theory and sociology is vast. The next section focuses on Sen, Vygotsky, Giddens, Archer and Foucault. It may seem odd to include the early Soviet psychologist Vygotsky as a contemporary, given that he worked between 1925 and 1934, at the same time as Dewey though over a much briefer span, but Vygotsky’s socially inflected empirical psychology retains a distinctive relevance in the discussion of structure and agency, while the impact of his contemporary psychologists in the West, such as Piaget, has fallen away. The chapter will not review the considerable further literature in psychology relevant to theorisation of student agency, such as studies of self-determination (e.g. Ryan & Deci, 2000) and reflexive agency in social settings (e.g. Bandura, 1986, 1993). These works are explored in the study of academic self-formation by Soyoung Lee (2021, in progress). Amartya Sen and Agency Freedom In ‘Well-being, agency and freedom’ Sen (1985) identifies three interacting components of freedom. First, the freedom of the individual from external threat, coercion or constraint. Sen calls this ‘control freedom’ and it roughly corresponds to negative freedom in Isaiah Berlin (1969). Second, freedom as the capacity of the individual to act, which depends on capabilities and resources, and on social arrangements that enable people to implement their choices. Sen calls this ‘effective freedom’ and ‘freedom as power’; Berlin calls it ‘positive freedom’. Third, there is ‘agency freedom’. This is ‘what the person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’ whether or not those goals are assessed in terms of external criteria as well (Sen, 1985, p. 203).

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This is the centred active human will, the self of conscious reflection and action. As Tomlinson (2022) notes, agency freedom moves beyond utilitarian economic advantage—though it may include that—to take in virtue, status, dignity, family, friends, making things, satisfying work, the realisation of forms of life and shared goods as well as individual goods. The three elements of freedom are interdependent. Control and effective freedom are defensive and proactive moments of agency freedom. Agency freedom is about determining the course of one’s life, though under conditions that no one can fully control. It is secured when people have the ‘capabilities’ to lead the life they value. Capabilities ‘depend on the nature of the social arrangements, which can be crucial for individual freedoms’ (Sen, 1999, p. 288), including income, education and health. Sen emphasises the shaping role of socio-economic and political structures. The enabling conditions of agency freedom are distributed unevenly. Some people have no access to them. The potential for agency freedom is not wholly negated by hierarchies of power and wealth but is calibrated by them. In exploring the potential to widen the space of freedom, Sen (1999) urges that political and human rights provide a more generative starting point than does economic prosperity per se. Prosperity without political agency does not necessarily lead to expanded agency freedom, while democratic agency enhances the prospect of both the elevation of economic conditions and a more just distribution of economic resources. This suggests that when subjectification in higher education is rendered as student self-formation, it is significant for economic and social development, just as is the qualification function. Lev Vygotsky’s Socially Embedded Self But where do the active will and centring self come from? Are they wholly patterned by prior social structures or is there an element of separated existence? Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) studies of child development show how self-formation begins, demonstrating an empirical basis for both the separation and inter-dependence of social structuring and inner-driven agency. Vygotsky finds that proactive agency is hard-wired into the infant, like the desire for food. However, subjectification must pass through the loop of the speech community. The infant reaches out, smiles and draws adults into speech exchange, first with noises and then words. Through language the child establishes a social identity and capability while patterning her/ his inner mentality. Children learn to work with and on their own minds

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in a conscious way. ‘An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Each function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level’ (Vygotsky, 1986, p. 36, emphasis in the original; Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57). The child’s behaviour is neither solely called forth by external stimuli nor solely governed from within (Bakhurst, 2009, p.  199). The self-formation of the child is a social process of individuation. So it continues through life. Again, the individual and society are each unimaginable without the other. Yet individual agency and social structure also are distinct in their origins, their trajectories,  their materiality. The one is not a simple function of the other. As the child develops, she/he continues to need the assistance of adults in learning. Vygotsky (1978) refers to the ‘zone of proximal development’, the difference between what students can understand unaided and what they can achieve with the help of teaching (p.  86). Arguably, this continues in higher education, where the knowledges structured by particular disciplines constitute other worlds that are largely unknown to students. In this adult zone of proximal development the teacher in higher education is an indispensable gateway. Adult students who have self-­ determining agency still need help in their engagements with knowledge. Vygotsky also explains how persons deliberately use elements in their natural and social environments to change themselves. They mediate their own behaviour by using externalised ‘artefacts’ that prompt or modulate action. Vygotsky’s simple example of mediation is when a person ties a knot in a handkerchief to remind her/him to do something. These artefacts take two forms: tools that are used in transforming the natural world; and importantly, internally oriented signs that are ‘a means of internal activity aimed at mastering oneself’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 55). These signs can include ‘language, various systems for counting, mnemonic techniques, algebraic symbol systems, works of art, writing, diagrams, maps and mechanical drawings’ (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 137). To this list, disciplinary knowledge, the curriculum, scientific equipment, computer hardware and software in higher education can be added. In other words, like other persons student agents consciously create, utilise or transform phenomena so as to change their own agentic potentials and scope for action. This enables them to modify their pre-given structural conditions. By consciously changing their own agency in this manner they are able to alter the potentials of agency/structure relations.

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There are limits to this. Individuals are not all powerful: they cannot use tools or signs to freely transform social structures at will, changing their possibilities as they want. But agency is not locked by structure. There is room to move in responding to structure. Further, as well as structure determining agency, there is scope for agents to modify the materiality of structure, though the causal flows are not equivalent or symmetrical  Anthony Giddens’s Structural Dualism In contrast, Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration ties agency and structure closely together on the basis of symmetry. His ‘structural dualism’ defines them as interdependent halves of an identity. For Giddens both agency and structure have causal powers. Agents are reflexive and have capabilities, intentions and knowledge (Giddens, 1984, pp. 9, 15, 281). Structures consist of rules that are primarily constraining and resources that are primarily enabling of human action. ‘The most important aspect’ of structure is the rules and resources that govern the situated activities of human agents and are ‘recursively involved in institutions’ (p. 24). The institutionalisation of structure in social systems establishes a reproductive ‘solidity’ across space and time (p. 25). Structuration is the process whereby systems are produced and sustained in space-time. Structure is the outcome of the actions of a myriad of agents, but it stretches beyond the life trajectory of any individual agent, while the actions of all agents are framed by it. People make society but at the same time are patterned by social structures and continually reproduce them within the terms of structural rules and resources (p. 19). The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality. According to the notion of duality of structure, the structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise. (Giddens, 1984, p. 25)

While structure precedes agency, the agency and structure converge in space-time in a single system. Inescapably, that makes structure primary in relation to agency. The vision is also profoundly reproductive and tends towards a system in equilibrium. ‘Routinised practices are the prime expression of the duality of structure in respect of the continuity of social

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life.’ Agents gain from this ‘a sense of ontological security’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 282). As Giddens sees it the convergence of structure and agency is achieved by a mechanism similar to Bourdieu’s habitus. ‘Structure is not “external” to individuals’, he states. ‘As memory traces, and as institutionalised in social practices, it is in a certain sense more “internal” than exterior to their activities.’ Giddens relies in part on an assumption about the content of the unconscious which is difficult empirically verify. How then do agents change their stable behaviours? Here Giddens places more emphasis on unintended consequences and accidental deviations, perhaps analogous to evolutionary mutations, than on conscious innovations. The implications for higher education are that the potentials of agentic self-formation are always regulated by social structures; socialisation and subjectification converge; and self-forming student agents follow paths that reproduce the social order. While the last is probably correct, most of the time, Giddens’s ontological closure is unconvincing. There is insufficient space for unevenness, disequilibria, multiplicity and individual and social transformation (Marginson, 2022b), for example, the changes experienced by cross-border students. Which of their multiple social orders are they fated to reproduce in this stable and unitary fashion? Margaret Archer’s Ontological Solution More directly than Vygotsky, and in counter to Giddens, Archer (1995) shows that while structure and agency frequently interconnect they are also separated and non-identical. Structure and agency constitute not a ‘structural duality’ as in Giddens (1984) but what Archer (1995) calls an ‘analytical dualism’. This frees up space for the evolution of agency. Archer grounds this theorisation in material terms through her interview-based studies of the double-coded self, inner consciousness and especially of what she calls the ongoing ‘inner conversations’ of all persons between their social selves and private selves (Archer, 2003). Archer began her career as a sociologist of education and she is always mindful of the determining power of social and cultural causation. Her notion of ‘structure’ includes economic, social, political, cultural and ideational elements: the last refers to knowledges, discourses, ideologies and the artefacts of their expression. Humans can modify and interpret structures, individually and collectively, but cannot abolish those structures. However pre-given structures do not determine the nature and potentials of agency in a linear fashion. This is because the agency of persons is

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ontologically distinct from social structure. Social structures pre-exist human agents. Structure and agency are ‘separable’ in time (Archer, 1995, p. 70) and constitute different levels of a ‘stratified social reality’ (p. 110). Both structure and agency are always changing, ‘emergent’ (Sayer, 2000). Crucially, this means ‘people are not puppets of structures because they have their own emergent properties’ (Archer, 1995, p. 71). Hence students, like other persons, ‘are capable of resisting, repudiating, suspending or circumventing structural and cultural tendencies, in ways which are unpredictable because of their creative powers as human beings’ (p. 195). Agency has an irreducible autonomy. It is both determined and not determined by structure. ‘We are simultaneously free and constructed and we also have some awareness of it’ (Archer, 1995, p. 2). One sign of the autonomy of agency is that different people have varied responses to the same conditions (p. 70). Interactions between structure and agency are open, fluctuating and contextual. While social structures have obvious power to shape lives, Archer notes also the ‘causal powers’ of agents. ‘People can reflect on their social context, and act reflexively towards it, individually or collectively’ (Archer, 2000, p. 308). These powers are conditioned by but not determined by social structures. What matters is how agents respond to structure, which is affected by the resources and social identities they can access. Again, as with Sen, the potentials of agency are mediated by but not absolutely determined by prior inequalities (pp. 10, 269; Archer, 2003, p. 131). Archer explores the conditions in which collective agency is advanced. The argument is convincing. The fact that structure and agency are separable is key to understanding the potentials of student self-formation. Agency does not freewheel without regard for structure but nor is it locked in, as Vygotsky also shows. Archer contrasts her position with that of Giddens. In Giddens’s theorisation of an interdependent yin and yang dialectic of structure and agency, they are simultaneous in time and must be ultimately identical (Archer, 1995, pp. 93–98). For Giddens structure is an inescapable trap. In the old argument between free will and determinism he comes down on the side of structurally determined fate despite his best efforts. In contrast, for Archer both free will and determinism apply. It is the only feasible position. Rather than being patterned by regularity in the manner of an imagined social law, the intersections between structure and agency are contextualised and contingent, multiple and continually changing. Archer’s open social realist ontology, which is akin to that of critical realism (e.g. Sayer, 2000), recalls Doreen Massey’s account

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of heterogeneous ever-emergent agentic trajectories and social relations in For Space (2005). However, it is Archer’s work on inner agency which has most to say to researchers of self-formation. As with Confucianism, Archer’s self is double-­coded as inner/outer and transcendent/in time, though Archer’s self has more room to move in relation to exterior social determination than does the Confucian self. She distinguishes between the continuous sense of self with expectations and responsibilities, the inner ‘private consciousness’ which she sees as a universal human property, and the socially active self with its ever-changing identity amid encounters in the world (Archer, 1995, pp. 282–283). Archer focuses on the conscious mind. The unconscious does not have the same explanatory power as in Giddens. The core private self—roughly corresponding to Sen’s centralising agency, Vygotsky’s inner mentality and the zhi of Confucianism—regulates conduct, resolves the dilemmas of social selves and determines personal paths. Archer stresses ‘the relative autonomy, pre-existence and causal efficacy of human persons in relation to social selves’ (p.  285). She describes the ongoing ‘inner conversation’ between the social and private selves, the ‘rich inner life of reflection upon reality’ in which ‘we give shape to our lives’ (Archer, 2000, pp. 9–10), in continuous self-evaluation ‘like a conscience’ (Archer, 2003, pp. 26, 32, 73). Hence for Archer individual agency is both socially embedded and socially separated (as Vygotsky also shows). The self is both active in the world and actively reflecting on self-and-the-world. This is the basis for student reflexivity, as all reflexivity: the double-coded self, the facing mirrors coupled together by a singular gaze. Self-reflection is an emergent power, neither pre-given nor the gift of society, that is continually formed through daily life in the world (Archer, 2000, p. 8). This idea of continuing social practice as the source of evolving mentality parallels Dewey’s (1916) learning through ‘experience’. For many students this describes the higher education years: a rapidly flickering and turning succession of experiences and reflections. The evolving sense of ‘who I am’, ‘who I am becoming’ and ‘what I want to be’ are sustained by continuing monitoring of the social self, self-­ criticism, self-regulation and self-transformation. Reflexivity is at the heart of not just personal growth through learning and experience but making social relations and building careers. Reflexivity sustains a virtuous circle. Education fosters reflexive agency, which in turn facilitates subjectification as self-formation, augmenting and complexifying agency. At the same time

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reflexive agency also requires continuous work by the self, as is explicitly recognised in Confucian learning. ‘Self-knowledge is something that we produce internally and dialogically; it is not something that we discover “lying inside us”’ (p. 103). Archer (2003) studies the inner conversation of 20 individuals. The degree of consciousness and complexity varied between people and also changed over time. In the case of one interviewee the inner conversation was little developed and this was a lifelong disadvantage. Archer’s (2003) ethnographic methods, based on extended and longitudinal interviews, could be fruitfully applied in studies of students in the process of self-formation. Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (1998) also develop the potentials of longitudinal research of agentic trajectories. They argue that ‘the key to grasping the dynamic possibilities of human agency is to view it as composed of variable and changing orientations within the flow of time’ (p. 964). In their theorisation, people move between an ‘iterational’ reading of the lessons of the past and a ‘projective’ imagining of alternate and conflicting possibilities in the future, drawing past and the future together ‘within the contingencies of the moment’ in the present using their ‘practical-­evaluative capacity’ (p. 962). Moving between these three temporal orientations—which can be understood as mental ‘artefacts’ in Vygotsky’s sense—can enlarge the scope of agency. For Emirbayer and Mische, as with Confucian self-cultivation, Vygotsky and Archer, agency is simultaneously both social-relational and inner-relational. It is ‘dialogic’ within the self (pp. 973–974), as in Archer’s inner conversation. Like Archer, Emirbayer and Mische (1998) criticise theorisations of ‘the interpenetration of structure and agency’ such as Giddens’s theory of structuration, and the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Giddens and Bourdieu imagine ‘pre-conscious’ social routinisation in which the past is reproduced in the future (p.  978). They evade the abstract individualism of rational choice theory only to become too ‘tightly bound to structure’ (pp. 962–963). They do not sufficiently distinguish ‘agency as an analytical category in its own right’. They see greater freedom as possible, but underplay conscious reflexivity, the potential for reappraisal of the past and the creation of ‘new possibilities for thought and action’ in the future (pp. 983–984). This does not mean that agency is all powerful. Single individuals do not move structural mountains and for social groups structural change is a long game except at rare moments. Lesser changes are more readily within reach. Emirbayer and Mische (1998) find that agents can alter ‘the

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structural environments of action’ in small ways and ‘with unforeseen outcomes’ (p. 964). Emirbayer’s and Mische’s framework has often been used to study agency in education (e.g. Biesta & Tedder, 2007, pp. 134–139). Brotherhood (2020) tracks the migration trajectories of cross-border students in England and Japan. The students’ sense of self and always provisional projects are shaped in the interactions between their evolving agentic imaginings and experiences, and the legal-institutional structures that govern migration, which are also continually changing. Michel Foucault’s ‘theoretical displacement’ The final theorist of student self-formation to be reviewed here is Michel Foucault. Some will find this inclusion to be counter-intuitive. Foucault is a pre-eminent modern theorist of the overwhelming political power of structures, of power-knowledge and governmentality: of subjects trapped in the panopticon, whose very autonomy is rendered an instrument of other-control. But such a judgement, formed on the basis of Foucault’s best-known middle period works, neglects the path-breaking message about self-forming agency in his final period. This is largely contained in the annual lectures at the College de France. Like Vygotsky, Foucault died relatively early and was unable to complete book length works from the lecture notes. Foucault’s mid-career work on power-knowledge emphasises how we are controlled by self-regulation. He dissects disciplinary projects of states such as the prison and the school and the regimes of truth associated with them (Foucault, 1975). The work on ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991) expands on how agency freedom is embedded in disciplinary regimes. Social structural power is pervasive and decentralised in micro-capillaries running through society, in which the autonomous power of subjects is fostered and shaped by external agendas. In Foucault that usually means the state rather than corporations. It is a chilling description of how the self-determining will of agents is not suppressed but captured and instrumentalised. In his last three years before his death at 57, however, Foucault moves to what Archer (2000) refers to as ‘the late foucauldian project of self-­ formation and self-enrichment’ (p.  34). He introduces ‘a more robust self-concept’ (p.  19). In his own words there is a ‘theoretical displacement’ away from the conflation of power-knowledge to ‘the relation of self to self and the constitution of oneself as a subject’ (p. 33). Instead of

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showing how individual freedom is normally controlled, he focuses on how to separate it from control altogether. For Foucault, unlike Sen, the path to freedom lies less in changing structural conditions that can expand the scope for agency than in directly changing oneself as an agent (Foucault, 2005, p. 251). The self, he states, is the only condition over which we have full control—it is the only object we can freely will ‘without having to take into consideration external determinations’ (p. 133). That is, agents can work on themselves wholly outside the framework of structural causes and limitations. People are more free than they know, states Foucault. They do not make full use of their potential (Ball, 2017, pp. xv, 55, 61). This is consistent with Archer’s point about the heterogeneity of structure and agency, and also pushes beyond it to explore how individual autonomy can be actively enhanced. The key to the enhancement of independent autonomy is to implement personal regimes of disciplined self-making, using specific knowledges and techniques. As Biesta and Tedder (2007) state, people make their agency. It is ‘something that is achieved, rather than possessed’ (p. 132). Remarkably, Foucault shows that this kind of self-formed independent autonomy is feasible because it has been done before. Reviewing the practical philosophies of the Hellenic world of the Greeks and Romans, he focuses on modes of self-formation designed to bring the self to an authentic life and the understanding of truth. These practices included meditation, self-­ examination rituals, rules of ethical conduct, blatant truth telling (parrhesia), and the forms of the ‘other life’ of the Stoics and Cynics. In these practices, where Hellenic self-cultivation partly paralleled Confucius, Mencius and others in China, the Hellenic world was more advanced than the contemporary Western world. While ‘the theme of return to the self’ has now recurred in modern culture, states Foucault (2005), ‘I do not think we have anything to be proud of in our current efforts to reconstitute an ethic of the self’ (p. 251). Most of the inherited Greek and Roman literature was lost in the second half of the fourth century and fifth century CE when essentialist Christian beliefs were universalised across the late Roman Empire. There was wholesale destruction of ‘pagan’ manuscripts and the burning of libraries (Nixey, 2017). The diverse intellectual heritage of the Axial age survived better in China than Europe (which helps to explain the differing takes on tradition and modernity). Nevertheless, what survived in the West is suggestive in relation to self-formation. For Foucault ‘freedom is the capacity and opportunity to participate in one’s self-formation’ (Ball, 2017, p.  69). Self-formation is an often

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arduous ‘work of the self on the self, an elaboration of the self by the self, a progressive transformation of the self by the self’ (Foucault, 2005, p. 16). This suggests a relentless reflexivity. For the Greeks and Romans, reflexive self-criticism always involved the invoking of something different, something ‘other’, an artefact (in Vygotsky’s sense) which would enable the world and/or the self to be perceived and practised in a new way. There were two pathways to this otherness. For the Platonists there was the ‘other world’, imagined ideal worlds from which this world could be viewed and critiqued, as Jonathon Swift did later in Gulliver’s Travels. For the Cynics, who were the most successful in achieving individual autonomy, the focus was turned directly on the self. The Cynics lived distinctive, challenging lives of their own determination, outside the normal, concentrating a relentless will in maintaining forms of conduct which scandalised their communities, even to the point of ostracism and death, such as refusing to wear clothes, or living in the wilderness, or ceaseless repetitive labour. If a human life was truly to be a life of truth, argued the Cynics, ‘must it not be an other life, a life which is radically and paradoxically other?’ (Foucault, 2011, p. 245). The contrast between this world and the other world, or between the conventional social self and the new social self, enabled the double-coding, the facing mirrors essential to reflexive formation. In a study of Foucault and education Ball (2017) finds that while education is ‘one of the key sites in which the processes of normalisation are enacted’, as the earlier Foucault showed, it can also be ‘a locus of struggle for productive processes of self-formation and freedom’ (p. 3). In the last sentence of his last lecture, Foucault drew his final lesson from Hellenic self-formation. The pathway to independent and free autonomy is also the pathway to truth, and ‘there is no establishment of the truth without an essential position of otherness. The truth is never the same’ states Foucault in his challenge to everyone to think differently. ‘There can be truth only in the form of the other world and the other life (l’autre monde et de la vie autre)’ (Foucault, 2011, p. 340). This is suggestive of higher education, at least when the subjectification function is well developed. The student approaches self-knowledge and truth through the medium of engagement in ‘other worlds’, for example disciplines new to the learner, or through the process of self-change, of making oneself different. Cross-border cross-cultural students both enter another world—multiple other worlds, when new knowledges are included—and also undertake the ‘other life’, engaging in a many-sided process of self-formation.

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In these arguments Foucault does not ignore the determining power of political and ideational structure. At no time does he repudiate his older insights into power-knowledge and governmentality. Rather, he supplements those insights by exploring a trajectory beyond social determination, a way out, a gift of freedom that can be achieved through strenuous personal effort. The larger ontological message is that structure and agency are not always zero-sum. It is possible that under certain circumstances both are enhanced simultaneously. This also connects to Sen’s (1985) distinction between three forms of freedom. What Sen calls ‘control freedom’, freedom from constraint (negative freedom), is a zero-sum relation. Graduates whose professional certification depends on them implementing compulsory beliefs experience a subtraction of potential agency. They gain agency if those structural requirements are lifted. On the other hand, what Sen calls ‘effective freedom’ or ‘freedom as power’ (positive freedom), the capacity to do things and exercise roles, is not always zero-sum with structural determination. The same professional requirements may enable the graduate to exercise a respected social role that is agentically empowering and productive. Within that role the graduate can further enhance her or his capabilities and social empowerment on a lifelong basis through the Foucauldian work of the self on the self. There are differences between Sen, Archer and Foucault. Sen, a political economist as well as a philosopher, is the most deductive. He surveys the structural impediments and seeks to empower agency not only by fostering agency freedom but through structural change. Foucault’s logic is primarily inductive. He can see individuals who separate themselves from most of the constraints of their condition. He notes that self-­transformation can occur separately from structural change. The Cynics fashioned an agency so autonomous that it was a reflexive other in relation to society, though society was still the reference point. Archer takes a middle position. She sees an uneven causality that flows both ways between structure and agency. For her, unlike the Cynics, agency is continually engaged in the world, while at the same time she foregrounds the all-important inner autonomy of the private self that has a trajectory separable from structure. But all of them, to varying degrees, imagine agents that are autopoietic, able to grow their lives through the reflexive work of the self on the self. All of them describe agentic behaviours that can be detected in empirical research with students.

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Concluding Thoughts All theorisations are incomplete. Each highlights some parts of reality better than others (Sayer, 2000). When the inquiry is primarily into human agency within the structure-agency complex, as in investigations of subjectification as student self-formation, then theorisations such as Archer’s which offer multiple insights into agency are more explanatory than theorisations such as Giddens or Bourdieu where structural over-­determination reduces the visibility of agency. This is not to say that Bourdieu (1986) is unhelpful in understanding the subjectification function in higher education. The notions of field and capital help to explain the relational space in which self-formation occurs and the motivations of those who augment themselves via economic, social and cultural accumulation. The concept of habitus helps to explain how reproductive structures colonise the mentalities of agents. But in explaining how agents can partly separate themselves from inherited structures, Archer and Foucault have more insights to offer. Discussions of agency in general and in education are attended by four common errors. The first is to assume that a focus on agency is individualistic (as if it contributes more to collective emancipation to suppose that structure is an inescapable trap!). Yet pre-eminent theorists of social agency such as Gramsci (1971) also theorise economic, social-political and cultural causality, and focus on collective as well as individual agency. Nor does the focus on agency mean buying into neo-liberal ideas of homo economicus or rational choice making individuals, for whom markets are seen as fair because structural inequalities do not exist. An emphasis on agency does not necessarily contradict a focus on structure, and vice versa. As the last point suggests, the second error is to suppose that relations between structure and agency are always zero sum—the more potent are structural forces, the more they reduce the potentials of agency. This error derives from two imaginaries together: the notion that agency and structure form two halves of a whole, and are not ontologically heterogeneous as in Archer, and the notion of freedom as solely freedom of control (negative freedom, freedom from constraint, the aspect of liberalism normally referenced in Euro-American societies). SAs noted, it is true that zero-sum relations are uppermost where freedom from constraint is at issue. But as Sen shows that is by no means all that there is to freedom. Agentic responses to structural pressures trigger self-formation that can enable agency in unpredictable ways. While the social self is constrained, the private self ponders and develops new possibilities for action. Foucault’s

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(2005) point is fundamental: under any circumstances agents can still work freely on themselves (p. 133). They always have the inner, private self. Augmenting the self can expand the potentials of effective freedom and agency freedom even when control freedom is blocked, and thereby also expands the potential for challenging the constraints on control freedom. Structures themselves provide conditions and resources for the exercise of effective freedom: they are enabling as well as constraining, as Giddens (1984) remarks (p. 25). How much that self-forming agents can affect structure, whether through individual or collective activity, is another question. The causal weight of agency is affected not only by prior articulations of power, and the resources, background characteristics and behaviours of agents themselves, but also on the basis of historically contingent factors in ontologically changing settings. Sometimes a window of opportunity opens and the potentials for agents to change structures are temporarily enhanced. At rarer times structural conditions disintegrate and many things are possible, until the next set of structural relations are solidified. The third error then is to exaggerate both the scope for self-creation and what it can achieve. This is neither absolute nor constant. It is never all-determining. Klemencic (2023) emphasises that self-formation in higher education takes place under conditions created not by students but by the classroom, institution, education system and society. Unequal learning conditions and unequal institutional commitments to subjectification sharply differentiate the potential for self-formation. This is especially apparent outside the wealthier countries. The constraints on agency are not simply economic, social and political, they are also ideational. The dominant policy discourses in many countries imply that the fate of individual students and graduates is entirely determined by their own efforts— as if there are no issues of limited opportunities, material resource provision or social justice!—and neo-colonial and/or neo-liberal lives are the only possible trajectories. While the consumer-investment model is never sufficiently compelling to fully evacuate epistemic learning or personal growth as objectives of higher education, for many students the dominant economic ideas do limit the possible selves that they can imagine. An educational emphasis on self-formation, with support, starts to break down those limitations. However, the larger problem in educational research and policy is not the tendency to overestimate agency. It is the tendency to overestimate the role of structure in such a way as to reduce the visible potentials of free

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self-determination. This is the fourth error. It can arise especially when economic or sociological researchers model whole populations in terms of universal patterns and causes. Statistical aggregates are explanatory. Social stratification and unequal outcomes in higher education are highly visible (Boliver et al., 2022; Marginson, 2018). Yet when looking at cohorts of students closer up, social researchers find plenty of exceptional cases. The exceptions are the point. Assumptions of weak agency that is always and necessarily overshadowed by structure render as ‘inevitable’ the very inequalities that narratives about inequality seek to challenge (or at least as inevitable until the structural inequalities are removed, which would indefinitely postpone agency freedom). In the face of structural inequalities, it is always agency that offers a way through, as Clegg (2011) states. Self-formation is hard work and requires continuing will but can be accessed by any and every student. The task of educators is to help them to explore the potentials. Any higher education, anywhere, can foster subjectification as self-formation and agency freedom. Disclosure  The author has no special interest to disclose. Funding  The research was conducted in the ESRC/OFSRE Centre for Global Higher Education, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (awards ES/M010082/1, ES/M010082/2 and ES/T014768/1).

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Tomlinson, M. (2022). Missing values: Engaging the value of higher education and implications for future measurements. Oxford Review of Education, 48(1), 46–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2021.1908247 Tran, L. (2016). Mobility as ‘becoming’: A Bourdieuian analysis of the factors shaping international student mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1268–1289. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1044070 Tu, W. (2013). Confucian humanism in perspective. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 7(3), 333–338. https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-­002-­013-­0019-­1 Vakeva, L. (2012). Experiencing growth as a natural phenomenon: John Dewey’s philosophy and the Bildung tradition. In P.  Siljander, A.  Kivela, & A.  Sutinen (Eds.), Theories of Bildung and growth: Connections and controversies between continental educational thinking and American pragmatism (pp. 261–280). Sense. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of the higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1981). The instrumental method in psychology. In J. Wertsch (Ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology (pp. 134–143). M.E. Sharpe. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. The MIT Press. Xu, X. (2018). The role of self-reflection in facilitating cross-cultural adaptation as self-formation  – A self-reflective diary approach. Reflective Practice, 19(6), 832–843. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2018.1539661 Yan, Y. (2009). The individualization of Chinese society. Berg. Yang, L., Marginson, S., & Xu, X. (2022). Thinking through the world: A tianxia heuristic for higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2022.2098696 Ye, L., & Edwards, V. (2017). A narrative inquiry into the identity formation of Chinese doctoral students in relation to study abroad. Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(6), 865–876. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332 4.2017.1294570 Young, M., & Muller, J. (2013). On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1(3), 229–250. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3017 Yu, J. (2021). Caught in the middle? Chinese international students’ self-­formation amid politics and pandemic. International Journal of Chinese Education, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/22125868211058911 Zhao, K., & Biesta, G. (2011). Lifelong learning between ‘East’ and ‘West’: Confucianism and the reflexive project of the self. Interchange, 42(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-­011-­9143-­6 Zhao, G., & Deng, Z. (2016). Introduction. In G.  Zhao & Z.  Deng (Eds.), Re-envisioning Chinese education: The meaning of person-making in a new age (pp. 1–9). Routledge.

CHAPTER 3

Agency and Student Development in Higher Education: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-­Disciplinary Exploration Lili Yang, Soyoung Lee, and Yusuf Ikbal Oldac

An early version of this chapter was developed and revised from the open access article: Yang, L., Lee, S., & Oldac, Y. I. (2023). A cross-cultural exploration of student development in higher education: Acknowledging, exercising, and enhancing agency. ECNU Review of Education. Further revisions were made in the peer review process of the book.

L. Yang (*) Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] S. Lee Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Y. I. Oldac School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun District, Hong Kong SAR © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_3

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Introduction Higher education has long been recognised for its fundamental importance to students’ formation and empowerment across cultures, as manifest in ideas such as the German Bildung, Confucian xiushen (self-cultivation), and British whole-person education (Yang, 2022). However, in the recent decades, it is the human capital and skills rhetoric, rather than ideas highlighting students’ holistic development, that dominate higher education. The education of students today, including the relevant policies and curricula, prioritises students’ acquisition of skills and employability. Higher education is mostly regarded as a place merely for professional preparation. Problems have arisen as a result. As Wheelahan et al. (2022, p. 1) highlight, ‘human capital theory [has come] to dominate policy in post-compulsory education, [and] result in the fetishisation of skills’. Underlying the skills fetish is the equation of human beings with individuals who have earning powers, and the reduction of education to skills acquisition. What is lost is the humanistic tradition of individual formation, which views human beings as reflexive agents and underlines their holistic development (Marginson, 2018; Taylor, 2017). Nevertheless, there is a growing body of research pointing out the problems of the human capital model and appealing for a return to the humanistic approach to educating students (Jabbar & Menashy, 2022; Tan, 2014). For example, Marginson (2017, p.  287) reveals the limitations of the human capital model—‘human capital theory imposes a single linear pathway on the complex passage between heterogeneous education and work’. Meanwhile, liberal arts education that focuses on students’ cultivation of critical thinking and overall capacity is attracting attention from both researchers and practitioners (Anders, 2017); the concept of capability, largely developed by Sen (1999) and Nussbaum (2000), has become influential in university student education; and as the other chapters of this book show, the ideas of student agency and self-formation attach particular importance to students’ empowerment. These arguments share the emphasis on the formation, transformation, and empowerment of individuals. They also recognise the potential of higher education in enhancing individual students’ agency freedom. However, although the holistic development of students is gaining attention and emphasis, it remains unclear how it takes place and manifests itself in higher education (Lee, 2021). In this chapter, we explore that question by concentrating on how individual students self-form,

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transform, and empower themselves as a result of their interactions with the world. This is based on the idea that people constantly interact with the outside environment, changing and empowering themselves as a result, and that these interactions are fundamentally conditioned by their approaches to the I-world relations (Chesterton, 1986; Yang, 2022; see also below). Specifically, to uncover key components and nuances in an individual student’s development, we first examine German Idealist, Chinese Confucian, and Islamic Sunni philosophical perspectives to the I-world interactions. The recognition of the I’s agency, the I’s use of agency in interactions with the outside world, and the I’s commitment to improving and developing agency through such interactions are three key components emerged from this analysis. We also draw on psychological, sociological, and educational studies to add details and nuances to the three identified elements, with the aim of unravelling how students develop in higher education. Philosophical discussions provide rather abstract and conceptual yet fundamental ideas, while the exploration of disciplinary knowledge reveals empirically grounded details about how these elements play out on individual students in higher education. It is important to elaborate on the selection of materials for this conceptual exploration, as any change of materials could have a significant impact on the research results. It is acknowledged that this chapter does not cover all possible ideas in the above cultural philosophies and disciplines. Certain ideas are omitted, inevitably. For example, Chinese philosophies include Buddhist and Daoist ideas in addition to Confucian ones. Meanwhile, there is also the possibility of homogenising the three philosophies when referring to Anglo-Saxon idealist, Chinese Confucian, and Islamic Sunni cultural philosophies. However, selection is necessary for such a conceptual exploration and for this book chapter. Specifically, this chapter selects materials based on the materials’ relevance to the research focus of the chapter—the development of students in higher education.

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The I-World Relations in Three Cultural Philosophies According to Chesterton (1986, p. 41), ‘the most practical and important thing about a [hu]man is [their] view of the universe’—that is their worldview. The worldview decides how we see and understand the world and our place within it (Anderson et al., 2017). It is the basic cause, with the else as effect or result. The worldview’s focus on the relations and interactions between the I and world is particularly important and relevant to understanding student self-formation in higher education. As we have revealed in a previous study (Yang, 2022), the I-world relations and interactions are the key to the process of an individual’s development, as it is through the I-world interactions that he/she realises self-formation, transformation, and empowerment. This section primarily focuses on relevant ideas in three cultural philosophies, the Anglo-Saxon idealist, Chinese Confucian, and Islamic Sunni philosophies. They are chosen for their influence on higher education globally and the vast differences among them. The modern universities have origins in Europe, and the US higher education is the most influential higher education system in the world (Altbach, 1991; Altbach & Balán, 2007). China’s higher education is developing at an extraordinary rate and is a rising star in global higher education (Wen et al., 2022). The legacies of Chinese cultures and philosophies are generally visible in East Asian countries and regions and Singapore and Vietnam (Marginson, 2011). While higher education in the Islamic world attracts less attention globally, Islamic cultures cover a quarter of the world population, and they may cover more of it in the future as their median age is younger than the global median and other socio-cultural populations (Hackett & Grim, 2012). As the chapter will show, the three cultural philosophies have fundamental differences while share certain important commonalities regarding the I-world relations and an individual’s development. The commonalities also shed new light on the question of ‘how students develop in higher education’. The Dualistic I-World Relations in Anglo-Saxon Philosophies The dualistic worldview is at the centre of the Anglo-Saxon idealistic philosophies. It sets the premise of the German Bildung idea and relevant Anglo-American ideas of the individual development (e.g. Dewey’s idea of

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Fig. 3.1  I-world concept in Anglo-Saxon idealist understanding. (Authors’ own conceptualisation)

None-I/Other

the I

growth/education and Amartya Sen’s idea of capability, see more in Yang, 2022). This dualistic worldview epistemologically understands the world based on the duality of I and non-I/other (von Humboldt, 2000; see Fig.  3.1). The I and the other are in lasting tensions and conflicts. According to Schumann (2019, p. 491), there are at least two kinds of alienation between I and the other—‘alienation from the present self, the letting go of immediate desires and egotistic interests in order to allow for an immersion into the world’ and ‘alienation from the world in order to return home to the self’. Following the dualistic worldview, Anglo-Saxon ideas of the development of the self centre around expanding the freedom of the self, especially with regard to striving for release from the external limitations. These ideas pay much attention to the external environment in the development of the self. They argue that only certain types of environments are conducive to the development of the self. According to Mill (1859/2015, p. 64) and von Humboldt (cited from Konrad, 2012, p. 110), an ideal environment contains at least two elements: first, freedom for individuals to self-form and self-development; second, the existence of variety of situations rather than a monopolistic situation. Individuals constantly interact with the environment (the world) in developing themselves. The interaction is a socially nested self-formation process and a process of mitigating tensions between the I and world. Throughout this process, individuals expand their freedom agency and improve their capacity for reasoning, as well as developing public spiritedness.

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Fig. 3.2  I-world concept in Chinese Confucian understanding. (After Tu, 1985)

World The state/society Family the I

The Harmonious I-World Relations in Chinese Philosophies An important, if not dominant, Chinese understanding of the I-world relationship is manifest in the Confucian anthropocosmic worldview and the pursuit of harmony (Tu, 2013; see Fig. 3.2). Confucianism ontologically understands the world as composed of a series of expanding entities—the self and communities including the family, state, and all under heaven (tianxia) (Yang, 2022). The conception of the self is grounded in communities (Li, 2018), and in this worldview, the self is nested within communities. The relationship between the self and communities, or more broadly, the world, is best captured by the notion of harmony. The harmonious relationship between the self and the world in Confucianism contains at least a twofold meaning. First, it is in contrast with the Anglo-Saxon view of the conflicting I-world relationship. In Confucianism, the self ‘is partly constituted by social relationships and is integral to the very fabric of the community’ (Li, 2018, p. 8). There does not exist natural tensions between the I and the world. The self is not isolated from the world, and the purpose of the formation of the self is not to release the self from the limitations exposed by the world. This leads to the second point: the notion of harmony is a verb as well as a noun. It describes the state-of-affairs regarding the I-world relationship. More importantly, it also indicates an ongoing dynamic, developmental, and generative process with the objective of realising a harmonious I-world relationship through individuals’ efforts (Li, 2018). Confucian xiushen, meaning selfcultivation, is an essential means to realise this objective. It highlights working on the self, including inward and outward self-­perfectionism, to

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realise personal formation and contribute to building a harmonious world (Yang, 2022). The unbounded free will (zhi) of the self is enhanced through inward perfectionism—a process of ‘a systematic study of things, …, putting conversation aright, …, putting minds in a proper and well-ordered condition, getting true ideas, …, and acquiring knowledge and understanding’.1 At the same time, the self deliberately works on harmonising the world in outward perfectionism—a process of ‘putting family in order, …, securing good government, and furthering the cause of enlightenment and civilisation in the world’.2 This outward self-perfectionism especially emphasises the cultivation of moral qualities and becoming morally virtuous persons. The Virtuous I-World Relations in Islamic Cultural Philosophies In Islamic constellations, every individual is perceived to have agency freedom, but this agency freedom is not positioned to be drawing from infinite possibilities (Kazanç, 2007). Individuals in a society are agents who act within the boundaries that are set by the God. The I-world relationship in the Islamic cultures is about what ‘I’ is choosing or not choosing to do (cüz-i irade) within the ‘sphere of possibles’ that is set out by God (külli irade). See Fig. 3.3 for a visual conceptualisation. The agency of the ‘I’, cüz-i irade, by direct translation means small or limited agency, since it is perceived to be a small droplet in the larger sphere of possibilities set for the I by God (Çınar, 2020). Sphere of possibles for the individual does not cover all sets of possibles that can ever exist, hence the addition of another layer in Fig. 3.3. This level includes beyond the possibles a specific individual can achieve, and it denotes unknown and infinite sets of possibles under God’s dominion. An important point about agency freedom in Islamic constellations is that every I has the capability to act within the sphere of possibles, but the boundaries of the sphere of possibles set by God is never knowable by the I (Kazanç, 2007). Hence, looking from the individual’s perspective, there is no clearly visible limit for I to interact agentically with the world and self-form and empower oneself. The I can and should work for personal  格物，致知，诚意，正心—Higher Learning, Book of Rites.  齐家，治国，平天下—Higher Learning, Book of Rites.

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Fig. 3.3  I-world concept in Islamic Sunni understanding. (Authors’ own conceptualisation)

formation through education and for the society’s good. However, the I should also be aware that there is a sphere of possibles in the end. It is the I’s responsibility to put the work in, but the results achieved are in God’s control and not reaching the intended outcomes is always possible. The word ‘virtuous’ here refers to having good moral qualities and behaviour by being aware of the sphere of possibles set by God in the I-world relations. There is a strong presence of God in the framing of I-world relationship in Islamic constellations. Usually, all factors constraining or enabling the agency of I can be positioned in the space outside of the smaller circle in Fig. 3.3. These may include factors that are beyond the control of I such as uncontrollable environmental disasters, and also the agential acts of other agents. Since God is envisioned to be all powerful, these factors are all accepted to be in his control; hence, God can set the boundaries of the space of possibles. The self has the potential to form oneself and rise above the surrounding unfavourable circumstances, but there is also this sphere of possibles they should accept, which has unclear boundaries from the individual’s eyes.

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A Summary of the I-World Relations in the Three Philosophies The above discussions demonstrate that the three philosophies vary regarding the I-world relations. They differ on the scope of the I, the agency of the I, and the relations between the I and world. For example, the I in Confucian and Islamic philosophies is bounded rather than entirely independent—the Confucian I is bounded within communities and the Islamic I is within the boundaries set by God. In contrast, the Anglo-­ Saxon dualistic worldview sees the world as composed of I and non-I. The I is an independent entity, without any predetermined boundaries. The agency of the I is unlimited and such unlimitedness should be protected and pursued in interaction with the non-I (the world). The expansion of the agency freedom of the I through individual development is constantly pursued, although a harmonious relationship between the I and world is desirable if the agency freedom is guaranteed. In addition, despite the commonality on the boundedness between Confucian and Islamic philosophies, the two philosophies are different too. The boundary of the I in the Confucian philosophy derives from the ultimate goal of achieving harmony in the world. Although harmony and moral qualities desire certain pathways of the development of the I, there is not a predetermined sphere of possibles, as in the Islamic philosophy. Accordingly, while the Islamic philosophy argues that the agency is limited (despite that this limit is unknown to individuals), the Confucian philosophy underlines the unbounded personal will (there is a separation between the unbounded personal will and bounded conduct of the will). Nonetheless, despite the differences, the three philosophies share certain common elements about how the I forms, transforms, and empowers him/herself. First, the acknowledgement of agency of I. While the three philosophies may differ in the scope of agency of I, they all see the potential and existence of the agency. The second is the importance for the I to exercise their agency in interfacing with the world. This contrasts with the idea that the world has a shaping influence on the I.  This element shows that the I is not dictated by the world. The I navigates the world and makes their own decisions. Third, the emphasis is on the I’s enhancement of agency by agentically interacting with the world. This element demonstrates the virtuous cycle between the I, world, and their interactions. And it is in this process where higher education can play a vital role. Another commonality, which is not pursued in this chapter but may deserve further exploration, is the shared focus on the development of moral qualities and

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virtues throughout personal development. The three cultural philosophies all seem to suggest the essentialness of moral qualities and virtues in attaining and maintaining social order and social development. However, the three cultural philosophies only point to these three elements, without providing details about how to understand them or how they play out in an individual student’s development. We therefore move on to explore the existing educational, sociological, and psychological literature to add nuances and details into how individual students’ agency is manifest, exercised, and enhanced in higher education.

Student Agency in Higher Education The Acknowledgement of Agency in Higher Education This section discusses the acknowledgement of agency in higher education research. Overall, student agency is not taken for granted in higher education. But in other fields that higher education researchers often draw on including sociology and psychology, human agency has been widely recognised, both implicitly and explicitly. Social theories often include agency as an element of society. Their agency-structure debates are illustrated in the works by Margaret Archer, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens. Although these scholars are all in agreement about coupling agency with structure, their views differ on how much agency can be empowered and how the interaction between structure and agency plays out. The variations are largely illustrated in the various theorisations of agency-structure interaction. Archer’s realist social theory (2003) empowers agency by separating it from structure as an independent and autonomous entity. Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory advocates for an interdependent dialectic of agency and structure. Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus includes autonomous agency, but only in the reproduction of the structure (Adams, 2006). Despite the fact that these various social theories suggest different configurations of the I-world relationship, they all acknowledge individuals as agents in society who have varying degrees of causal efficacy on or within the structure. Emirbayer and Mische (1998) have proposed to include the temporal orientation towards context as a way of understanding what agency is. This proposal has influenced further conceptualisations about student agency in education (e.g. Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Klemenčič, 2015). For instance, Klemenčič (2015) distinguished agentic orientations

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and agentic possibilities of agency in theorising student agency in higher education. While agentic possibilities are influenced by the perceived environmental affordances, the agentic orientations refer to an individual’s capacity to interact with the contexts as they are. By distinguishing between agency as (a) personal, internal, and psychological property and (b) agency in holism, as defined by external structure, this approach recognises student agency outside the bounds of structure. Klemenčič (2017, xx) incorporated the idea of agency, which is prevalent in educational sociology, into the research strands that are more intimately tied to the psychological components of higher education research by engaging with the literature on student learning in higher education and student engagement. In addition to sociologist studies, psychologists also provide empirical evidence and insight that support sociologist theories and concepts of agency. In general, psychologists focus more on the inner human functioning that manifest agency, whereas sociologists tend to be more concerned with agency’s relation to structure. Psychological theories, which are primarily concerned with inner human functioning, can further operationalise and expand on the concept of reflexive agency or internal conversation. While agency is often referred to with different terms in psychology, there are certain theories that draw on the agency idea in exploring how human psyches operate. For example, higher education studies frequently refer to two psychological theories in discussing students’ affective, behavioural, and cognitive development in higher education. The two theories are Bandura’s (1977) self-effective theory and Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory. Self-efficacy, or one’s beliefs about their own capacities to take actions to achieve desired results, was proposed by Bandura (2001, p. 10) as ‘the foundation of human agency’. Bandura proposed that human actions were outcomes of human self-reflexive thinking, rather than being the outcomes of external conditioning within the automatic stimulus-response mechanism. For instance, earlier empirical research found that the following mechanism can either help or hinder human action: it affects human actions including the effort and time expenditure in the face of adversity, which determines the level of stress and accomplishments that follow (Bandura, 1977). According to this view, student development incorporates students’ reflexive deliberation and agentic behaviours. It is not an automatic, mechanical process. This idea of self-efficacy and its impact on personal performance and various academic phenomena have been

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confirmed and extended over decades of empirical research (e.g. Honicke & Broadbent, 2016). Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000) is another psychological theory that premises on the acknowledgement of human agency and has been repetitively referred to in higher education research. For SDT, a quintessential manifestation of agency is through a particular type of motivation, intrinsic motivation, that makes people behave not as a result of external stimulus but because that the activity they are engaged with is inherently interesting and enjoyable. SDT presumes that all human beings, including college students, are intrinsically ‘agentic and inspired, striving to learn; extend themselves; master new skills and apply their talents responsibly’ (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 69). This view holds that students’ engagement with higher education is primarily to satisfy their human nature of growth propensities. Students naturally desire to grow by actively exploring and developing their capabilities and seeking out new challenges and novelty in the environment. Notably, agency is recognised as the foundation of student development in the existing higher education studies on college students’ academic success and dropout rates (Jeno et al., 2018), why and how students learn in higher education (Levesque et al., 2004), and more general university experiences. The Exercise of Agency in Higher Education Following the above discussion on how agency is manifest in higher education students, this section moves on to explore a particular manifestation of agency and how it is exercised: reflexivity (Archer, 1995). In particular, it focuses on the major occasions where such reflexive agency may be stimulated and well-observed in the higher education setting. First, the existing research has revealed that active reflexivity is an important precondition for student’s learning processes, which is the key activity in higher education. Second, at the social level, reflexive agency plays important roles too, for example, through student activism or as institutional agents in higher education. In addition, Kuh (2009) showed that successful university experience requires students to exert their agency in engaging with various academic and extracurricular activities. Tinto’s (2012) findings echoed this and highlighted the role of agency in students’ integration into the university environments. According to Case (2013) and Klemenčič (2017), reflexive agency is a crucial factor in achieving higher quality of learning in higher education. For example, students’

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ability to manage their own learning is closely linked to higher academic performance and better learning patterns or approaches to learning (e.g. Vermunt & Donche, 2017). Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) reveals that students can and are required to reflect on their cognitive, motivational, and behavioural levels, particularly in higher education where more voluntary and independent learning takes place with individually different projects for learning (e.g. Pintrich, 2004; Vermunt & Donche, 2017). As informed by these studies on student learning in higher education, stronger reflexive agency seems to be activated when students acquire and process the given knowledge in a more intrinsically motivated, internally regulated, and self-monitored way. Learning researchers tend to focus on agency practice in generic learning. There is also another research strand that focuses more on students’ agency in interacting with disciplinary knowledge, which distinguishes higher education learning from learning in other levels of education. Ashwin, with his colleagues, explored how students relate to knowledge (Ashwin et al., 2014, 2022). They highlighted that it is knowledge that makes higher education transformational, and explored students’ accounts of their disciplinary knowledge through tracing how students change their ways of relating to knowledge. The findings show that students’ accounts vary from a basic account that only refers to ‘the immediately visible aspects of the discipline’ (Ashwin et  al., 2014, p.  221), to an inclusive account in which students link disciplines not only to personal meaning but also to a wider context like society. This indicates that student agency exercised in relation to knowledge might further lead to student agency influencing the wider society. In other words, student development through agentic learning processes can be extended to student agency for social development through engagement with knowledge in higher education. Establishing the relationship between how students exercise agency for personal development and social formation is an important yet difficult part of the puzzle, as Marginson (2018, p. 3) pointed out. The enactment of agency is not something that takes place in isolation. It is part of larger social contexts. In addition, the direction of influence is not one-way— students are influenced by larger societies, but they also have an influence on societies. Indeed, the relationship between student agency and societal contributions has been discussed in the perennial cultural understandings relevant to the I-world relations. For example, the Kantian understanding of Bildung emphasises the individual development of autonomous,

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rational persons who live in the public sphere with other individual beings (Kivela et al., 2012). The agentically active and autonomous individuals play an essential role in the emerging civil society (Biesta, 2002) and engage with their larger environment (Klemenčič, 2015). The Confucian tradition of self-cultivation emphasises the unity between ‘I’, humanity, and the universe. In this regard, Confucian self-cultivation is not only about the continuous self-improvement of the individual but also about harmonising with the larger context, which points out a strong relationship between the free will of the individual and their contributions to society. Moreover, the interaction between student agency and social formation is studied in a strand of empirical research that take student activism at its epicentre which shapes university policies and larger social discussions (e.g. Luescher et al., 2016; Klemenčič, 2014; Bellei et al., 2014). The Enhancement of Agency in Higher Education Following the above discussion about agency practice in the I-world interaction, we now turn to how such agency is restricted or enhanced in higher education. There is a consensus in the literature that individual agency is conditioned by external factors of structure. Higher education, like other situations, provides students with an environment that allows them to enact their agency to various extent according to the varying contextual affordances. This indicates the possibility and potential for higher education to enhance student agency. Educational research has indeed identified several resources for agency development in universities. First, the aforementioned learning researchers have discovered that changing learning environments (e.g. pedagogies) can facilitate learning processes of higher levels of agency. Fryer’s (2017) thorough review of students’ perceptions of control over learning processes revealed that certain pedagogical strategies can enable learner agency. These include a manageable workload, clear course objectives, and sufficient contingent assessments. The above-discussed theories in psychology that acknowledge human agency (Bandura, 2018; Ryan & Deci, 2000) also emphasise the importance of environment in fostering human agency. Self-­ Determination Theory has shown that strongly agentic motivation (intrinsic motivation) can only be enabled when the environment meets basic psychological needs (senses of belonging, competence, and autonomy) (Ryan & Deci, 2000). For example, student agency can be enhanced when universities support students to perceive themselves included, competent,

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and autonomous by providing communities, knowledge and skills, and an independent learning and living environment. Beyond simply enabling already existing agency by regulating the environmental affordances, there is also an approach that focuses on developing the agentic capacity itself. Biesta and Tedder (2007) aver that education can contribute to the development of agentic capacity and orientation. Adult education encourages students’ reflective thinking, such as biographical learning. This learning can transform how students relate to the context, or agentic orientation (Biesta & Tedder, 2007). Similarly, students’ academic background through which students directly and indirectly experience the making of one’s own success (Bandura, 2018) and students’ acquisition of more background knowledge and skills (Fryer, 2017) were found to promote student agency. Focusing on developing agentic capacities rather than regulating environmental affordances resonates the capability approach (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000). Academic knowledge can enhance capabilities, which is the freedom to achieve personal well-being by being able to do and to be. Therefore, disciplinary knowledge, different from everyday knowledge and common sense, is powerful in empowering students by conferring students’ capabilities and thereby enhancing human agency (Young, 2007). Higher education for enabling and enhancing student agency, however, is not confined to the academic-knowledge-related phenomenon. Agency enhancement can also be achieved through interacting with non-academic yet critical social factors in higher education. A distinctive example of the factors is students’ access to immense new social resources for developing their agency through higher education experience. This allows them to encounter social interactions within a wider environment. These social interactions are crucial in their development and particularly the enhancement of their reflective agency (Mead & Morris, 1962). Mead (1913) pointed out that the work on the self involves an internal conversation between the active self/the subject ‘I’ and ‘me’ as the object of an action. Since ‘me’ is an object that other people’s actions can influence, it is situationally variable dependent on both the actions of ‘I’ and other individuals. With the heightened social interactions in higher education, the inner stage of students becomes a ‘forum and workshop of thought’ (Mead, 1913, p. 376) to work on the self or reflexive agency. The social interactions as resources for agency development are particularly highlighted when students study abroad. The social day-to-day interactions and the extracurricular activities that take place in a different social,

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cultural, and academic context can stimulate students to practice more reflexive agency. Building on Biesta’s (2009, 2010) thesis, in which socialisation and subjectification are the two of the main purposes of education, international higher education involves significant facilitation of student agency. International students are placed in the process of becoming more like the society that are novel to them (socialisation) in some respects, and becoming different from such unfamiliar society (subjectification) in some other respects. This process can significantly foster student agency because it requires students to engage in constant reflexive internal negotiation through the I-world interaction in a novel country context. The intercultural bridges built in international higher education are shown to play a role in the transformative nature of higher education (Oldac, 2021). In a way, agency enhancement is amplified in international higher education as students experience a more immersive experience and have more diverse resources to draw from.

Conclusion This chapter has explored how students form, transform, and empower themselves in higher education. Three elements have been identified from the three cultural philosophies, pointing to the essentialness of agency in student development. There is also ample evidence from educational, sociological, and psychological studies that supports the three elements and further adds details and nuances to them. The three elements are the acknowledgement of agency, the exercise of agency, and the enhancement of agency. Students have agency and exercise their agency in their engagement with higher education and social activities inside and outside the campus. If organised and practised well, higher education can contribute to student self-formation. Nonetheless, student agency can also be constrained depending on how higher education is organised. Modifying university environments to provide students with adequate free spaces to navigate their own courses of higher education (in aspects such as major selection and course enrolment) and frequent social interactions is conducive to the enablement of agency. This directly points to the problems of many existing higher education practices guided by the other-formation ideas. For example, equalling higher education with merely professional preparation, portraying students as objects and ‘governing’ them using numbers and grades, and disconnecting students from society, all dismiss how student

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agency can be enhanced through higher education (McArthur, 2022; Nieminen, 2021). In sum, individual students have agency and can exercise their agency, and if organised well, higher education can enhance their agency. These provide a useful approach to understanding how students develop, form, and empower themselves in higher education. In particular, they echo the idea of ‘higher education as self-formation’. As Marginson (2018) argues, self-formation is both a living empirical reality and a norm that is pursued, highlighting the need to organise higher education activities in ways that can effectively enhance students’ agency. However, the dominance of the various ‘other-formation’ ideas in higher education, represented by the human capital theory, shows that there is still a long way to go in pursuit of this normative end and many challenges still linger. That said, the consensus among the three examined cultural philosophies on the three elements on the acknowledgement, exercise, and enhancement of agency together provide the groundwork for placing students’ agency at the centre of higher education.

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CHAPTER 4

The Mechanism of Student Agency in Self-­Formation Through Knowledge Engagement in Higher Education Soyoung Lee

Introduction Student formation and knowledge formation are the two major intrinsic contributions of higher education (Marginson et  al., 2023). Regarding student formation, an emerging concept of higher education as student self-formation calls for a paradigm shift to acknowledge the role of student agency that has been undermined in the dominant understandings of higher education (Marginson, 2014, 2018, 2023). Regarding knowledge formation, there has also been a call for “bringing knowledge back in” to the major discussions about higher education (Ashwin, 2020; Young, 2007). These narratives represent the current gap in the literature. When discussing the macro-level functions and values of higher education in society and researching more micro-level individual experiences at

S. Lee (*) Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_4

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universities, student agency and academic knowledge have been often placed periphery rather than central. For instance, the human capital approaches tend to reduce students to objects of their own formation rather than subjects in higher education, in which knowledge is also reduced to a mere vehicle to transmit certain capitals. This only superficially involves student agency and knowledge, excluding the intrinsic feature of universities from explaining what is higher education and silencing students in describing what they do in it. To address this issue, the current chapter aims to redirect focus to more inherent contribution of higher education: students’ self-formation through engagement with knowledge. On the one hand, higher education is where students actively exercise their agency to reflexively navigate their own development to construct the more ideal selves (Marginson, 2014, 2018, 2023). This process is distinctively academic in higher education of which educational purpose is “to bring students into a transformational relationship to knowledge” (Ashwin, 2020, p. 3). On the other, the transformational student-knowledge relationship changes students’ “sense of who they are and what they can do in the world” (Ashwin, 2020, p. 3), and this is part of self-formation enabled and steered by students’ reflexive agency. In this study, students’ agentic work on the self through the transformational engagement with knowledge is termed academic self-­ formation. To remit what knowledge is in this study, I draw on previous scholars who distinguished academic, specialised disciplinary knowledge, from generic everyday knowledge, often linking the former with epistemic power or freedom (Bernstein, 2000; Wheelahan, 2012; Young, 2007). My investigation focuses on disciplinary knowledge that specifically refers to students’ chosen field(s) of study, which students are taught, learn, construct, practice, and engage with in the formal educational settings in higher education. Researching Academic Self-Formation Emerged from a large-scale study on international students in higher education, Marginson and Sawir (2011) illuminated the phenomenon of self-­ formation by providing a conceptual resource. Understanding higher education as students’ self-formation can provide a more adequate abstraction of the reality than the longstanding, dominant discourses about higher education. The self-formation approach endorses a more genuine reflection of who the students are and what they do in higher education

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compared to the existing approaches that assume homogeneously patterned, singular, and linear student formation (e.g. human capital theory). For a simple example, most readers would identify themselves as human agents, rather than as non-agentic conceptions of humans such as those who are unconsciously conditioned in Pavlov’s dog experiment. When students are redefined as agents, higher education can base its institutional, political, pedagogical decisions on a more adequate understanding of reality. Thus, this chapter builds on a premise on the benefits of adopting, elaborating, and extending the self-formation discourse in higher education research and practices. The initial publication of its summative theorisation (Marginson, 2014) has been cited by research on student experiences (e.g. Kudo, 2023; Lin et al., 2022), higher education policies and practices (e.g. Lomer, 2018), and philosophical discussions about higher education (e.g. Yang, 2022). While these previous works adopted the assumption underlying self-­ formation about student agency, there has been little effort to investigate self-formation itself as a researched phenomenon (Lee, 2021), leaving the need to empirically support the concept unresolved. Even a small number of existing empirical studies on self-formation almost exclusively focus on international students’ experiences (e.g. Oldac, 2022). Limiting self-­ formation to international students’ experiences raises a question if it is the international education or higher education that is accountable for the self-formation phenomenon (Marginson, forthcoming). Thus, research on higher education as self-formation is required to focus more on core, essential experiences in higher education, which is equally critical to all students regardless of their international or domestic status—such as engagement with knowledge. The self-formation research is still in the early stage of developing its research programme. In his series of work, Marginson (2014, 2018, 2023) has provided extensive conceptual discussions and theoretical foundation about what is self-formation. However, relying on conceptual methods without empirical support and elaboration, a theory faces a danger of becoming an armchair theory with a limited power of explaining reality (Meredith, 1993). The lack of empirical research on self-formation can be attributed to its broad and normative nature that challenges researchers to remit the scope of investigation. A range of student-related phenomena in higher education has been interpreted as self-formation, just because they are positive not negative, heterogeneous not homogeneous, dynamic not linear, active not passive, or culturally integrating not assimilating,

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resisting not conforming, internal than externally given, and active not passive (Lee, 2021). It seems that researchers have a shared understanding about what the self-formation idea is opposed to (non-agentic portrayal of student experiences), but yet to establish a consensus on the scope about what it is and how it can be observed. This is also related to the difficulties in operationalising student agency, a central element of self-formation, as seen in its frequent appearance as a “buzzword” in studies on international students in higher education (Inouye et al., 2022). One way to deal with the comprehensive nature of self-formation in empirical research is selecting and focusing on a certain aspect of the phenomenon. When focusing explicitly on academic self-formation that is highlighted when students are engaging with disciplinary knowledge, student agency appears as a unit of analysis and observation. The extensive literature on student learning in higher education provides a number of theories and empirical findings about student agency in the form of agentic motivation, cognition, and action in the learning processes (e.g. self-­ regulated learning; Pintrich, 2004) or in the name of deep approaches to learning (see Vermunt & Vermetten, 2004 for a review). However, as Case and Marshall (2009) have already pointed out, the psychological approach to student learning effectively put forward students as subjects of learning but does not sufficiently acknowledge the existence and influence of structure. For example, this line of research only focuses on the general learning activities including how and why students study at universities, without considering “what” students learn, academic knowledge. Thus, although previous studies point out some potential ways to examine agency in student learning, they fall short of guiding how to research academic self-­ formation through knowledge engagement. In short, the research programme of self-formation requires further empirical investigations that can support and elaborate the initial proposition of the idea. To move the conceptual discussions forward to the empirical level, researchers need to deal with the normative and comprehensive nature of self-formation, which causes challenges in remitting what is self-­ formation and what is not. I suggest that a possible approach to operationalise the concept of self-formation by establishing a theory, with a narrower and more specific focus on a certain (e.g. academic) aspect of self-­ formation. An ongoing research project, on which the current chapter is drawn, has been developing a theory that can conceptually explain what self-formation is and also can guide empirical observation of how students engage in it, especially when knowledge is at the centre of their

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experience. This chapter introduces one of the emergent themes that constitute the theory of academic self-formation: the reflexive mechanism of student agency. How students’ reflexive agency operates in the process of their self-formation as they immerse in disciplinary knowledge will be discussed in the following sections. By doing so, the chapter can contribute to conceptually elaborating and extending the initial summative proposition of self-formation (Marginson, 2014), while illuminating the function of academic knowledge in it, as well as to the operationalisation of the concept to be empirically studied in the future.

Theoretical Framework of Agency As there is student agency at the centre of the self-formation phenomenon, conceptualising agency should precede researching self-formation. The current study is based on Margaret Archer’s (1995) Realist Social Theory as a philosophical and theoretical foundation. Archer proposed a realist approach in social theorising, which offered a novel framework to define the structure-agency relation. In Realist Social Theory, social reality as having two independent layers, structure and agency, which have different features and powers. Structure and agency are related but not determining nor dependent on each other as imagined in other social theories that Archer criticised for conflating the separate power of structure and agency and also for dismissing the interplay between them. For instance, some commit upward conflation by subsuming agency under the determining power of structure, while downward conflation occurs when agency is seen as operating in an individualistic way regardless of structure (Archer, 1995). While the efficacy of both structure and agency are acknowledged in Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory, it still cannot escape the conflationary error as the structure and agency can only exist under the condition of each other’s existence in this view (Archer, 1995). A more detailed discussion about Archer’s and Giddens’ understanding of structure and agency is provided by Marginson in Chap. 2 of this book. The main problem of such conflation between agency and structure is that, stated Archer, the outcome and process of their interaction are either precluded or reduced to the zero-sum relationship. However, in the stratified world, what forms and transforms social reality is “the linkages between the different strata with their own autonomous, irreducible, emergent properties” (Archer, 1995, p.  8). To illuminate the interplay between agency and structure, Archer places the causal efficacy of

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students’ reflexive deliberation, or reflexivity, between them. As “a mediatory mechanism” of the structure-agency interaction, reflexivity is one of the most important properties of human agency (Archer, 2003, p.  15). When students’ reflexive agency is acknowledged, their experiences at universities become fundamentally self-formation because foregrounding reflexivity confers on humans the internal, subjective powers that are efficacious in relation to agency of the self as well as in relation to structure in higher education. Following previous works that have shown effectiveness of using Realist Social Theory (Case, 2013, 2015) and more specifically reflexivity (e.g. Matthews, 2017) in researching student experiences in higher education, I have shown the validity of Archer’s reflexivity in examining student self-­ formation previously (Lee, 2021). Thus, the current study adopts Archer’s conception of agency as reflexivity in researching academic self-formation in higher education. Reflexivity has also informed methodological decisions of the present study as will be explained in the following section.

Methodology: The Reflexive Research Design Based on Realist Social Theory, I devised the reflexive research design that incorporates both conceptual and empirical approaches in one study. A new research design was required because the existing methodological choices did not provide the most appropriate means to consider the nature of the self-formation concept. First, the self-formation concept can benefit from engaging with similar ideas in different fields such as psychology, philosophy, and sociology as shown in Marginson’s series of conceptual discussions (2014, 2018, 2023). However, such active engagement with existing concepts and theories are not generally accepted in conventional theory-developing methodologies such as grounded theory methods (Glaser & Strauss, 2017). Second, although the relevant previous literature can provide insightful perspectives in elaborating the self-formation concept, it should not prescribe students’ accounts of their own self-­ forming experiences if the emerging theory can reflect on the empirical reality. For instance, qualitative analyses with deductive uses of a theoretical framework in classifying data into the pregiven categories can only limit the self-formation phenomenon into the existing framework (Maxwell, 2012). Thus, the theory development of academic self-formation needs a methodology that enables working with both concepts and data, of which interaction is necessary in advancing knowledge (Sayer, 1992, pp. 80–81).

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Just like reflexivity enables the interplay between agency and structure, the reflexive research design I devised for the current study leaves a space for researcher reflexivity to critically interact with both observation and theories. In other words, researchers can reflect on the data in relation to the theories, and on the theories with the aid of data. Figure 4.1 illustrates how the theory of academic self-formation was formulated through the iterative, critical revision of findings and theories in the reflexive research process. This was inspired by Archer’s (1995) illustration of the interactive but independent formation of structure and agency through the reflexive cycle of conditioning, interaction, and elaboration phases. Several themes emerged through the cyclic process as key elements that constitute the theory of academic self-formation. This chapter presents one of the themes, the underlying mechanism of how students’ reflexive agency operates in their self-formation through knowledge engagement. Archer’s (1995) realist social ontology sees social reality as having independent strata with different features and autonomy. Such social realist approach acknowledges both conceptual and empirical aspects of reality, while the interplay between them is also taken into account (Sayer, 1992, 1999). The different ways of knowing the world, how it is held exist in the conceptual world, how it is observed/experienced in the empirical social

Fig. 4.1  Theory building with conceptual and empirical domains. (Inspired by and adapted from Archer, 1995, p. 309)

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world, and how researchers consider the interactions between the stratified world are each valid ways of knowing reality. The theory building in this study is a negotiation between concepts and data about academic self-­ formation, with an ultimate aim to abstract reality as adequately as possible, rather than providing an ordering framework to determine the observed world. The study had two interacting parts of research: conceptual and empirical. The conceptual research (Snyder, 2019) conducted a series of critical literature reviews of the theories/concepts that were relevant to academic self-formation, while the empirical research collected and analysed ethnographic data from thirteen South Korean graduate students throughout the first year of their studies. The fieldwork was undertaken in two research fields, in Korean and British universities, respectively, to compare academic self-formation in  local and international higher education. The research participants (Korean students) and sites (UK and Korean higher education) were selected because Koreans culturally emphasise self-cultivation and nationally attach a high value to higher education (South Korea has the world’s top gross tertiary enrolment ratio: OECD, 2019). These factors might make South Korean sites informative and interesting in theorising academic self-formation. The profile of the participants is listed in Table 4.1. To anonymise the data, I used the pseudonyms for the names of the participants and their universities. Findings from the separate conceptual and empirical investigations are then compared and combined to in the integrative analyses, which provide an updated focus for the next round of investigations. This iterative process of going back and forth between hypotheses and multiple rounds of investigations enables an increasingly narrowing down focus of inquiries and increasingly detailed theory development. The final set of hypotheses will construct the model of academic self-formation with the key constituent themes. As the research project is still ongoing, the current chapter only concentrates on one of the themes, the mediating mechanism of reflexivity in academic self-formation. The discussions and examples introduced in this chapter draw on preliminary findings emerged during the theory building process. Reflecting the research design that emphasises engagement with both concepts and data, the findings and discussions will be presented in an integrated way in the following sections.

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Table 4.1  Summary of participant information Student status

Name

International students

Domestic students

Sex

Age University

Degree Field of study

Dongwon Male

28

PhD

STEM

Chanho

Male

27

PhD

STEM

Kibum

Male

27

PhD

STEM

Mijoo

Female 27

PhD

Humanities

Sarang

Female 28

Jisun

Female 27

Inho

Male

27

Young

Male

25

Sena

Female 26

Bumsoo

Male

Aram

Female 25

Woori

Male

27

Hankyu

Male

24

32

English University 1 English University 1 English University 1 English University 1 English University 2 English University 3 Korean University A Korean University A Korean University A Korean University A Korean University B Korean University C Korean University D

Master Humanities Master Social Science Master Medicine Master Humanities PhD

Humanities

PhD

Social Science Master Social Science Master STEM PhD

STEM

Mediatory Agency in Academic Self-Formation Student agency is hypothesised to be a condition for academic self-­ formation in this study. This proposition will be discussed in this section, with the aim to elaborate what is academic self-formation, how students engage in it, and how it can be empirically explored. In researching student agency, the present study focuses on the reflexive kind of agency (Archer, 2003, 2007, 2012). Reflexivity refers to “the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their contexts and vice versa”, which takes place through internal conversation (Archer, 2007, p. 4). Thus, this section presents theories and findings that can help explain how students might engage in internal

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deliberation about the self in light of the environment (e.g. social, cultural, and academic contexts facing an individual) as well as on the environment in light of the self. Psychology of Reflexivity In variants of social theories, agency had been often an elusive, vague term rather than a unit of analysis (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). However, it has been long associated with terms such as “motivation, will, purposiveness, intentionality” (p. 962), which appear frequently in the psychology literature. Psychological perspectives are useful to theorise student agency in higher education as shown in Klemenčič’s (2015) use of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001). In particular, human reflexivity in the form of internal conversation has been a widely researched area in psychology that explores inner human functioning. Theories and findings about human reflexivity emerged in the psychology field through deductive and inductive endeavours to explain how people think, feel, and act. A relevant concept of reflexive internal conversation in psychology is cognitive processing behind human behaviours. Research on cognitive capacities was spawned as the field of psychology experienced a paradigm shift since 1970–1980s, which was so marked that it was referred to as “cognitive revolution” (Gecas, 1982, p. 1). The movement from focusing on external stimulus to explain human behaviours towards mental abilities that process the determining influences of stimulus on responses is reminiscent of reflexive agency that is not directly determined by structure but mediated by critical internal deliberation. Social learning theory of Julian Rotter (1954) is one of the ancestor theories that had led the cognitivist tradition in psychology. Its central idea is that it is not the reward and punishment that determine human behaviours but human’s interpretation about them. The famous Bobo doll experiments, conducted by Albert Bandura in early 1960s, demonstrated the functions of cognitive thinking. When groups of children were observed in terms of their violent behaviours towards a doll after they watched a person attack the doll, the most significant variation was found after they saw what the person experienced (punished, rewarded, or no consequences) as a result of aggressive act (Bandura et al., 1961, 1963). The fact that children’s behaviours were affected by observing, not by directly experiencing, the punishment/reward was interpreted as evidence of cognitive abilities. This point is the cornerstone idea of reflexive agency

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because the controlling power for the human action is given to the inner self, not to the external stimulus. It is important to note that the shift towards a more agentic portrayal of humans is a result of inductively and deductively reached findings, which provides empirical and theoretical supports for the proposition about the student agency in self-formation. In the above examples, reflexivity was manifested in people’s abilities to search causal relations between events (action and event) and to regulate their own actions accordingly to create the desirable results. This implies reflexivity based on causal search, which can be further examined by the two themes that emerged from interviewing and observing South Korean students: effort and self-criticism. Self-Reflexivity Korean students in this study similarly and very frequently used the Korean word yeolsim. Yeolsim, that can be translated into English as “effort” or “hard work”, was regarded as a main cause that participants attribute their past success or failure to. For instance, Sarang ascribed her successful presentation to her hard work when she stayed up all night to prepare for the presentation, while Hankyu thought his unsatisfactory performance was due to his insufficient effort, regretting he should have “saved more time, slept less”. Such focus on personal effort as a cause of an event can be interpreted as reflexive agency by employing the lens of attribution theories (Graham, 1991; Kelley, 1967; Weiner, 1985). According to research on attribution, people who ascribe an event to a more controllable, internal, and changeable cause have stronger belief about their own control power, or agency. Effort is normally regarded “subject to volitional control—an individual can increase or decrease effort expenditure”, contrasting to the ability that is generally perceived as determined by nature, hence incontrollable (Weiner, 1985, p. 550). Thus, the frequently observed self-­ ascription among participants implies their belief about effort as a controllable variable that can bring out a certain result in their student life. Further analysis of students’ use of the word yeolsim revealed that it tends to be paired it with the word “studying”. “Studying hard” was almost used as a phrasal verb by the participants. Effortful studying echoes the student engagement concept that has attracted considerable attention on the academic, institutional, and political levels, as a key factor in student success in higher education (Trowler, 2010). Student engagement refers to “the time and effort students devote to activities that are

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empirically linked to desired outcomes of college and what institutions do to induce students to participate in these activities” (Kuh, 2009, p. 683). Such engagement, however, cannot provide a sufficient explanation for the finding of this study. When I asked students to define “effort” in their own words, it meant beyond completing the mandatory tasks given by teachers. For instance, Young was a successful student from the institution’s view, excelling in all evaluation criteria, but he complained about himself for not being able to go further than what is expected by others, saying: “I was complacent when I reached the point that my professor expected. I should have made 2 and 3 out of 1 that I learned in classes.” While engagement research sees students’ effortful involvement as a measure to achieve “the desired outcome of college” (Kuh, 2009, p.  683), students in this study regarded effort as a self-evaluation criterion that is not confined to the college’s expectation. While personal effort was where participants’ reflexivity often dwells on, it was also unmissable that their self-evaluative accounts were mostly negative and critical. When the students were asked to look back on their overall college experiences at the end of each term, all participants without exception picked up problems. For instance, Kibum was ashamed of himself when he submitted a manuscript to a conference for the first time because most of the manuscript was written by the supervisors even though Kibum was the first author. This made him conceive of himself as incompetent. The sense of humiliation evolved to anger at the end of his first year: Recently, I got angry at myself. When I first began my study, I … relied too much on my supervisors. Looking back, I don’t think it was the right attitude. I am angry at myself back then who was passive, incapable.

Note that Kibum’s negative feelings are all directed at and rooted in himself. He felt ashamed of himself, humiliated by himself, and angry at himself. At first glance, students’ dominantly critical comments about themselves seem to indicate that student experience is negative and struggling rather than an active process of working on the self. However, with the assumption about students’ strong agency in mind, self-criticism can also be seen as agentic beliefs that the present situation is the result of one’s behaviours, hence under one’s control and responsibility. Attribution theories have also found that self-criticism is a natural psychological

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consequence of attributing an outcome to self-effort (see Weiner, 2012 for review); when an event is interpreted as caused by one’s effort, it is the self whom to blame or praise for the result. Self-critical students seem to always recognise more possibilities by searching for the points that they “could have worked harder” or “could have known better”, such as knowledge yet learnt, efforts yet made, or the ideal yet achieved. Thus, self-criticism enables a mechanism in which students voluntarily search for a gap to fill in the self and divert it into determination and workable personal projects. This indicates the most critical function of self-criticism in academic self-formation: it is the last piece of the puzzle that makes self-­ formation a self-fulfilling and ever-becoming cycle. Self-criticism directs and energises the continuous process of becoming in self-formation, without which student formation might be confined to a linear, unilateral process. According to Archer (2012), reflexivity is characterised by three features: causal efficacy, internality, and subjectivity. Both effort and self-­ criticism share these characteristics. Students’ focus on efforts manifest strong efficacy beliefs in the self’s causal power. This also elevates the self to a subject of making changes and bringing out outcomes in one’s life. Thus, I argue that both effort and self-criticism are manifestations of reflexivity. What is distinctive about these as reflexivity is that they involve the self as both a subject and object of one’s internal conversation. Self-­ reflexivity, or reflexivity exercised on the self by the self, enables the interactive communication between the subject and object self (James, 1890); the two selves are iteratively feeding back and forth each other, elaborating and being elaborated by each other. While this reciprocal mechanism of self-reflexivity should be included in explaining what self-formation is, this does not mean that self-formation is an atomic process. If reflexivity only operates on the individual psychological level, it would preclude the space for various resources in higher education such as academic knowledge to influence student formation. The following section explores how reflexivity operates in relation to structure including various resources for academic self-formation.

Reflexivity and Resources As students enter higher education, they encounter new structure. Marginson (2014) suggested that international education can provide resources for self-formation, such as intercultural interaction,

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communicative competence, or mobility. Building on the suggestion, this study assumes that there are resources specific for academic self-formation, in the form of various social, cultural, and systemic factors facing students in a formal learning environment at universities (e.g. pedagogies, cultural norms, assessments, relationship with teachers). However, it is not the aim of this study to identify and catalogue all relevant characteristics of structure that influence students’ academic self-formation. Rather, I intend to reveal the core mechanism of how students’ reflexivity operates in light of such various contextual factors. Socioculturally Mediated Agency Almost every agency theory advocates the impact of social contexts on agency development in one way or another (Ahearn, 2001; Biesta & Teddar, 2007; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Klemenčič, 2015). Ahearn (2001) suggests that agency is shaped by sociocultural factors, such as language, that construct and carry culturally symbolic systems among individuals. The impact of these factors, however, is not determining but only mediating according to her definition of agency: “a socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p.  112). This conception of agency mediated by sociocultural factors has been particularly endorsed by studies on international students in higher education (Inouye et al., 2022). The current study adopts the mediating relationship between agency and structure in a slightly different direction by emphasising the role of reflexivity. I argue that not only agents’ capacities are socioculturally mediated but they also can exploit such mediating power of structure. Something impossible for agents could be made possible by their engagement with the mediating factors. Various theories of control in psychology have commonly suggested differentiating the means-ends, agents-ends, and agents-means relations (Skinner, 1996). First, means-ends relations are the connection between particular causes and outcomes, which is shaped by one’s perceptions about the likelihood of certain results followed by certain causes (e.g. actions, attributes, external power). Second, the agents-means relation is “the extent to which a potential means is available to a particular agent” (Skinner, 1996, p. 553). Third, the agent-­ ends relation refers to “the extent to which an agent can intentionally produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones” (p.  554). Even when agent-ends relation is perceived hopeless, agents can borrow the

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power of a right means to achieve an outcome that was out of reach for agents. And this process is premised on reflexivity. The proposition about agency subjecting the mediating power of structure was examined by the empirical part of this study. To do so, I selected a specific contextual feature observed in fieldwork and explored how students reflexively interact with it for their academic self-formation in the following section. Active Conformity: Passivity for Activity Students in this study similarly accounted for the hierarchical relationship between students and professors as an influential factor in their university experiences. Participants very frequently described their professors as “scary”, “authoritative”, and “directive” in Korean higher education. When Korean mobile students were asked to compare their experiences in Korean and UK higher education, they commonly picked out different power distances between students and professors. With professors at the upper and students at the lower part of the hierarchy, knowledge mostly flows one way from teachers to learners. Large-scale lectures were often perceived most efficient in learning knowledge by the participants. Even during student presentations or class discussions, students tended to use professors’ reactions and responses to confirm their knowledge construction. Based on the shared trust in professors’ knowledgeability, students almost unconditionally and fully accepted professors’ feedback and follow their directions without questions. As this hierarchical culture filters how students engage with knowledge, students’ reflexivity concerning the hierarchical culture can provide rich information about academic self-formation. The hierarchical culture is featured by controlling professors and conforming students. Normally, conformity is placed at the opposite of resistance in the relationship with structure, indicating a lower level of agency (Ahearn, 2001). However, I argue in this section that conformity is another aspect of reflexivity that students enacted in their interaction with the environment. Inho’s case represents the typical portrayal of conformity. Since Inho did not believe in his ability (or “do not have metacognition”) to evaluate his performance, he borrowed the standard of professors who are experts in his field. He tried hard to fit himself into what professors wanted. In fact, for Inho, effort-making is “performing well according to the given evaluation criteria”. Working towards the expectation set

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by professors, he did not perceive much autonomy. He described the professor-­student relationship as “masters and slaves”: It is a one-directional interaction that professors give materials, assignments, and orders, and students should work hard on the orders … students can neither ask to reduce the workload nor tell their professors what they want. So, it is a dependent relationship.

He was both voluntarily and inevitably conforming to the hierarchical structure. Inho could not even leave feedback about classes at the end of a semester because he was afraid that the professor would know that it was him. “Even if the anonymity is secured, … I’ll anyway graduate in 2 years, why would I stir the institution’s evaluation system?”, said Inho. He internalised the power of professors, had to submit himself to the externally given standard, and perceived no control over the given structure. This illustration would be exactly what the word “conformity” would summon in readers’ minds. Here is a rarer image of conformity. Sarang’s mobility to UK higher education cost her substantial time, effort, and financial investment. When she received an offer from her current British university, she felt like her life goal had just been realised. It was important for Sarang to make the most out of the two years at the university. Whenever she felt demotivated or demoralised, she reminded herself that “I am living in my dream”. She was certain that the new environment would bring her closer to her ideal self. With such a belief in mind, she said to herself “I must obey. I must follow the direction. I need to get the most out of here.” Conformity was taken for granted for Sarang to form herself. Sarang internalised the transformational power of the university, autonomously submitted herself to the programme, and had no intention to change or control anything but herself. Inho and Sarang similarly accepted the power of structure, submitted themselves to the structure, and exercise control power over the structure. However, while Inho’s case fits the conventional story of obedient students, people would not necessarily categorise Sarang’s case as conformity. This difference can be explicated by employing the Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2000) that distinguishes human motivation according to varying degrees of autonomy, subjectivity, and agency about external regulation. In SDT, internally generated human motivation is the undisturbed form of human agency. What is significant about SDT is that

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it also embraces agency in externally regulated or conforming behaviours. It gives orders to different types of conformity according to the extent of agentic interpretation of the external forces. When students’ conformity is compulsory with no internalised value, structure (e.g. hierarchy, evaluation criteria) is perceived as external regulation. Inho’s conformity is slightly different from this case because he introjected the value of the given structure (e.g. professors’ approval, grades) in protecting his self-­ worth. By letting himself be controlled by the structure, Inho’s agency is somewhat limited. In contrast, when the importance imposed by structure is accepted by the self (identified regulation) or fully aligned with the personal projects (integrated regulation), conformity would be wholehearted and autonomous. This is similar to Sarang’s active conformity. SDT helps the self-formation framework to justify conformity as an aspect of agency, particularly the reflexive kind as it involves interpreting the external regulation against the personal project and controlling the self accordingly. Self-formation, in turn, can extend SDT. First, the self does not only interpret the external forces but also creates them, for instance, through mobility. Remember Sarang’s endeavour to enter her university so that she can conform to it. SDT does not capture her agentic, the internally generated motivation that preceded her conformity. Thus, the findings about the close interaction between conformity and autonomy challenge SDT’s distinction of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation as the different extent of the agency. In the view of self-formation, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation indicates not more/less agency but instead varying modes of agency. Examining students’ conformity revealed that conforming behaviours can be students’ intentional delegation of self-control to referential others in the course of academic self-formation. Chanho praised his authoritative supervisor for forcing him how to try over and over again despite the repetitive failures. Such external regulation is the very reason “why people go to university”, said Sarang, “because you can do things that you don’t usually do by yourself when you are in a certain environment”. It seems that voluntary conformity is always accompanied by students’ strong trust in the environment as to its power to bring them what they want. When the environment has power that the self does not have, students can borrow its mediating power to change the self by conforming to it. This phenomenon is named active conformity in this study. Just like the proxy agency of Bandura (2018) that people exercise by “influencing others who have the resources, knowledge, and means to act on their behalf to obtain

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the outcomes they desire” (p. 131), students might exercise conformity, so universities can work on self-formation on behalf of the self. What is distinctive in active conformity is that it works with one’s relinquishing of power as a way to acquire more power for self-formation. If agency was only conceptualised in terms of its varying extent, conformity as the unique aspect of reflexivity cannot be appropriately illuminated. Findings about conformity pointed out the need to consider not only the extent but also the content of reflexivity to theorise academic self-formation. Then, a question arises: what makes up the content of individual reflexivity? The final section of this chapter tries to address the question by drawing on the impact of disciplinary knowledge.

Disciplinary Reflexivity In theorising academic self-formation, I propose that the content of reflexivity is highly influenced by academic knowledge. The function of knowledge in students’ academic self-formation is beyond enabling or enhancing student agency. By moving the discussion beyond the extent of agency to how students form unique content reflexivity through engagement with knowledge, the distinctive academic self-formation in higher education can finally be elaborated. Changing Reflexivity Through Engagement with Knowledge Earlier in this chapter, students’ focus of efforts as a controllable variable was described as an aspect of self-reflexivity. Sarang experienced a significant shift in her conception of effort, or reflexivity, while she studied Art Design in the UK. Sharing her tutor’s comments on her artwork about being “typical Asian”, Sarang provided her view about Asian characteristics in creative art. In South Korea, technical quality is an important criterion for the evaluation of artwork. A highly praised work shows great precision and sophistication achieved by a significant amount of effort and time invested in it. This applies even when the idea of the artwork is not that impressive. Sarang herself also used to consider effort more important than the idea itself while studying in the field of Art in South Korea. Moving to the UK, she identified differences in defining what is good Art. Time and effort were no longer the priority in the UK. Even if a student could invest only half an hour to produce the artwork, it was completely acceptable if the idea was worthy of praise. When realised this

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difference, she felt liberated. It was liberation from the pressure to put a great amount of time into “sugar-coating” her idea, especially when she was not very confident about the idea. Thus, the changing approach to her discipline freed her from the presupposed rules that have regulated her work so far. Aram similarly experienced a paradigm shift while studying Sociology. She acknowledged, “sociology changed my perspectives when I relate to others and understand society, social issues”. Sociology led her to question the power relation in societies and she gradually learned to apply the perspective towards her hierarchical relationship with professors. This change is clear in her account below: I experienced a paradigm shift in terms of my relating to my supervisor. Well, maybe I do not have to think of him as someone higher, more powerful than me. Sociology is very much about pointing out the power … Instead of blaming others, I realised that first I should stop placing myself into the hierarchy. It seemed almost taken for granted among other students too, that they must be submissive to their supervisors. But, if I am to grow, I must break through this. And in that way only, studying Sociology could be meaningful.

Aram’s reflexivity transformed as she engaged more with Sociology. There were no physical or structural differences between the beginning and the end of her first year but Aram’s paradigm in understanding herself in relation to her supervisor. Her paradigm-shifting ability was drawn from Sociology, she admitted. In turn, the paradigm shift made Sociology meaningful to her. This shows how Aram aligned her disciplinary learning with her daily life. Furthermore, beyond changing viewpoints, she devised a strategy to act with the new perspective. In her mind, by using reflexive agency, she consciously rearranges the relationship by placing herself more powerful subject (who can help) than the professor (who needs help): I decided to change my perspective. … I think of him as someone whom I should pity. Intentionally I pity him. This has transformed ‘working for him’ to ‘helping someone who needs my help’. Otherwise, I would regard him as a great, reputable, doctor, and professor, and myself as an incompetent one who cannot even conduct research on her own. … This frame made me more comfortable.

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The examples given here imply the growing extent of students’ agency in relation to structure. As Aram repositioned herself in the hierarchy and as Sarang placed herself out of the given structure, their self-reflexivity through engagement with knowledge helped them rearrange their relationship with structure. Also, their accounts showed how the content of reflexivity is constructed in active interaction with academic knowledge. Sarang’s reflexivity became more concerned about individual freedom and diversity, which is emphasised in the newly encountered definition of Art in the UK. Aram’s reflexivity towards hierarchy was directly prompted by her studies of power, equality, and social structure in Sociology. The cases from Aram and Sarang might raise questions regarding what aspects of knowledge or disciplinary characteristics inform students’ reflexivity and how. These questions are addressed by another part of the current doctoral research project, which is left for future publication due to limited space for this chapter. The chapter remains focused on the changing reflexivity through students’ engagement with knowledge. While participants of this study helped illustrate the phenomenon, theories and concepts help explain how. How Knowledge Informs Reflexivity Theories help to extend the understanding of academic self-formation by elaborating how disciplinary knowledge forms students’ reflexivity in higher education. I draw on Vygotsky’s (2012) sociocultural theorisation of thought development in this section. For Vygotsky, human reflexivity emerges from social interaction, mediated by languages that are initially used for social communication and then turned into language for internal conversation. He imagined that a child’s thought development is contingent on his mastery of “the social means of thought” or language (Vygotsky, 2012, p. 100). The internal conversation is constructed as “the speech structures mastered by the child become the basic structures of his thinking” (p.  100). This approach is similar to Archer’s (2012) reflexivity in that they both recognise the interplay between cultural system and private imagery through a mediatory mechanism such as language. Thus, reflexivity develops through language for inner and external communication. What Vygotsky emphasised is the social as the beginning of this process, and language as a measure to individualise the social into the personal. If Vygotsky’s theorisation is correct, then students’ self-reflexivity used for their self-formation might have also

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been constructed by internalising the language used for engaging with others. By extending the definition of language, knowledge can also be a form of language that is different across disciplines (Marginson, 2023). Knowledge might be a critical form of language that mediates students’ reflexive self-formation in higher education. The function of language is equivalent to disciplinary knowledge that socially communicates thoughts, ideas, and discourses through distinctive texts or language, as a means of communication. In each discipline, there are jargons that people in the field use to communicate only with each other, while people out of the field would not understand. Just like language represents and forms the way of understanding the world as well as the self, knowledge shows how people in certain disciplines see the world in their distinctive ways. Thus, if one’s internal conversation drifts from social dialogues with the world through knowledge, academic knowledge would provide a distinctive, specialised language that students individualise to form their reflexivity. The earlier Aram and Sarang’s examples describe how disciplinary knowledge shapes students’ reflexivity and thereby influences academic self-formation. The way Sociology envisions individual power and social structure was individualised by Aram and changed her way of interacting with the world around her. Knowledge as language might slightly vary across cultures, countries, regions, and so on, just like various dialects rooted in one language. This explains how Sarang’s reflexivity shifted as she moved from Korea to the UK while staying in the same discipline. By borrowing the view of Vygotsky, I could illuminate how academic knowledge mediates students’ reflexivity as a language to communicate to society as well as the self. It extends the previous understanding of student agency in higher education, which only remained at the extent of agency, for instance in the form of more self-regulated learning skills or more willingness to engage in institutional changes or student activism. Disciplinary knowledge carries distinctive content and varying extent of reflexivity, individualised by students as a language for internal conversation; this I term disciplinary reflexivity.

Conclusion By introducing different aspects of reflexivity (effort, self-criticism, and active conformity), this chapter illustrated the mechanism of students’ agency practice underlying their academic self-formation. Effort was

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perceived by students as a controllable variable for the self-formation in higher education, while their voluntary self-criticism completed the self-­ fulfilling, ever-becoming cycle of self-formation. In addition to self-­ reflexivity, this chapter has also shown how students’ reflexivity in relation to structure, with the example of hierarchical student-teacher relationship in Korean higher education. Making a case for conformity as another aspect of reflexivity, this chapter argues for a shift of the focus from the extent of reflexivity to the content of reflexivity. As can be seen from students’ examples, students developed their unique disciplinary reflexivity throughout higher education. As reflexivity mediate between agency and structure, the way in which students work on the self in light of the world as well as the way they reflect on the world in light of the self are conditioned by disciplinary reflexivity. In conclusion, I propose that academic self-formation involves the process and outcome of the agency-structure interaction mediated by students’ evolving disciplinary reflexivity. Higher education as academic self-formation can thus bring both knowledge and student agency back to the table. This chapter illuminated the potential direction for future investigation, such as the disciplinary differences or cultural foundations in students’ reflexivity. Addressing these topics, the ongoing theory development is expected to provide a fuller understanding of academic self-formation.

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Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. Sayer, A. (1992). Method in social science: A realist approach. Psychology Press. Sayer, A. (1999). Realism and social science. Sage Publication. Skinner, E. A. (1996). A guide to constructs of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(3), 549. Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 104, 333–339. Trowler, V. (2010). Student engagement literature review. Higher Education (November), 1–15. Retrieved from http://americandemocracy.illinoisstate. edu/documents/democratic-­engagement-­white-­paper-­2_13_09.pdf Vermunt, J.  D., & Vermetten, Y.  J. (2004). Patterns in student learning: Relationships between learning strategies, conceptions of learning, and learning orientations. Educational Psychology Review, 16(4), 359–384. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10648-­004-­0005-­y Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). Thought and language. MIT Press. Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548. Weiner, B. (2012). An attribution theory of motivation. Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, 1, 135–155. Wheelahan, L. (2012). Why knowledge matters in curriculum: A social realist argument. Routledge. Yang, L. (2022). Student formation in higher education: A comparison and combination of Confucian xiushen (self-cultivation) and Bildung. Higher Education, 83(5), 1163–1180. Young, M. (2007). Bringing knowledge back in: From social constructivism to social realism in the sociology of education. Routledge.

PART II

Depicting Student Agency in International Higher Education

CHAPTER 5

Student Agency and Becoming in International Programs in Vietnamese Universities Phuong Minh Luong, Ly Thi Tran, and Huyen Thi Thanh Nguyen

Introduction Student agency has attracted increasing scholarly attention during the past few decades as a key ingredient to education transformation (Stenalt & Lassesen, 2021; Vaughn et  al., 2019). Agentic student engagement is P. M. Luong (*) Faculty of International Studies, Hanoi University, Hanoi, Vietnam Faculty of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Vietnam Japan University, Hanoi, Vietnam L. T. Tran School of Education & Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Centre, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia H. T. T. Nguyen School of Interdisciplinary Sciences, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_5

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found at the core of contemporary education systems which need to respond to emerging world challenges (Charteris & Smardon, 2018), especially when the technology advances are enabling polysynchronous learning (Marín et al., 2020). Non-Western education systems have been rather under-represented in the study of student agency, especially in relation to the ways learners’ agentive quality is linked to education outcomes. The systematic review of the literature on the impact of student agency over learning by Stenalt and Lassesen (2021) was able to include only five relevant studies from Asia during the period from 1980 to 2021. In the meantime, many countries in Asia including Vietnam are striving to reform their education systems heavily influenced by Confucianism where student role may be passive and sidelined due to teachers’ dominance (Huang & Cheng, 2020; Tran et al., 2022). A major part of the effort involves internationalization. Thus, an investigation into the enactment of student agency in international programs in Vietnam is much needed as this would fill the gap for understanding the mechanisms and factors that underlie education quality during internationalization in a country peripheral to international education. The development of international programs is part of the internationalization efforts in Vietnam as the country tries to modernize its education system and to produce an internationally competitive workforce (Ryu & Nguyen, 2021). At-home internationalization in Vietnam has evolved through increased use of English as a medium of instruction, the borrowing of foreign curriculum, and the delivery of programs through international partnerships or transnational education (Tran et  al., 2018; Tran et al., 2014). As of 2021, strong internationalization in higher education has brought about 408 joint training programs with foreign partners from 33 countries, up by 1.5 times compared with 2016 (MOET, 2022). However, there has been a paucity of studies on student agency in international programs of Vietnam. An insight into the way students agentically engage in Vietnamese international programs toward achievement of education objectives for becoming will thus provide a missing piece in the bigger picture of education internationalization and changes in Vietnam. This chapter is based on qualitative data collected from 80 participants including 69 Vietnamese and 11 international students. It discusses student agency in the process of becoming in four themes including the development of English, adaptation of learning approaches, acquisition of

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intercultural knowledge and communication strategies, and forgery of social relationships. The results of our study reveal how students’ agentive enactment helped in their cultural adaptability throughout the study programs. The self-initiated acts by students to meet with their needs and to reach their dreamed professional future particularly counted into the transformation they experienced and enhanced their overall satisfaction. The study thus provides implications for institutions and teachers of international programs, suggesting development of policies to nurture student agency in cultural adaptability while revising the curricular and pedagogical environments to accommodate more student-led interactions.

Human Agency The discussions of student agency have blossomed in the past decade. OECD countries have participated in the lead asserting their position for Future Education 2030 that agency be the first thing to be equipped to learners of the future (OECD, 2018). Agency has been described as the “capacity of autonomous action … [independent] of the determining constraints of social structure” (Calhoun, cited by Biesta & Tedder, 2006, p.  5) or as the capacity of actors to “critically shape their responses to problematic situations” (Biesta & Tedder, 2006, p. 11). From the psychological perspective, Bandura (2006, 2018) elaborates four core features of human agency including: (i) intentionality (i.e. action plans and strategies for realizing them), (ii) forethought (i.e. more than future-directed plans, goal setting and outcome anticipation that serve as current guides and motivators of behavior); (iii) self-reactiveness (ability to construct appropriate courses of action and motivate, regulate their execution); and (iv) self-reflectiveness (i.e. personal efficacy through self-­ awareness, adjustment making). Among these, the metacognitive capability to reflect upon oneself and the adequacy of one’s thoughts and actions is the most distinctly human core property of agency. Meanwhile, in the relational view, agency is seen as the “power to transform … (and) … resistance to and transformation of dominant power relations” (Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011, p. 813). From the ecological approach, agency is seen as emerging from the interaction of individual capacity with structural conditions (Priestley et al., 2015; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Actors can exercise their agency from “the interplay of individual efforts, available resources and

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contextual and structural factors as they come together in particular and, in a sense, always unique situations” (Biesta & Tedder, 2007, p.  137). From the social-cognitive perspective, human agency has been seen in the way that to be an agent is to influence intentionally one’s functioning and life circumstances. In this sense, “people are self-organizing, proactive, self-­regulating and self-reflecting. They are contributors to their life circumstances not just products of them” (Bandura, 2006, p.164). From the socio-cultural perspective, human agency is described as “the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p.  112). As such, the agentic learner’s participation in social practices and involvement in the social construction of knowledge is highlighted (Jääskelä et  al., 2016). In this sense, agency is shaped by culture in several ways. It tends to be objectifying itself in social relations. Moreover, agency also exposes a function of the quality and character of social relations in which an individual participates. Social relations are the essence of agency. As a social phenomenon, the conception has been underlined by Ratner (2000) that agency depends upon cultural processes for its realization, forms culture, and has a cultural form. Reciprocally, active agency shapes individuals’ personal acts and attitudes that, in turn, produce and reproduce culture through creating personal meanings about the significance of things and through acts. More specifically, people act on the basis of beliefs, preferences, norms, values, understandings, and goals that are generated by cultural adaptation. As important aspects of their social and natural environments are actively shaped, their adaptive dynamics and outcomes are subsequently affected (Smith, 2013). Regardless of the diverse perspectives on agency, there has been a convergence on the linkage between student agency and education quality. Student self-initiated engagement has been seen both as a desirable goal and as a process, crucial for lifelong learning (Biesta & Tedder, 2007), for the transition management (Ecclestone, 2009) and for students’ overall performance and satisfaction (Stenalt & Lassesen, 2021). The following section shall review how student agency is enacted and related to education attainments in the process of becoming.

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Student Agency and Intercultural Adaptability for Becoming Education is essentially a process of personal transition from the “being” to the “becoming” or the before and after of specified learning experiences (Ecclestone, 2009). The transfer to further education after the secondary level is a particularly daunting point as it is not merely a move from formal compulsory schooling to a more independent environment but rather a crucial transformation from adolescence to adulthood. It is argued that this becoming period at the higher education level thus requires even stronger ecological support to the transforming subjects while proactiveness of learners themselves holds the key to success (Ecclestone, 2009; Packer & Thomas, 2021). Agentive engagement has been found important for students to make successful adjustments to the university life: students are to adapt to new study conventions; to acquire new competences for independent academic journey, new attitudes, knowledge, and skills; to develop navigation strategies to interact with and get support from university staff; and to integrate into the professional community (Packer & Thomas, 2021). For those who transfer from secondary education to internationalized higher education programs, there are even more challenges in their becoming process because of additional challenges in the forms of language barriers and cultural educational normative and practical differences (Prescott & Hellsten, 2005; Quan et al., 2013). The process of becoming for students in tertiary international programs thus demands development of intercultural adaptability as well. Many studies have demonstrated how student agency is attached with increasing importance in such a becoming process (Luo et  al., 2019; Theobald, 2021; Dörrenbächer, 2017; Tran, 2016). Student agency as becoming is tied to not only the actions and engagement in the present but importantly the aspirations for the future and for pursuing a professional, social, and personal life that the students wish to pursue (Tran, 2016). Luo et al. (2019) conducted an empirical study at undergraduate level and suggested that student proactive participation in flipped classrooms bore significant impact on their academic performance and perceived learning experience. Numerous studies on self-regulated learning strategies and motivation which are parts of agency have confirmed their effectiveness on academic results (Theobald, 2021; Dörrenbächer, 2017). Self-initiated student contributions have been found constructive to the

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process of knowledge production or translation from theoretical understandings to professional advances (Heikkilä et al., 2020; Eteläpelto, 2017). For students studying international programs, Dippold et  al. (2021) presented cases of successful linguistic conquer through agentic actions to make the most of institution-facilitated opportunities and self-help for reciprocal adaptation. Quan et  al. (2013) noted on the great support extended through intra-networks among international students themselves. Tran and Vu (2018) highlighted students’ curricular engagement, while Kudo et  al. (2020) emphasized student-initiated activities, which proved more important than institutions’ internationalization efforts in the development of meaningful intercultural relationships. With focus on the intentional response to a given situation, research found that international students’ agency depends on students’ subjectivity and structural conditions (Tran & Vu, 2018). In the intercultural adaptability process, student agency for becoming shows student self-transformation and future aspirations associated with intercultural contexts. It exercises through the ways they set out to achieve a particular goal and position themselves in this striving process (self-positioning) and the ways they position the relations to different actors (for example, teachers and peers) and/or navigate to agentively interact with them (other positioning) (Luong et al., 2021). In fact, the discussions on the linkage between student agency and their learning experiences and outcomes have flourished during the past decade (Stenalt & Lassesen, 2021). Being one key learning outcome of the international programs, intercultural adaptability has been made the focus of many studies related to agency and becoming. Kim (2001) defines intercultural adaptability as a process in which individuals acquire competences to become fitter to the new cultural environment. These intercultural competences comprise cognitive, affective, and behavioral attributes or, in other words, they include knowledge, skills, and affection toward other culture (Bennett, 2009). Many factors have been found to affect this adaptability process including individuals’ personal characteristics and the environment in which they are immersed. Recent studies on adaptability, however, have departed from the mere identification of the cognitive, affective, and operational requisites needed for individuals to function well in intercultural communication. Instead, some studies have started to look at how individuals enact agency through differentiating their own experiences in new cultural environment and their adjustment process (Luong et al., 2021, 2023. Further insights into how student agency is enacted for becoming in intercultural

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adaptability in international programs in a teacher-dominating tradition such as Vietnam thus provide more details into the picture of internationalization.

Confucianism, Student Agency, and Education Reforms in Vietnam Vietnam’s education system, along with those of other Asian countries, has been heavily influenced by Confucianism (Thu et  al., 2021). Many scholars have associated this Confucianist influence with limited student agency in a predominantly teacher-dominated education setting. Tan (2013) cites several studies that depict Confucianist education as being centered on textual transmission, rote learning, memorization without genuine comprehension, didactic teaching, suppression of individuality, and a disregard for critical, creative, and other forms of high-order thinking. Han and Schull’s (2010) list of typical philosophical beliefs and class practices in Confucian heritage cultures further highlights the absence of student agency due to the teacher-centeredness, top-down approach, emphasis on obedience, and limited use of the interactive process. Tan (2018) cautions against oversimplifying Confucius impact on education. Although there is a tendency in Confucianist educational tradition to indoctrinate students rather than allowing them to actively participate in their own training, Confucianism does contain elements that promote agency, such as reflective learning, which encourages students to engage with their own beliefs and values and consider alternative viewpoints (Tan, 2018). Similarly, Yang (2022) points to the concept of xiushen within Confucianism, which requires individual efforts for students’ self-­ formation. Yang (2022) asserts that for the xiushen concept to make a practical contribution to enhancing students’ agency, there must be an enabling educational environment. Other scholars report that Confucianist education systems are constantly being revised and altered to become more student-centered (for example, Marginson, 2018; Kaur, 2020). In such a process, education internationalization was both a reality that requires adaptation and a deliberate reform initiative adopted by governments (Ryu & Nguyen, 2021; Li & Eryong, 2022).

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Methodology Research Design Using the qualitative method, the research collected data from eight international programs of five universities across three different regions in Vietnam. There have been two types of international programs selected for this study including the advanced training program and the articulated international one. The first is the advanced program in English language (Chư ơ ng trình tiên tiến) that was imported from a foreign university and funded by the Vietnamese government. Meanwhile, the latter is called an articulated program, also delivered in English language but in a joint-­ degree cooperation between a Vietnamese university and a foreign one, not funded by the Vietnamese government. There are four advanced training programs and four articulated ones as seen in Table 5.1. Participants and Context Among eight international training programs, four advanced programs enrolled foreign students who primarily came from Asia (i.e. Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc.), Africa (i.e. South Africa, Nigeria, etc.), and America (i.e. Canada, Mexico, etc.). The remaining programs only had Vietnamese students. Notably, four articulated programs offered Vietnamese students exchange and/or mobility programs (one month to two years) to their foreign partner’s university Vietnamese students after they completed the second year. The study collected qualitative data from 80 in-depth interviews including 69 with Vietnamese participants and 11 with foreign ones, 8 undergraduate students from each cohort (from first to fourth year) (Table 5.2). Data Collection and Analysis The rich and detailed data set, which included recordings of in-depth interviews and a collection of life stories based on the participants’ lived experience, enable us to gain useful insights into students’ intercultural adaptability. The interviews were semi-structured and conversational within 60–90 minutes. The interviews were audio-recorded with the consent from the participants and were then transcribed by the research team. A data log was

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Table 5.1  International programs in the research sampling (2021) Region

Name of university

Northern University 01 region

Number of international training programs

The training major of advanced training program

2

University 02

1

University 03

3

Central region

University 04

1

South region

University 05

1

Chemical engineering Environmental management and science Food processing technology Agricultural economics

The training major of the articulated international training program

International university partner

Accountancy— The Association of Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) Tourism management

A Malaysian university

An Austrian university An American university An American university An American university

An Australian university Information A French communication university technology Logistic and A South port Korean management university

Table 5.2  Participants of the study (2021) Participants Lecturers Graduate students (*) Undergraduate students University leaders Program coordinator Educational management agencies Employers Total number

Foreign Vietnamese Female Male Total number 4 5 2

11

14 12 27 3 6 3 4 69

10 6 18 3 2 2 41

8 6 14 3 5 1 2 39

(*) Graduate students are those who completed their bachelor study and left the universities

18 12 32 3 8 3 4 80

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created with the code number assigned to each participant for administering and analyzing. To account for how student agency is enacted in intercultural learning environment, qualitative data analysis was completed to prepare data for comparison and interpretation using an abductive coding process (Tavory & Timmermans, 2019; Flick, 2014). First, the transcriptions of 80 in-depth interviews were transferred to NVIVO 12. The data coding was initially undertaken with 10 interviews in order to develop the themes of intercultural adaptability. These interviews were selected based on three key criteria including: (i) perspectives of different participants; (ii) resourceful information on IA and students’ agency enactivement; and (iii) students from different geographical locations and type of international programs. With such criteria, we first selected two interview transcriptions from two coordinators (one from the university in the northern region and the other in the central region; two lecturers (one from the advanced program and the other from the articulated one), and six students including four undergraduate and two graduate ones of which an even proportionate has been selected from the advanced and articulated programs). The degree of resourceful information has been noted in the field note of each IDI for the researchers’ selection of these initial coding files. On this account, the analysis of these ten initial files has brought about four deductive master codes including: (i) language development, (ii) cultural knowledge and communication, (iii) learning style, and (iv) social relationship. On this basis, student agency enactment has also been coded in terms of these four IA themes, specifically: (i) developing English language competence through student self-initiated and university-programmed activities; (ii) adapting their learning approach, particularly transition from general education to higher education and access internationalized curriculum and pedagogy; (iii) exercising communication strategies relevant to intercultural learning environment, particularly working with internationalized curriculum and foreign lecturers; (iv) enriching their cultural knowledge in order to be prepared for their learning in an intercultural environment; and (v) building social relationships that enable them to achieve their goals or aspirations toward their international training programs (i.e. employment opportunities, supports to their study and life, etc.). These represent dimensions of the student agency of intercultural adaptability framework chosen to frame the data analysis. These worked as a “master list” with segments of data relating to each dimension. As such,

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pattern codes of student agency were developed to pull together data into units of common issues of concern (Flick, 2014). To check their validity, 10 more similarly selected interviews were subsequently coded and compared with the initial pattern codes as noted below in order to finalize the codebook. Based on the refined codebook, the coding was conducted with the remaining 60 interviews. Notably, the names of participants and institutions were anonymized to protect their identity.

Results and Discussion The analyzed data shows the ways that students exercised agentic capacity in intercultural adaptation in the process of language development, cultural knowledge and communication, learning style, and social relationship. Markedly, the agency and becoming of international students has more easily enacted in a multicultural environment than that of local ones in language development and cultural knowledge and communication. Language Development The majority of students of all eight international training programs reported that limited English language has been their first barrier in accessing at-home international programs and interacting with teachers, particularly foreign ones. Therefore, some students have enacted their strong agency in English language learning. Besides, other students who have had their good English preparation prior to the international programs owing to their personal experience and family support have exercised their agency in language development process. In practice, inadequate English language proficiency forced many Vietnamese academics to deliver their lectures in Vietnamese language, particularly when all students in class were Vietnamese. Some students were self-aware of the potential setbacks of this practice for their English language improvement. Moreover, being aware of their limited English language, they were all able to foresee challenges in study and in life if they took their study abroad in the remaining semesters. As such, they actively communicated with their lecturers and friends in English. Notably, they agentively sought for advice and support from graduate students of their training program in this regard.

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Teachers often prepare their lectures in French but deliver in either English or French. … In reality, they often deliver their lectures in Vietnamese language during the first year because of students’ poor language capacity. Some students shared their worries with me that they could not catch up our French colleagues’ lectures if their French and/or English proficiency was limited. Therefore, they have actively communicated in either English or French with teachers. Some of them even actively connected with some Vietnamese alumni of previous cohorts so that they could introduce them with some foreign friends in France for their language preparation and improvement. (Coordinator, University 04)

Some students actively found an effective way of self-learning English. They create the dynamics for their English communication on daily basis and initiate some intercultural programs in the universities. Moreover, they proactively decide to move in the university dormitories so as to live with international peers in an English language communication environment. I did not understand anything at all during the first lessons. I lagged far behind compared with my peers who were living in Hanoi. … At that time, I found and tried many different self-study methods and finally used the effortless English method by A.J. Hoge. With this method, I spent two hours speaking with my mobile phone everyday. It also required me to be highly disciplined and spend at least two hours per day during 6 days on speaking English. After the first 6 months, my English was getting better and I could understand lectures. … After the morning class, I usually wait for office hours with my foreign professors in order to address my unclear questions. Through discussions and exchanges with them, I can quickly improve my English and consolidate my acquired knowledge. (A fifth-year graduate student from the advanced training program, University 02) Many students of our advanced programs move to live in the dormitory though their house is near the university. They want to share room with their international peers and participate in parties or intercultural events such as football watching together, outdoors and music festivals, etc. that motivate them to communicate in English. Actually the international communication environment in the dormitory is really good for them to improve their English proficiency and communication. (Lecturer of the advanced program, University 03)

To motivate themselves in language development, some students acted as facilitators of international and intercultural events and English language competitions so that they could confidently communicate in

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English. Furthermore, some students actively found out their peers who also set similar goals for their language improvement. While students with limited English language sought ways to improve their language competence, students who could communicate well in English actively develop their English competence in specializing areas. With their good English competency, they were able to attend the seminars or workshops in their field of study or pursue the cultural exchange programs with international students. I seek a Vietnamese classmate who is not good at English like me. We then read books, some news from Twitter, and study by YouTube. The first time I don’t understand many words. I just try to remember first and use them in similar context. … I sometimes join English club and talked about my experience when I was studying in Thailand. Sometimes I feel tired with English but I never give up. (A third-year Cambodian student, University 02) I achieved IELTS certificate of 6.0 when starting my international program in 20018. … Different from my peers, I could easily acquire knowledge in my accounting training program, even with F1 courses purely theoretical such as micro- and macro-economics. In contrast, these courses were quite challenging with my friends who had poor English language. I even searched for more specializing books of these courses in English for my further reading. (A newly graduate student, University 01)

The results of our study resonate with those of some previous studies that students’ agency enables them to improve their language competence by their self-help in seeking effective method of language learning and student-initiated activities by creating an international environment for communication (Prescott & Hellsten, 2005; Dippold et  al., 2021; Pirhonen, 2021). Additionally, both international and domestic students shift from their passiveness to activeness in finding their suitable partners as peer learning and intercultural exchange programs. However, it has also found that there was a certain difference in external motivation of English language adoption between international students and local ones. Accordingly, the first group has inevitably been forced to communicate in English language in this host country when they engaged in any social interaction, particularly when they were hardly able to communicate in Vietnamese language. In contrast, the latter group has had their language choice of communicating in either Vietnamese or English language in their social interaction as Vietnamese is regulated as the country’s official

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language of instruction and communication. As a result, the English language use and development for international students has been more compulsory than that of their local peers. Furthermore, findings of the previous studies indicate that the internationalization at home has positively impacted domestic students’ language development and intercultural competence owing to their international peers (Gosling & Yang, 2022; Jon, 2013). As such, great support extended through intra-­networks among international students has significantly contributed to their language development (Quan et al., 2013; Pirhonen, 2021). A new finding of this study is that student agency enables them to overcome the constraints of language development caused by inadequate institutional conditions such as teachers with inadequate English competency and their preference of lecturing in Vietnamese language for classes with 100 percent Vietnamese students by creating by themselves opportunities for communicating in English with foreign lecturers and/or students. From the ecological approach, this agency is enacted from the interaction of individual capacity and structural conditions (Priestley et  al., 2015; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Moreover, seeking opportunities of self-­ actualization of their language competence such as competitions, intercultural exchange programs, or professional knowledge, expansion has been seen as a way of motivating students to make efforts in their language development at the professional level. In this regard, student agency is exercised through the interplay of student efforts and available resources and structural factors (Biesta & Tedder, 2007). Cultural Knowledge and Communication In classroom, students explore the discipline-specific concepts from the diverse cultural perspectives. They localize and link to key theoretical concepts to Vietnam’s context, particularly in some courses in law, business, accountancy, and environment management. In life, some students actively enrich their cultural knowledge about local people, religions, food, norms, and festivals to properly communicate with these people. Furthermore, they actively tried to enhance their knowledge about the characteristics and patterns of communication of people from different ethnic background. Some of them even pursued the “intercultural communication” course to understand and navigate communication with their peers and/ or teachers from different countries.

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In order to effectively complete ACCA program, I have to link it with Vietnamese law on business in Vietnam, and Vietnamese business, etc. … We need to learn the fundamental concepts about business and society in Vietnam, then the business laws. Once we achieve such knowledge in Vietnam context, it is easier for us to access the international context. Moreover, this training program has been developed by people from different cultures so we sometimes share our different perspectives on the introduced concepts. (A third-year student, University 01) I registered one intercultural communication course in my training program to understand the different characteristics and communication patterns of people from different countries. I want to know what Asian people desire for and how it is different from that of European people. European people highly respect for each other’s privacy while Asian ones prefer being cared by others. This cultural knowledge enables me to be more effective in communication and tolerant when there are conflicts in discussion with my peers owing to our different cultural perspectives. (A third-year female student, University 04)

Beyond their active exploration of different cultures, students proactively introduced Vietnamese culture to their international peers and teachers. Through this process, they reinforce their self-identity in an intercultural learning environment. Notably, some students even correct the distorted understanding of some international friends about Vietnamese history and people. For example, international peers perceived that Vietnam still suffers from war. I participated in the 48 hours program on exploring “chèo” (traditional operetta) of our homeland in order to understand the Chèo history. I love Vietnam’s culture so much so there is no reason for not disseminating it to my international friends. … Moreover, when I flied to Malaysia, I brought a lot of coffee with me to offer it to them. Many international friends like Vietnamese coffee much. … I told them about the beauty of Vietnam, landscapes, long beach, and taught them with some Vietnamese vocabularies. (A female student, University 01) I want to correct my international friends’ understanding about Vietnam that Vietnam is no longer a country in war and Vietnamese people are not aggressive as they thought. Some of my friends know nothing about Vietnam and they even do not know that there is one country named Vietnam in the world. (A male student, University 05)

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Interestingly, some students held a positive view about adapting their communication in a new intercultural environment. Accordingly, they effectively developed their communication competence with people from different backgrounds. Some students have been aware that empathy is crucial in effectively communicating with their local friends. As such, they put themselves in the shoes of others so that they could understand and feel how their peers felt in communication with them. To reinforce trust and confidence in communication, some students proactively arranged talks between foreign teachers and students. They learnt and shifted toward being more open to new cultures when they had more opportunities to work with foreign teachers. Being culturally different, I was unable to feel how my Vietnamese friends felt at first. Maybe this built a wall between us to have an open communication. Many Vietnamese students think that foreign students are better than Vietnamese ones. I want to feel like how they feel. So I tried to understand my peers’ feeling by experiencing and engaging in all activities with them. We shared our same difficulties in English competence and addressed the best strategy of our language development by ourselves. Many of us actively experienced life of Vietnamese peers in order to live and study in harmony with Vietnamese ones. (Final-year Cambodian student, University 03) We organized many open talks between our American professors and students that significantly consolidated our sense of trust and belongingness. … In the international program, we were granted with lots of autonomy. So we found the effective ways to improve our communication with foreign teachers and made use of their stay time in Vietnam so that we could improve our language and communication in an international environment. (A fifth-year graduate student, University 02)

As such, student agency is manifested in terms of strengthening students’ subjectivity through their self-transformation in cultural knowledge and communication (Tran & Vu, 2018). Accordingly, both international and domestic students are self-positioning in this striving process by broadening their knowledge about cultures and communication patterns of people from different backgrounds (Packer & Thomas, 2021). On this account, they position the relations to foreign academics and peers in an effort of improving their language and effective learning and communication (Luong et al., 2021). Yet, there has been a difference in their self-­ awareness and adjustment making between international students and

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local ones. As a result, domestic students with their quite good understanding of socio-cultural and living context in their country are able to navigate appropriate ways of localizing the learnt concepts of at-home international programs. In contrast, this is more challenging for international students. Moreover, domestic students have been able to access updated information about their society owing to their daily interaction with their parents and relatives. On contrary, their peers have been more disadvantaged in this regard. The contextualization of learnt concepts is known as self-activeness and self-reflectiveness of student agency in an international learning environment (Bandura, 2018). In particular, Vietnamese student agency in this study shows its power to transform their international peers’ and teachers’ perception about their country’s identity and cultures (Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011) through actively disseminating their cultures and country history that help enhance others’ understanding. Learning Style Transiting from upper secondary to tertiary education, some students have actively adapted their learning style when pursuing the international programs. Instead of one-way knowledge transmitting approach, they shifted toward self-studying, knowledge construction, and experiential learning. Some students developed their self-studying competence not only to broaden their knowledge but also to enhance their work readiness. When I entered the university, teachers offered us more freedom to promote our self-study in all subjects. This was totally different from that in the upper secondary school in which I passively received the transmitted knowledge from teachers. Moreover, at the university, the advanced training program required me to spend more time on improving my English competency in chemical engineering and enriching my knowledge about cultures of foreign professors and friends so as to effectively communicate with them. (A fifth-year graduate student, University 02) At the beginning of ACCA training program, students actively seek for information about big four companies in their major of training by themselves. They subsequently investigate the required skills for employees in these big companies so that they can prepare for their application in the future. (Coordinator of an international program, University 01)

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In all the international programs, students have actively constructed their knowledge with their teachers’ scaffolding. Moreover, the imported curriculum required local teachers and students to share their possible different perspectives or ideas about the learning concepts. Therefore, with such an constructivist approach, students actively engaged in constructing knowledge rather than passively receiving transmitted knowledge from teachers as in the traditional way. In classroom, foreign teachers always encourage students to raise our voices and elicit our ideas about the learnt concepts or issues. However, apart from our poor language, our inadequate knowledge challenges us to engage in discussion with our teachers and peers. After the first year, I was aware that being more active in speaking out our thoughts and ideas was very important in acquiring the lessons. As such, I actively contributed my perspectives about the learnt concepts or issues. (A second-year graduate student, University 05)

At the university, more practical knowledge has been introduced to students than that in upper secondary education. As such, some students often related the contents in internationalized curriculum to the Vietnamese context by sharing their experience and observation of learnt concepts. As such, they expanded the introduced concepts by their self-­ investigation before and after class. The autonomy of our study at the upper secondary schools is very limited. We mostly followed what our teachers introduced to us and learnt them by heart. … When I pursued the international programs, it required us to be active in searching for more information and reading books after teachers’ lectures. This enabled me to develop my practical knowledge in order to achieve the relevant and required competences for my aspired jobs after graduation. (A second-year graduate student, University 04)

In brief, engaging in an international program, students experienced three transition periods in which student agency clearly shows its effects on their adaptability of learning approaches (Prescott & Hellsten, 2005; Quan et al., 2013). The first transition from upper secondary school to university requires students to adapt their learning from passive or one-­ way knowledge transmitted approach to active or constructivist one. The second transition from national settings to internationalized ones (including curriculum, teachers, evaluation or examination, teaching and learning process, or academic mobility exchange) offers students the opportunity

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to swift from mono-cultural and teacher-regulated learning to intercultural and self-regulated learning. The third transition requires students to be well prepared to transfer from university to the world of work. During all three transition processes, student agency is essentially facilitating the adaptability of their learning approaches toward self-regulated learning strategies (Theobald, 2021; Dörrenbächer, 2017) and self-initiated student contributions as constructive to the process of knowledge production (Heikkilä et  al., 2020; Eteläpelto, 2017) through which personal transition takes place from the “being” to the “becoming” or the before and after of specified learning experiences (Ecclestone, 2009). Throughout this process, student agency was involved in self-identity transformation and coping with environmental changes to enrich their learning. Relationship Building Taking international programs, some students set clear goals or aspired outcomes that are considered as strong dynamics for their adaptability of local and international relationships. As noted, some intercultural and domestic students actively communicated with their foreign teachers and peers to develop their English language and/or their cultural knowledge and communication. Additionally, they made friends with students from the mainstream programs to jointly enhance their language development and socio-cultural exchange events. This relationship enabled them to overcome the feeling of being different from those enrolled in mainstream programs in their university. In practice, the majority of students from international programs disclosed that their peers saw them as less intelligent but rich kids. I have the feeling of being isolated from the university’s cultural exchange and extra-curricular programs. Our classroom is located in a separate building from my peers’ that are students of regular majors of training. Despite this practice, I tried to make friends with those from the major of tourism and those from French language by becoming a member of the tourism club in the university. This makes me feel integrated and connected with them and thus, enables me to diminish the feeling of being different and marginalized from the university learning environment. (A third-year student, University 01)

In particular, several students held the international program coordinators and teachers accountable for supporting them to connect with

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international teachers and friends to improve their language and communication in intercultural environment. I sometimes proposed our program coordinator to hold up an open talk between Irish teachers and students. I am aware that interaction with foreign teachers and peers is critically important for effective learning in this international program. Under the Covid context, the connection can be reinforced through social network. Fortunately, we have had opportunities of attending class with international students and professors through Zoom or Team software. (A third-year student, University 04)

To develop the necessary competences for students’ aspired employment and their understanding about their professional field, some students actively build relationship with potential employers. They resorted to different ways to approach their potential employers. They actively connected with alumni of their international programs who were working for big companies. More directly, they attended workshops in which potential employers introduced their companies and employment opportunities or recruitment competitions of these big companies through which they learnt about interviews and expectations for their future jobs. In some provinces (such as Hue, Thai Nguyen) where there are fewer international companies or enterprises for students to have internship opportunities of working in an intercultural environment, students connected with their friends and relatives in big cities nearby for seeking information about these opportunities. Additionally, they searched for internship offers through the Internet and their teachers who have good relationships with international companies or organizations. They sought advice from their peers or teachers about future career prospects. Notably, some students stepped back to make self-reflection on their aspired jobs when they remained confused. I desired to earn a job in an international working environment. When I was student at the university, I actively made friends with human resource managers of the four big companies in financial area so that I could receive their valuable advices for my preparation to apply to appropriate positions in their companies. After graduating, I earned a job as an auditor in one reputed international auditing company. However, I felt bored about my work. So I decided to stop for a period in order to make sure if I am suitable with the current job. I shared this problem with my parents for their advices. After three months, I successfully achieved a job as financial advisor in a smaller company

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in which I do not have to suffer from pressure. (A second-year graduate student, University 01)

As noted, social relations are seen as the essence of student agency. In this process, cultures have been addressed to significantly regulate the quality and characters of social relations (Ratner, 2000). Student agency in social relationship building has been exercised in their active response to the structural condition such as separation of international programs from mainstream ones (Packer & Thomas, 2021). Some students hold some duty bearers such as program coordinators or teachers accountable for creating favorable international environment for them to reinforce their intercultural adaptability. Notably, students’ dynamics and goals of building social relationships with employers, teachers, and senior students have potentially helped them enhance their readiness for securing their aspired jobs. As such, student agency of becoming has subsequently enabled their effective intercultural adaptability to achieve their desired outcomes (Smith, 2013).

Conclusion Our research findings in student agency and “becoming” in terms of language development, cultural knowledge and communication, learning style, and relationship building provided a nuanced insight into student self-transformation in the transition from national programs to internationalized ones. The study indicates that student agency has significantly contributed to their “becoming”. In turn, this has enabled students to make fundamental transformation in teaching and learning that has long been influenced by Confucianism in which teachers are dominant and little role is assigned to students (Le & Vu, 2020; Nguyen & Stracke, 2021). As noted, in a predominantly teacher-dominated educational settings, student agency have been constrained when that Confucianist influenced teaching and learning centered on textual transmission, rote learning with memorization of learnt concepts, didactic teaching with little critical thinking and creative development opportunities, even suppression of individuality (Thu et  al., 2021; Tan, 2013). Such limited self-reflective and interactive opportunities of students in their learning process have evidently challenged students’ engagement in their own knowledge construction and self-formation of their own beliefs, values, and perspectives (Han & Scull, 2010; Tan, 2018). Given this context, international

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programs have been found to exert positive changes to students toward more agentic capacity that enabled them to substantially develop their language competence, intercultural knowledge and communication, learning approaches, and relationship building despite clashes between foreign practices with Vietnamese higher education structures, Confucian values, and the Communist leadership (Tran et  al., 2020). Throughout this process, students’ agentic engagement is prescribed for its potentials to boost quality and inclusiveness (Klemenčič et  al., 2020). Moreover, within an enabling educational environment, involvement of different stakeholders in students’ learning ecology in intercultural context such as family, friends, teachers, or employers facilitates the self-formation (Yang, 2022) and the successful transformation for both domestic and international students (Tran et al., 2018).FundingThis work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam under Grant No. B2021-NHF-03.

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CHAPTER 6

Conceptualizing the Employability Agency of International Graduates Thanh Pham, Denise Jackson, and Peter McIlveen

Introduction Post-study employment prospects have become one of the most significant determinants of international students’ study destination as a large are self-funding their overseas studies (Pham, 2020). However, international graduates are often not satisfied with their employment outcomes in the host country (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019). To keep its competitive position in the international education market, Australia has tried

T. Pham (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. Jackson School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] P. McIlveen School of Education, The University of Southern Queensland, Darling Heights, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_6

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various initiatives to enhance international students’ employability but very little is known about their employability experiences. While graduate employability is found to be largely determined by a range of resources (Clarke, 2018), the current limited research on international graduates’ employability mainly explored how international graduates’ employment is determined by visa schemes and qualifications (e.g., Tran et al., 2019). A small but increasing number of studies have recently explored how this cohort negotiated employability based on a range of resources like social networks, career identity, and recently agency (Pham, 2021a; Pham & Jackson, 2020a; Xu, 2020). While agency has been widely researched in various disciplines (Eteläpelto et al., 2013), very little is known about how agency contributes to international graduates’ employability. Recently, there are arguments about the need to explore agency and international graduates’ employability because rapid social, economic, and cultural changes in our society have increasingly required individuals to enact agency to find their position and directions so that they can control their life. Evidence has also been found about the significance of graduates’ agency in developing and using resources for employability effectively (Pham, 2021a). This is because agency enables graduates to develop perceived employability to predict what kind of capacities, skills, and resources they need to develop to respond to expectations of the labor market (Forrier et  al., 2018; Pham, 2021a). Besides, studies often perceive international students as “inferior others” who experience struggles and need to “adjust” to host (Marginson, 2014) and home (Pham, 2020) countries. Their capacities to overcome challenges are not often appreciated or discussed. Recently, an increasing number of researchers have critiqued stereotypical assumptions about international students by exploring how this cohort has exercised agency in managing their studies and career (Marginson, 2014; Montgomery & McDowell, 2009; Inouye et al., 2022; Pham et al., 2019; Pham, 2021b). These studies found evidence about how international students could make choices to decide their identities and use strategies to negotiate studies and career in the host country. In the field of employability, Pham and Jackson (2020b) and Pham (2020) found evidence about the significance of students’ agency and argued that to obtain optimal outcomes in the employability negotiation process, they needed to develop “agentic capital”, that is, the capacity to develop strategies to use various forms of capital effectively and strategically depending on one’s ethnic background,

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areas of expertise, career plans, contexts, and personal qualities. However, similar to other fields, the concept of agency in this field remains relatively vague. We have not known much about the agency-structure relationship, and how international graduates build and use agency to negotiate their employability. To fill this gap, this chapter aims to conceptualize how employability agency of international graduates is supported and hindered by a range of personal and external factors and how international graduates develop various forms of agency to negotiate their employability depending on the interactions of these personal and external influencers.

The Purpose of This Chapter The studies reported in this chapter aimed to answer two research questions below. 1. What are the factors that influence international graduates to enact employability agency? 2. What are the forms of agency that international graduates develop to negotiate employability? The data were collected from several studies exploring international graduates’ employability conducted for several years. A total of 375 international graduates participated in these projects; however, the data reported here came from qualitative data collected from 55 participants. The majority of these 55 graduates were from East, Southeast, and South Asia, while eight came from countries like Egypt, Russia, and Italy. Individuals selected as participants obtained a degree (undergraduate, masters, or PhD) and lived in Australia when the research was conducted. Overall, 60% had gained permanent residency (PR), whereas the rest were on a post-study work visa. The sample was diverse in terms of gender, nationality, and disciplines. No timeframe after their graduation was set because the projects aimed to explore experiences of international graduates during their long-term employability trajectories. This aligns with what Clarke (2018), Jackson and Tomlinson (2020), and Pham (2021a) argue for a broad definition of employability: Employability includes employment outcomes, sustainability, job satisfaction, professional skills growth, and wellbeing. However, 60% had stayed in Australia for six months to five years after graduation, whereas the rest had stayed for more than five years.

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This chapter chose to report qualitative data because it has been evidenced that agency is not easily studied through quantitative methods (Inouye et al., 2022). Instead, qualitative methods are useful for capturing the complexity of international students’ experience and agency, and avoid framing international students as “in deficit”, foregrounding “what they lack, what they need, and how they differ” that quantitative surveys often do (Lipura & Collins, 2020; Marginson, 2014; Page & Chahboun, 2019). These projects deployed the biographical interpretive approach which invited the graduates to share their work experiences in Australia via in-­ depth interviews and the scroll back method (Lincoln & Robards, 2017). Using the scroll back, international graduates were invited to be individually connected with the first researcher on social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) so that the researcher could obtain biographical insights about the participants’ career and other aspects of their life as reflected in their photos, comments, status, and connections over time. Second, each participant was asked to select “critical” moments (e.g., gaining and ending a job, attending courses, marriage) and to bring these to an individual in-depth interview to share their insights about the connections between these “critical” moments and the participant’s employability. Exemplar interview questions were: Why did you leave that job? Was your marriage in that year influenced by your job at that time? How? As advocated by Lincoln and Robards (2017), the scroll back method allows researchers to obtain longitudinal data without spending a long period in real longitudinal research. This dimension enabled the researchers to collect data about the international graduates’ long-term employability within the short timeline. Inouye et  al. (2022) argues this longitudinal dimension is also important and necessary for the exploration of international students’ agency but few studies deployed this design. This chapter is framed as a conceptual paper of which the main focus is to develop a framework to conceptualize how international graduates develop various forms of agency to negotiate their employability depending on the interactions of a range of personal and external influencers. This choice was made because increasing attention has been paid to individual agency of international students (Inouye et al., 2022). While this line of research is necessary, there should be caution about the tendency for overemphasis of individual agency and underestimate the impacts of structural factors. In employability, although international graduates’ agency has been evident, we have not known much about the extent to which they could exercise agency, the impacts that structural conditions have on their

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agency, and the conditions for their agency to be activated. To answer these questions, a critical review of various theoritical perspectives and research strands should be conducted because a single perspective is not sufficient to unpack and explain this complexity. Besides, agency has been widely discussed theoretically but not empirically, leading to vagueness of concepts about agency. To fill these gaps, this chapter aims to provide a critical discussion of several theoretical frameworks and ground them by empirical findings. Studies use a range of theoritical approaches in various disciplines exploring agency (see Eteläpelto et al., 2013 for a comprehensive review). This chapter does not attempt to discuss all but only selects the theoritical frameworks that represent the two “extreme” paradigms: one perceiving individuals as agents with weak agency and one viewing them as agents with strong agency. These theoretical approaches were chosen because, as discussed above, there are concerns about the tendency of researchers to overcompliment international students’ agency and carry them too far over to the other side of the continuum. By unpacking “extreme” theories, this chapter aims to draw out reasonable principles of various theories that could inform the development of a reasonable conceptual framework for the investigation of international graduates’ employability agency. Since agency has been discussed widely and there have been different notions of agency (e.g., human agency of Goller (2017)), this chapter uses the term “employability agency” to refer to agency that international graduates use in their employability negotiation. The terms “agency” and “individual agency” are also used through the chapter, but they refer to human agency in general. The chapter consists of four parts. The first part discusses the paradigm perceiving individuals as agents with weak agency and the second part discusses the second paradigm which strongly celebrates individual agency. In each paradigm, the chapter discusses how the chosen theoritical accounts reflect employability agency of international graduates, considering empirical data. The chapter does not attempt to include all theories and approaches representing each paradigm. Instead, it only selects those that have distinct features representing individuals’ weak and strong agency. The chapter then discusses a conceptual framework informing the investigation of international graduates’ employability agency. This framework is developed based on theoritical and empirical insights obtained from the discussions of the chosen theories, empirical findings, and other relevant theoretical approaches. Finally, the chapter discusses forms of

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agency that could be resulted from the interactions of the components of the suggested conceptual framework.

Individuals as Agents with Weak Agency Theoretically, the rejection and underestimation of individual agency is manifested in several theories. The first was Leontiev’s (1978) object-­ centered theory, which was particularly common at the start of the industrial epoch when basic technological tools played a central role in manufacturing (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). This theory emphasizes object-­ oriented and goal-directed actions; consequently, individuals (workers) have little space for individual choices and initiatives. The suppression of structures is praised and the existence of human agency is significantly underestimated (Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Loyal & Barnes, 2001). There are other theoritical frameworks sharing a similar view, although their advocacy for structural suppression is “softer”. One of these is the sociocultural perspective that defines agency as “socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001), meaning agency is either enabled or restricted by one’s language, personal backgrounds and aspirations, and academic communities (Anderson, 2017; Chang, 2011; Inouye et  al., 2022; Weng, 2020). The others are “strong” post-structural accounts (e.g., Butler (1992)) and Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice. These frameworks argue for the existence of discourse and field which function as divisions of different social groups. Within each discourse and field, subjects are given their own positions and constituted to act based on their positions. People need to follow specific logic, taken for granted practices, and “rules of the game” that favor the dominant groups (Bourdieu, 1990). This happens because cultural capital carries both standardized values, which are legalized and institutionalized, and embodied values, which refer to one’s preferences or perceived “correct” ways of doing things (Bourdieu, 1986). People may possess the same standardized values; however, very often, only dominant groups’ embodied values are acknowledged and validated. According to Bourdieu (1990), individual agency manifests in how people use “habitus” to act strategically to enhance their forms of capital in the field. The author claims habitus is “a system of durable and transposable dispositions that mediates the actions of an individual and the external conditions of production” (p. 53). In other words, it consists of familial and personal experiences and functions as “internalised schemes” that direct individuals to engage with certain ways of thinking and

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behaving (Tholen, 2015, p. 777). Habitus enables people to accumulate valued forms of social and educational capital that they have experienced and built. However, the accumulation of different cultural capitals does not benefit individuals naturally; this is because how people can use their accumulated capitals depends on their agency, which is seen in the capacity to play the game and perform in particular ways. This requires people to have a “feel for the game” and to align oneself with the “tastes” of the field (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 166). As such, here, agency does not mean absolute freedom, but is blocked “within existing social conventions, values, and sanctions” (Tholen, 2015, p.  777). The possibilities for individual agency are seen as restricted and are determined through discourses and within the field. How Was Employability Agency Depicted in These Theoretical Accounts? The data analysis revealed that the employability agenda aligns with the principles of the abovementioned theoritical approaches in various aspects. First, there was evidence about the existence of discourses, rules of the game, and habitus, as proposed by post-structural and Bourdieusian accounts. Plentiful evidence showed that the host labor market was divided into various discourses; of these, the main discourses were discourses of local employers and international graduates. The former was featured by expectations of Western culture and habitus about English proficiency, a PR visa, high-level communication skills, Australian work experience, and a range of Western personal values like being proactive, critical, innovative, and independent (Blackmore et al., 2017). International graduates were categorized in another discourse where their position was defined as “inferior others” because they had to accumulate resources to meet expectations of local employers. For instance, a large number of the graduates in the projects mentioned that they were not eligible to apply for a position that they could fully handle because they did not have a PR visa as expected by local employers. Recently, international graduates’ inferior position has been even reinforced because Australia is inflated with graduates with credentials. Therefore, local employers have increasingly become interested in assessing “legitimate” capitals so that they can evaluate how international graduates “fit in” the Western labor market (Blackmore et al., 2017). This was evidenced by complaints of many graduates about local employers

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shortlisting them due to their strong CV but refusing to hire them after interviewing them. Pham (2021b) evidenced direct interviews could disadvantage international graduates because they were the opportunities for local employers to discover how international graduates did not meet their hidden expectations about English proficiency and other values. For some local employers, Asians’ shyness and passiveness also indicate their incapability in taking the lead in groupwork (Blackmore et al., 2017). Therefore, very few graduates could climb to the management level. In other words, the discourse of international graduates was “labelled” with Asian habitus which inadequately met Western expectations and values. The existence of these two discourses led to the fact that international graduates are only able to decode real expectations of employers if they have real-life insights about the workforce by doing some work or engaging in the community in some way. If they view the labor market based on their “naïve” understanding, as promoted by policies and institutions, they continue to struggle. Under these structural constraints, only a small number of the graduates can exercise employability agency by acquiring or acting on particular forms of strategic knowledge or rules of the game. What Were Limitations of These Theoritical Accounts in Informing Employability Agency? These theoritical accounts were useful for the explanation of how power existed visibly and invisibly within discourses and fields, and how international graduates were constrained within hierarchical systems and stereotypes. However, these superior-inferior positions were not found in several cases. Several graduates actually resisted to adapt to the rules of the game. They were even able to transform established traditions in their organizations. The journey that an academic took to transform curricula and pedagogies at their college was an example. The academic initiated the development of hybrid practices (e.g., intercultural pedagogies or bilingual services) that used Asian ethnic cultural and intellectual properties as key elements in teaching and student services; however, their initiative was rejected straightaway. Instead of giving up, they persistently collected evidence to show how this initiative worked. Eventually, authority was given to renovate the whole program and became the course director. Several others did not take these gradual steps but showed strong resistance by refusing to improve what local workforce expected because they did not see the need. They actually planned to leave Australia at some point (e.g.,

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migrating to another country to learn new cultures, or returning to their home country to be close to their relatives). As such, the graduates’ employability trajectories were not necessarily determined by their defined positions in discourses and rules of the game. They did not struggle to enhance capitals for a better position in the field, as Bourdieu (1990) argues, either. Instead, their career paths were significantly shaped by a range of other factors associated with one’s reflexive agency, which is the evolving sense of self and objectives, the “who I am”, “who I am becoming”, and “what I want to be” (Marginson, 2014). Reflexive agency is missing in arguments of scholars supporting objects-­ centered theories because, as argued by Marginson (2014), education itself does not lead to employability outcomes; instead, the contribution of education is “the production and augmentation of the reflexive autonomous agency of graduates which makes these outcomes possible” (p. 5). International graduates managed their employability trajectories through activities occurring from a social basis like availability of resources, goals, and visions of social practices, albeit through their subjectivities. Therefore, the abovementioned theoretical accounts provided insufficient conceptual guidance for an examination of these issues. Consequently, although these theoritical approaches can significantly contribute to our understanding of how employability agency is constrained and resourced by contextual structures, they are not in themselves sufficient.

International Students as Agents with Strong Agency Scholars who believe that individuals have strong agency also acknowledge the connections between individuals and their environment. Environmental characteristics can impact individuals’ plans and actions. However, individuals are not fully subjugated by the environmental characteristics of their current situation but can control its nature and their circumstances. Two traditions that place strong emphasis on individual agency are social cognitivism (e.g., Bandura, 2001) and social theory (e.g., Giddens, 1984). Social-cognitive theory undertakes a comprehensive psychological effort to explain the human functioning and behavior behind the exercise of agency. Scholars advocating this perspective claim that human beings are able to control the environmental surroundings and their life circumstances because they have agentic features like a belief in the capacity to

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exert influence over life (Hitlin & Elder, 2006). These capacities and skills assist people to manage their behaviors, emotion, and actions; thus, they are able to engage with or control intentional activities which they initiate. Meanwhile, social theory scholars explore the relationship between individuals and the society in a more complex way. For example, Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration argues that individuals possess interpretive frameworks or “schemes” which enable them to understand the world through their own lenses. Therefore, structures do not exist outside individuals but operate through them and are reproduced and modified by them (Tholen, 2015, p. 776). In this sense, people do not mindlessly follow normative expectations but frame the world based on their interpretations. Although individuals have shared meanings, they may use “practical consciousness” (Giddens, 1984) to engage with different actions to produce and reproduce shared meanings. This means that individuals may have different interpretations of society, inducing their engagement in various actions, although they may aim to reach the same goal. Giddens (1984) strongly advocates individual agency by claiming that individuals use their interpretive schemes to constitute and communicate meaning of a structural system, and then take actions with intended and unintended consequences (Tholen, 2015). In this way, Giddens (1984) perceives humans as agents with capacity and power who can make a difference to a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events. In summary, this paradigm assumes that human beings are agents of power and change. They have capacity to control their current and future life circumstances by exercising agency, individuals can put themselves in more advantageous situations that are physically and socially less constrictive, and that offer numerous options for personal development (Goller, 2017, p. 41). Agency is often implicitly or explicitly used as a notion of human freedom, individual volition, or power within a given social structure. However, due to their strong advocation for individual agency, these theoritical accounts have been criticized by various researchers. For instance, Fuchs (2001) and Archer (2000) question if individual agency exists at all, how much agency individuals have, and what is the more “correct” interrelation between structure and agency.

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How Was Employability Agency Depicted in These Theoretical Accounts? The analysis of empirical data showed that many graduates possessed agentic features and were able to initiate agentic actions. They achieved desired employability outcomes based on a range of personal qualities and short- and long-term intentional activities—an important condition for agency to be exercised (Bandura, 2001). Among the participants, three academics emerged as the best examples representing this group. They had strong beliefs in their research and intellectual capacities and demonstrated durable persistence in pursuing their career in academia. Therefore, they strategically built teaching and research records very early and persistently refused part-time work that did not support their profiles as an academic. Here, their agency is demonstrated in the confidence they have about their capacity to achieve their objectives (Bandura, 2001) as well as a selective capacity (Billett, 2001). Some others experienced more ups and downs before achieving their goals. Their employability trajectories were interrupted by a range of unforeseen incidents and adversities, leading to investments of more time, effort, health, and finance. The majority had thought obtaining PR would enable them to find jobs easily, and thus, enrolled in disciplines aligned to the Migration Occupations in Demand List, although many did not share a genuine interest in these areas. Unfortunately, having a PR did not guarantee employment. Consequently, some had to do another degree in a new discipline due to their lack of engagement in the “wrong” profession. These pathways were particularly common among young graduates. For other cases, continual changes in PR policies even altered their career plans. They experienced career interruptions for several years due to the sudden discontinuation of the Skilled Independent visa. After completing their studies, instead of using the obtained degrees to apply for PR as initially planned, they had to leave Australia because their majors had been removed from the Demand List. After years of staying and doing different jobs in the home country, they returned to Australia and either enrolled in a new degree or did different types of work. Employability agency was also demonstrated in how the graduates worked on their communication competencies—an area evidenced as a concerning limitation of international graduates (Pham, 2021b). Most improved English in their study program but there were some exceptional cases. These graduates wanted to enhance their English to the level of a

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native. They engaged in learning the authentic language via social media like Facebook and LinkedIn because this suited daily conversations more. They also engaged in self-reflections and observations so that they could pick embodied cultural norms. Interestingly, these graduates could not only integrate in the mainstream society and perform their work better but also improve their whole-person development, that is, a desire to enhance both social and personal identities (Archer, 2000). Some received satisfactory outcomes, whereas some did not. Those who achieved better outcomes were often those who had work and living experiences in Australia. Real-life experiences allowed them to reflect on how what they had learned in universities differed from reality and then how they had to adjust. By contrast, the graduates who could not improve communication competencies much were often those who lacked these experiences. Therefore, the latter often faced a sense of being stuck because they found it confusing and hard to decode embodied cultural values in the labor market. For instance, a graduate expressed their depression when experiencing how “professionalism” was applied very personally at their workplace in a way which was entirely different from that learned in universities. In fact, universities and the labor market are two different discourses. Without experiences of an insider, international graduates often found it hard to transfer knowledge and skills obtained in universities in the market (Pham, 2021b). Interestingly, English proficiency limitations forced some graduates to seek space where they could use their mother tongue. Many succeeded in obtaining employments in either their co-ethnic community or multinational enterprises which had collaborations with clients in their home countries. In these cases, ethnic capitals are international graduates’ unique or unofficial power (Collin et al., 2011), and these graduates were able to tap into them. As such, Giddens is right in these cases when claiming that individuals have capacity to use power to influence social events. What Were the Limitations of These Theoritical Accounts in Informing Employability Agency? The data analysis revealed several limitations of these theoritical lenses. In their employability negotiation journeys, the graduates clearly did not have absolute power and capacities to fully control their career trajectories. By contrast, contextual factors had both obvious and hidden impacts on employability trajectories, although their influences varied in different cases. Obvious impacts included how governmental policies about PR and

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supply-demand in the workforce profoundly and immediately influenced graduates’ career trajectories (as discussed in the first part of this article). Furthermore, many graduates lost jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hidden impacts were observed in how universities continue disseminating the human capital doxa and embed assumptions that higher education leads to improved employment outcomes (Blackmore et  al., 2017; Chen, 2014). International students and their parents internalized the policy doxa about the importance of qualifications, degrees, and university-­ based resources promoted by universities, and therefore, placed great emphasis on attaining academic performance and technical knowledge. The graduates only realized the lack of a range of other capitals like social, cultural, identity, and psychological when they started the transition to the workforce (Pham, 2021c). The abovementioned theoritical approaches do not provide conceptual guidance for the investigation of how employability agency was shaped by structural factors in these ways. Furthermore, as explained before, employability is not limited to one-­ off employment outcomes but involves other aspects like job sustainability, job satisfaction, and personal and professional growths which can only be unpacked during the process through which international graduates negotiate their employability. This means working contexts and discourses in the workplace need to be examined so that insights can be obtained to unpack how they limit or resource employability agency. Institutional conditions and professional relationships like material facilities, mentorship, supervision, organization culture, and power relations can determine the extent to which international graduates engage with their work, stay with their job, or alter their career pathways. The aforementioned theoretical approaches do not consider these structural and relational factors as well as examine them enduringly. This limitation renders these theoritical approaches as one-dimensional views. Furthermore, different career trajectories revealed that the graduates had different levels of interests in pursuing career goals. They also engaged with constraints and affordances associated to their employability differently. Some had great passion, and thus, desperately looked for solutions to overcome struggles and made improvements. They perceived that their personal and professional enhancements were not only for the sake of obtaining employment but also for whole-person development. Some others only fulfilled their commitments at a minimal level. Therefore, they actively decided what is “judged worth of participation” (Billett, 2004, p.  320). As such,

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individuals’ interests and priorities were also signifiers of employability agency but were underestimated in these theoritical perspectives. Finally, as discussed before, work and living experiences played a significant role in guiding the graduates’ navigation of structural barriers. Those who had these experiences and constantly engaged in self-reflections experienced smoother trajectories and showed more confidence about their management strategies of personal and professional matters. This finding compensates Giddens’ (1984) notion of “practical consciousness” because the author did not really explain what can help individuals become conscious about their actions. For Giddens, individuals can initiate intentional actions but cannot fully control their consequences; however, the author did not explain why. As we found here, work and living experiences can be seen as “reasons” of why because they could enable international graduates to control the outcomes of their actions.

Toward a Conceptual Framework Guiding a Fuller Understanding of Employability Agency This section discusses a conceptual framework that allows for a fuller understanding of the employability agency of international graduates. The above discussions inform that this framework needs to consist of essential components as captured in Fig. 6.1. First, international graduates’ subjectivities “must” be considered when examining their employability agency. These subjectivities include their initial motivation, ongoing personal and professional growths, aspirations and expectations in the home country, and personal and professional interests and priorities. All these can both constraint and resource international graduates’ employability agency. The two “extreme” theoritical paradigms above incorporate the context—dependent structures (e.g., visa policies, supply-demand regulations, and COVID-19 pandemic) and human psychological and cognitive dispositions (e.g., beliefs, confidence, and self-management)—which do not adequately examine unique personal, living, and career characteristics of international graduates. Subjectivities drive international graduates to exercise agency and engage with the world via discursive, practical, and embodied actions (Archer, 2000, 2003) in a unique way. Without examining these subjectivities, international graduates are more likely to be trammed in the only discourse and field dominated by Western habitus where there is little space

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Fig. 6.1  Conceptual employability agency framework of international graduates

for them to exercise employability agency. The traditional approach often neglects the complexity of international students’ subjectivities, and consequently, views them as inferiors. The sociocultural perspective (e.g., Hodkinson et  al., 2008) has argued for the consideration of a range of contextual factors in individuals’ professional agency; however, it tends to focus on technical and social tools and circumstances. Subjectivities of international graduates should be understood as a broader picture. In the projects, an important component of subjectivities was international graduates’ identity commitments. These commitments guide, direct, motivate, and hinder how people take actions and engage in activities to achieve their goals; in other words, individuals practice agency “in the very performance of those identities” (Eteläpelto et al., 2013, p. 58; Hitlin & Elder, 2006). As evidenced in the projects, the connections between identity commitments and the graduates’ agency manifest even more clearly. This is because, as argued by Marginson (2014), the graduates engaged in the self-formation process through which their multi-­ identities, including home, host, student, professional, and hybrid identities, kept evolving. These identities did not stand separately but interplayed by pulling and pushing each other. Thus, when exercising employability agency, it is unavoidable that the graduates needed to consider the fulfilments to their various identities.

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Second, host country’s resources are important to the enactment of international graduates’ agency. These resources include work experiences, specializations, professional skills, and living experiences. As argued by Pham et al. (2019), international graduates were often disadvantaged in terms of possessing impressive professional skills but became advantaged for their strong technical knowledge and skills in many disciplines (e.g., STEM). Therefore, possessing excellent technical knowledge and skills could be an enabler of the agency enactment of international graduates. Besides, as evidenced in the projects, work and living experiences allowed the graduates to understand literal and embodied expectations of local industries. The graduates could then adjust their subjectivities and exercise employability agency in a more “acceptable” way. Nonetheless, to do this, the graduates needed to engage in self-reflection and use reflexive agency to accumulate self-knowledge, review their evolving commitments, sort their priorities, reflect on the external world as an object, and weigh their actions in relation to external factors affecting their interests (Archer, 2000; Marginson, 2014, p. 9). However, the desire to obtain work and living experiences could put international graduates in a contradicting position. This is because to obtain work and living experiences in the mainstream, international graduates sometimes need to depart from or even give up some of their ethnic capitals. To overcome these contradictions, international graduates need to understand their subjectivities (e.g., what are their priorities? What are their identity commitments?). As such, the significance of subjectivities in employability agency becomes even clearer. Third, home country’s resources also play a significant role in either enabling or constraining international graduates’ agency exercise. Ethnic capitals include ethnic community, social networks with co- and similar ethnic people, home-country habitus, and mother tongue. As evidenced in the projects, many could use ethnic capitals to obtain full-time, part-­ time, and casual jobs when they failed to compete with local graduates in the mainstream labor market. They could also use ethnic knowledge and skills to transform work practices in the mainstream society (e.g., combining home-country knowledge with that of the host country to create hybrid pedagogies and curricula). Their ethnic community was the space where they could develop and use “relational agency”—a capacity to work with others to achieve shared goals (Edwards, 2010). However, many also became disadvantaged due to the possession of these ethnic capitals because the possession of non-Western capitals could make local

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employers think negatively about them due to stereotypes about nonWestern habitus. Fourth, contextual structures are unavoidable determinants of international graduates’ agency. These include labor contexts, globalization, restructuring of industries, changes in governments’ migration policies, and constant labor movements which have become common phenomena (Pham & Jackson, 2020a). COVID-19 is also a significant determinant that has created a greater level of job insecurity, underemployment, and economic uncertainty facing graduates. As a result, graduates have to be more independent and construct their work careers on an individual basis and be enterprising and mobile as well as able to manage their career trajectories (Jackson & Wilton, 2017). Finally, agentic features and actions have been evidenced as important enablers of agency enactment (as discussed elsewhere in this chapter). These include beliefs, confidence, self-management, self-reflection, active selection, and active engagement. These features and actions have been found to enable international graduates to develop strategies to use various forms of capital effectively and strategically depending on one’s ethnic background, areas of expertise, career plans, contexts, and personal qualities. More specifically, the authors define “agentic capital” as the capacity to interlink various forms of capital, highlight strengths, cover weaknesses, and visualize one’s short- and long-term goals of career development (Pham & Jackson, 2020a; Pham, 2020, 2021b).

Forms of Agency A further examination of the impacts of the five abovementioned components on the graduates’ agency revealed that the graduates produced various forms of agency depending on the interplay of these components. For instance, holding PR and citizenship was local employers’ strong preference. Therefore, the graduates who did not meet this requirement often needed to accept manual, casual, and low-skilled jobs either relevant or irrelevant to their fields of studies and research. Common jobs undertaken by these graduates were taxi drivers, tutoring, and factory workers. These jobs enabled the graduates to respond to their essential needs such as payments of their daily living costs and accommodation. In this case, the type of agency that the graduates performed to navigate these temporary employment periods can be called “essential needs-responding agency”. The extent to which the graduates could alter these visa and PR barriers was

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minimal. Only a small number could navigate these structural restrictions by looking for sponsorships, doing extra studies to obtain more points for PR, or marrying someone with PR or citizenship. The form of agency enacted by these graduates can be called “visa-navigating agency”. Another common constraint facing the graduates was that they needed to meet high expectations of local industries and employers about professional skills, work experience, and English proficiency. The length of their studies was often insufficient for this cohort to obtain and master these skills at the level expected by local graduates. As a result, some used their strengths such as diligence, resilience, and honesty to win support of key stakeholders who then bridged them to job opportunities. Some others made use of ethnic capitals like ethnic community and language to obtain casual and short-term employment. The type of agency these graduates performed can be called “strengths-based agency”. Finally, as discussed elsewhere in this chapter, employability trajectories of the graduates were, to a great extent, influenced by the evolvement of their multiple identities in various contexts depending on their professional and personal commitments. They took the fulfilments to their identities, for example, as a parent, a son, or a daughter in their family and a citizen having responsibilities for their motherland as important factors when considering the type of job that they would take and the level of engagement to their work they would do. The form of agency the graduates enacted to negotiate employability in alignment with their multi-­ identities can be called “relational identities-based agency”.

Conclusion This chapter attempted to contribute to the field by conceptualizing employability agency of international graduates based on existing theoritical frameworks and empirical insights. As discussed above, the graduates had various employability trajectories. However, they shared a common pattern: the graduates actively engaged in constructing their own life and career. They proactively cultivated their personal development by continuously reflecting on past experiences, envisioned short and long futures, and worked on possibilities for present actions. These enduring journeys resonated with a line of research that emphasizes the need to examine agency during one’s life course but not merely from a momentary and cross-sectional viewpoint (Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Especially, Biesta and Tedder (2007) claim that agency cannot be

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fully understood without considering the historical continuum of an individual person’s life course. The graduates developed and used various forms of agency over time, contexts, and conditions through their employability trajectories. Although the chapter has made a conceptual contribution to the literature, it has two limitations. First, as data were collected only in Australia, this framework may not be highly applicable in other contexts. Future research should further explore how employability agency occurs in larger-­ scale studies and in other contexts so that this conceptual framework can be tested and refined. Second, increasing evidence has been obtained about the role of mediators in researching structure and agency (Anderson, 2017; Chang, 2011; Weng, 2020). For instance, Ahearn (2001) reported the role of language in enhancing or reducing international students’ agency. The scope of this chapter did not allow the researchers to examine what would be the mediators that could enable the graduates to mediate the interplay of the five components captured in Fig. 6.1 to develop various forms of agency. Future research should address this gap so that enablers, constraints, and mediators of international graduates’ employability could be unpacked more fully.

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CHAPTER 7

The Role of Higher Education Institutions in Fostering Students’ Cosmopolitan Agency and Self-Formation Kazuhiro Kudo

Introduction Recent studies in higher education have increasingly focused on student agency and self-formation. Broadly defined as the human will and capacity to control one’s life course, agency is linked to individual autonomy, freedom, resilience and self-determination (Marginson, 2014; Tran & Vu, 2018; Volet & Jones, 2012). This connection is also found in self-­ formation, which is construed as the reflexive self-making of one’s skills, knowledge, talents, habits and aspirations (Marginson, 2014). Importantly, as this chapter will illustrate, student agency and self-formation are relational, as they are practised and nurtured through interactions with fellow students, institutional staff and so forth. They are also contextual, taking

K. Kudo (*) Dokkyo University, Soka, Japan Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_7

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place primarily within higher education institutions (HEIs), though offcampus settings, such as the workplace and religious institutions, also play a role (Skyrme, 2016; Yu, 2020). As such, the role of HEIs in fostering students’ agency and self-­ formation deserves serious academic scrutiny. Indeed, research on higher education internationalisation has highlighted HEIs as ideal sites for equipping all students—whether they are international or domestic—with intercultural competence and global citizenship through internationalised curricula (Richardson, 2016). However, strategic and informed institutional interventions to support students’ self-formation with an intercultural focus remain underdeveloped. Instead, research shows that despite the increasing cultural diversity of the student populations, intercultural interaction and cosmopolitan learning are not fully embraced, particularly by local students and staff (Marginson & Sawir, 2011). Furthermore, while a growing number of studies have examined international students’ agency and self-formation (e.g. Kudaibergenov, 2023; Xu, 2018; Yu, 2021), few have focused on domestic students’ counterparts, particularly through interactions with international students. In light of this, what research is needed that can productively inform institutional policies and activities to enhance the intercultural dimension of agency and self-­ formation for all students? This chapter addresses this question by focusing on the role of HEIs in fostering students’ cosmopolitan agency and self-formation. Drawing on an ecological and person-in-context perspective of cosmopolitan agency and intercultural interactions (Kudo, 2023a; Kudo et al., 2019, 2020), the chapter makes a theoretical proposal that cosmopolitan agency and self-­ formation are cyclically augmented by intercultural interactions and cosmopolitan capital amid institutional affordances and constraints. First, it argues that cosmopolitan agency as a hallmark of intercultural interactions contributes to self-formation with an intercultural twist and to the accumulation of cosmopolitan capital. The chapter then illustrates how institutional policies and decisions, often beyond students’ control, enable and constrain the emergence of cosmopolitan agency and the prospects for self-formation. It then highlights the role of ‘critical cosmopolitan agency’ in overcoming institutional constraints for the betterment of students themselves, other students and the environment—on and off campus. The chapter concludes by suggesting directions for future research. To this end, this chapter draws on student voices about intercultural interactions collected through interviews at two Japanese universities with

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contrasting degrees of commitment to internationalisation.1 All of the interview extracts presented below relate to interactions between international and domestic students. However, the main ideas of this chapter are expected to be applicable to interactions between international students from different, and even the same, countries, and also to interactions between domestic students. Although the validity and generalisability of the discussions, especially outside the context of this study, require further empirical investigation, I hope that this chapter will open new avenues for advancing research on the institutional and intercultural dimensions of student agency and self-formation.

Conceptualising the Role of HEIs in Student Agency and Self-Formation In order to advance the conceptual discussion on the role of HEIs in fostering student agency and self-formation, I developed an incipient conceptual framework using an ecological and person-in-context perspective of cosmopolitan agency and intercultural interactions (Kudo, 2023a; Kudo et  al., 2019, 2020). The construction of this framework was also informed by conceptual and empirical studies of international students’ agency and self-formation (e.g. Kudaibergenov, 2023; Marginson, 2014; Xu, 2018; Yang, 2022) and those examining the intercultural transformation of international and domestic students (e.g. Colvin & Volet, 2014; Nada et al., 2018). The main proposal underpinning the proposed framework is that cosmopolitan agency and self-formation are cyclically augmented by intercultural interactions and cosmopolitan capital amid institutional affordances and constraints (see Fig.  7.1). This proposal is composed of three propositions.

1  The study involved a combination of individual, pair and two-individual interviews, in either English or Japanese, with 21 domestic and 21 international undergraduate students. The research sites were two private universities specialising in the humanities and social sciences, which differed mainly in terms of the proportion of international students (2% vs. 50%) and the languages of instruction (predominantly Japanese vs. Japanese-English bilingual). The overall aim of the research was to conceptualise and empirically examine the extent to, and the manner in, which higher education institutions, in dynamic interactions with students’ attributes and abilities, afford and constrain the development of intercultural relationships between international and domestic students.

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Fig. 7.1  Cyclical augmentation of cosmopolitan agency and self-formation through intercultural interactions and cosmopolitan capital amid institutional affordances/constraints

1. Cosmopolitan agency contributes to self-formation through intercultural interactions, leading to the accumulation of cosmopolitan capital. 2. Institutional affordances/constraints, in dynamic interactions with cosmopolitan capital, (dis)enable the emergence of cosmopolitan agency. 3. Cosmopolitan agency, driven by cosmopolitan capital with a critical spin on institutional constraints, can enhance institutional affordances through intercultural interactions. In reality, the phenomenon expressed in the second proposition occurs first, followed by the first and third. However, the three propositions are ordered with a view to highlighting the role of HEIs in students’ agency and self-formation as efficiently as possible. It is also worth noting that the conceptual framework aims to capture one specific—intercultural—aspect of self-formation among many others, including the achievement of non(inter)cultural identities and projects. Thus, the framework emphasises the need for students to interact with intercultural peers by exercising cosmopolitan agency, using their cosmopolitan capital in institutional environments that value and validate this capital. In doing so, students not only engage in self-formation but also cultivate and accumulate cosmopolitan capital that becomes instrumental for future display of cosmopolitan agency. In addition, cosmopolitan agency has the potential to generate collective actions that challenge and redress the limitations of resources available in institutional environments. Such actions, though undertaken

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by a relatively small number of students, can enhance the prospects for cosmopolitan agency, both for themselves and for others in HEIs and beyond. In short, what student agency does is to enable students to actively negotiate social structures for the construction of self and environment (Inouye et al., 2022). The remainder of this chapter elaborates on each of the above propositions in turn and suggests directions for future research.

Cosmopolitan Agency as an Enabler of Meaningful Self-Formation The first proposition concerns the relationship between students’ agency and self-formation. That is, cosmopolitan agency contributes to self-­formation through intercultural interactions, leading to the accumulation of cosmopolitan capital. More specifically, it is through cosmopolitan agency that students engage in intercultural interactions; it is through intercultural interactions that students experience self-formation; and it is through self-­ formation that students accumulate cosmopolitan capital (see Fig.  7.1). These associations are consistent with Yu’s (2020) argument that for international students, the role of agency in self-formation is primarily through intercultural engagement, whereby they make holistic judgements about themselves based on their own changing situations in the host society. However, as illustrated below, domestic students can also engage in agentic self-formation through intercultural interactions. Cosmopolitan Agency Contributing to Intercultural Interactions Kudo et al. (2020) posit that cosmopolitan agency is a hallmark of meaningful intercultural interactions, such as the development of close intercultural friendships (see Fig. 7.1). Cosmopolitan agency denotes a reflexive expression of openness, inclusion and morality beyond (perceived) cultural and personal differences towards a better future (Kudo, 2023a). Importantly, this agency is conceptualised as an emergent practice of individuals in ever-changing social relationships and spatio-temporal contexts. This view is consistent with Plage et al.’s (2017) perspective of cosmopolitanism as ‘a performance in encounters, rather than an identity that is consistently acted upon’ (p. 17). Thus, it is suggested that cosmopolitan agency is not primarily about what types of students are cosmopolitan

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(Delval & Bühlmann, 2020), but rather about what conditions make intercultural interactions cosmopolitan. In addition, as argued by some theorists (Archer, 2012; Emirbayer & Mische, 1998), cosmopolitan agency involves reflexive deliberation about what to do next in a given moment, but can be unconsciously displayed as a habitus when practiced routinely over time (Akram, 2013; Matthews, 2017). For example, Takeshi, a domestic student who participated in my research, proactively initiated to develop a relationship with an international student in the hope of fulfilling his long-standing interest in language teaching and learning. He said, ‘I have a qualification for teaching Japanese … and I offered to tutor an international student in Japanese. … When I have some questions about English, I can easily ask her in return.’2 However, to engage in meaningful intercultural interactions, not all students need to purposefully display cosmopolitan agency as Takeshi did (Kudo et al., 2020). Michael did not actively try to interact but made friends with a domestic student, based on ‘similar interest in movies’. He added, ‘We are both very curious about the world. … we do not want to just look at things on the surface, but we have a curious mind for different things’. In addition, cosmopolitan agency can even be displayed reactively, so that students do not seek to develop a relationship but find common ground by coincidence. Mary’s experience exemplifies this: I think we started to get really close when she needed help installing her internet in her [dormitory] room. So, I went to help her and I actually saw that she had the Bible. I was like, ‘Oh! Are you Christian?’ and she was like, ‘Yeah!’ … we got really close from that time maybe.

Intercultural Interactions Contributing to Self-Formation Irrespective of the level of cosmopolitan agency displayed by students, intercultural interactions contribute to the intercultural dimension of self-­ formation (see Fig. 7.1). For international students, intercultural interactions involve disequilibrium and disorienting dilemmas that evoke not only difficulty, anxiety and frustration but also the negotiation and transformation of multiple and hybrid identities, resulting in the reconstruction of a new identity (Kudaibergenov, 2023; Marginson, 2014; Nada et al., 2  Original interview excerpts in Japanese were translated into English by the author. All student names are pseudonyms.

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2018; Yu, 2021). This identity is open to a myriad of possibilities related to academic success, personal growth, career development, among others. As Marginson (2014) put it, student self-formation is irreducibly complex, involving more than one project—educational, economic, occupational, familial, cultural, social, linguistic and so on. However, one prominent sign of self-formation that can be specifically linked to intercultural interactions is intercultural transformation. Colvin and Volet (2014) succinctly define it as ‘a personal, positive change in thinking or attitudes regarding culture-related issues, including one’s cultural worldview, empathy for culture-related issues, or disposition for reciprocal cultural understanding’ (p. 79). Their detailed empirical investigation of intercultural interactions revealed that agency with a deep level of cultural interest—which resonates with cosmopolitan agency—was associated with intercultural transformation. Importantly, their research focused on the experiences of domestic students, suggesting that the intercultural dimension of self-formation, such as intercultural transformation, can be pursued by any student, even without international mobility experience. Indeed my empirical data show that interactions with intercultural peers led both international and domestic students to feel that they had become more ‘optimistic’, ‘easy-going’, ‘tolerant and flexible’, and ‘proactive’. The following reflections on the transformation of domestic students, one self-reported and the other observed, are illustrative: I became less concerned about the details. I’m very close to the students from X [a country name].3 They are very loose with time. Everything is very vague. From a Japanese point of view, that bothered me. You might wonder why this guy doesn’t show up on time, or why they don’t make things clear, but I don’ care anymore (laughs). I like that feeling of freedom. … It made me realise how much we had lived in a confined environment. (Yusaku) Japanese students are no longer Japanese. They change a lot. … they are quite shy at first but … at a certain point they become chatty persons. It’s fabulous to see how some people change a lot. They blossom. (Lina)

As indicated by intergroup contact theory (Pettigrew et al., 2011), the reduction of negative stereotypes can also be seen as an important marker 3  In order to avoid premature generalisations, the names of certain countries, regions and races mentioned unfavourably by interviewees have been omitted by the author.

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of intercultural transformation resulting from intercultural interactions. In contrast to domestic students who have expressed indifference and reticence towards interacting with international students (Dunne, 2009; Fozdar & Volet, 2016), those in my research reported they had freed themselves from (inaccurate) essentialist othering (Holliday & MacDonald, 2020) by developing an individualised view of people with (perceived) cultural differences: Being in Japan, at first you had an image of [a country name] people as being a bit ill-mannered, or something like that. I had that image. I was a bit afraid of interacting with [another country name] and [race name] people, so I judged them without knowing anything about them, using my own common sense. But as I interacted with them, I realised that it really depends on each person and their character. … So I no longer judge them based on what I see around me, not about the country or anything. I am now willing to talk to them. (Ayako) My desire to befriend someone just because they are a foreigner has changed. When I started university, I thought foreigners were great and I wanted to play with them and be friends with them. But now I don’t want to be friends with them any more just because they’re foreigners. (Takeshi)

These accounts explain the achievement of agentic formation of a new, positive identity, regardless of the extent to which it is linked to the success of concrete personal projects—be they educational, economic, occupational and social, amongst others. For some students, this interculturally transformed identity may be directed towards instrumental goals, such as employability, which will be illustrated below. For others, it may be directed towards a broader appreciation of living with culturally different others during and after a period of study at HEIs. Self-Formation and the Accumulation of Cosmopolitan Capital Whatever direction is chosen, the self-formation achieved through intercultural interactions, such as intercultural transformation, promotes the accumulation of ‘cosmopolitan capital’ (see Fig. 7.1). Cosmopolitan capital is defined by Kudo (2023a) as a combination of embodied, objectified and institutionalised resources for future engagement in intercultural interactions. This capital can be most broadly exemplified as intercultural competence, or the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with

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people from other cultures (Perry & Southwell, 2011), which according to my interview data, was typically associated with multilingual skills. For international students, the ability to communicate in a local language (i.e. Japanese) was considered an important form of capital they had acquired through intercultural interactions. I think my Japanese has improved a lot compared to the last two years … I find it much easier to talk to Japanese people. (Duong) I really enjoy having Japanese people as my friends. It is also not just for friendship reasons, but also in the sense of my language ability. By having a lot of Japanese friends, it gives me a chance to use the language all the time, which is really good and beneficial too. (Mary)

Domestic students who cultivated foreign language skills, especially English, shared a similar view: International students are highly motivated to learn Japanese, and their motivation motivates me to do my best, for example, in learning foreign languages or other things. (Jun) My English has improved a lot (laughs). … I used to get stuck on what I wanted to say and I couldn’t really get across what I wanted to say, but lately I haven’t had that problem. I’m not really aware of it, but I think it’s probably gone. (Yusaku)

It should be noted that in Japan, universities have been urged to educate their students to become ‘global jinzai’ (i.e. global human resources) with international language skills, who can contribute to Japan’s business expansion into the global market (Yonezawa, 2014). As such, the significance of English language proficiency has dominated discussions on Japanese higher education policy (Hashimoto, 2018). This policy climate may have conditioned domestic students’ agency and self-formation, which presupposes English as a desirable cosmopolitan capital. Importantly, the significance of English has also been taken for granted by international students from non-English-speaking countries. Without English proficiency, they find it difficult to pursue globally oriented careers, especially if they choose to seek employment outside of Japan and their home countries (Tan, 2021).

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It is also important to consider the limitations of self-formation that arises from student interactions. Rou, an international student planning to work in Japan immediately after graduation, doubted if interactions with intercultural peers would be helpful in achieving her career goals: I have learned how young people in Japan think, what kind of people they are, what they like, things like that. I don’t know how useful that knowledge would be if I worked in Japan. I only know how to deal with young people. But as a future member of [Japanese] society, I probably haven’t learned much at university.

Her feeling, as well as many students’ perceptions of the importance of English, suggests that student agency and self-formation cannot be completely isolated from the neoliberal and human capital rationales that have permeated HEIs (Spero, 2022; Tan, 2021). For some agentic students with instrumental and transactional expectations of higher education, intercultural interactions with other students may seem insufficient for meaningful self-formation. However, they are open to other possibilities, including those with inclusive and altruistic values, as will be illustrated later in this chapter.

Institutional Affordances and Constraints for the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Agency The above illustration of cosmopolitan agency as a necessary condition for self-formation raises the question: how does cosmopolitan agency emerge and what role can HEIs play in the (non-)emergence of this agency? This leads to the second proposition that institutional affordances/constraints, in dynamic interactions with cosmopolitan capital, (dis)enable the emergence of cosmopolitan agency (see Fig.  7.1). Affordances, according to Gibson (1979), refer to perceived or actual possibilities for action that exist in a given environment. Conversely, constraints denote perceived or actual limitations on action in the environment. However, institutional affordances/constraints do not stand alone as the determinants of the emergence of cosmopolitan agency. Instead, as Kudo’s (2023a) ecological and person-in-context perspective of cosmopolitan agency suggests, cosmopolitan agency emerges at the dynamic ‘experiential interface’ (Volet, 2001) between institutional affordances and students’ cosmopolitan capital. In other words, in order to display cosmopolitan agency, students need

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to reflexively mobilise their cosmopolitan capital (accumulated from past learning experiences), which is attuned to the interactional environment (in which they are participating). If institutional affordances are not congruent with cosmopolitan capital that students possess, or if institutional constraints are too strong for students to use their cosmopolitan capital, cosmopolitan agency is unlikely to emerge. Additionally, from an ecological systems perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 2005), the interactional environment in which students (do not) exercise cosmopolitan agency to explore their self-formation is embedded within multi-level systems, including educational policies at the national level and institutional policies, curricula and facilities. Kudo et al. (2020) argue that regardless of the institutional affordances, it is ultimately students’ cosmopolitan agency that matters for meaningful intercultural interactions to occur. However, I argue that HEIs can facilitate students’ self-formation by providing them with opportunities to exercise cosmopolitan agency. This echoes Yang’s (2022) argument that the optimal situation for self-­ formation occurs when student agency is harmonised with the environment. Institutions Affording the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Agency The question, then, is: what kind of institutional environments are most conducive to the emergence of cosmopolitan agency? Many researchers and educators keenly interested in the internationalisation of HEIs have sought to facilitate interactions between international and domestic students with the expectation of developing their intercultural competence and global citizenship. They have attempted to achieve this by mixing them in carefully designed teaching and learning contexts that are safe and non-threatening for both groups of students (Arkoudis et  al., 2013; Rienties & Nolan, 2014). Although there is some truth in this instructor-­ centred approach, recent studies have demonstrated alternatives. That is, students tend to display cosmopolitan agency or its equivalents more frequently in informal curricular contexts (e.g. culturally mixed dormitories, student organisations) and non-curricular contexts (e.g. private parties, churches) than in formal curricular contexts (e.g. lectures, groupwork) (Boni & Calabuig, 2017; Kudo et al., 2020; Nada et al., 2018; Yu, 2020). For example, intercultural interactions that began in the shared kitchen of a culturally mixed dormitory, my research participants explained, were meaningful because they naturally contributed to the cultivation of cosmopolitan capital, such as foreign language learning:

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The kitchen is the best place in the dorm when people coming, cook together. They cook together and then they try to learn other language. For me, how do call this in Japanese? And they ask how say hello in Vietnamese. Yes, kind of exchange. (Duong) They (domestic students) have English books and we (international students) have Japanese books. … you help them with the homework because it is such a lot of homework, so I don’t think you can do it without help. They always helped me with my homework. … but helping with academics never stopped even after I moved out from the dormitory. It continued and it went up to helping with the study abroad applications and IELTS. That went up to that level. (Ranil)

These quotes suggest that HEIs can play a role in providing convivial environments that are created and owned by students; that is, the environments in which students can freely use language and cultural differences as resources for superficial and fleeting interactions that have the potential to develop into close relationships (Kudo, 2023a). Such interactions allow people to feel comfortable exercising cosmopolitan agency, which in turn can contribute positively to self-formation with an intercultural focus (e.g. intercultural transformation). Importantly, Ranil’s experience suggests that the emergence of cosmopolitan agency can be facilitated when formal curricular activities (e.g. homework) are aligned with informal and/or non-curricular activities (e.g. eating in the dormitory). Institutions Constraining the Emergence of Cosmopolitan Agency In contrast, institutional decisions beyond the control of individual students, such as the structure and curricula of academic programmes (Mendoza et  al., 2022), and international student recruitment policies and strategies (Yu & Moskal, 2019), can limit the prospects for the emergence of cosmopolitan agency. An important but underexplored issue in the literature is the relationship between students’ enrolment status (e.g. degree, exchange, study-abroad, postgraduate, undergraduate) and institutional constraints. For example, Lina, who first came to Japan as an exchange student and then transferred to the same university, illustrated how changing institutional decisions about housing arrangements confined a group of exchange students to an enclave:

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[W]hen I was an exchange student, I was living in the Bamboo House (i.e. culturally-mixed dormitory). But right now, the exchange students get sent to all the International Houses. It’s downtown and it’s completely separate. … Before, I had like the chance, and I would go out into the kitchen I would see domestic students. But now, they get separated. (Lina)

Her comment below suggests the danger of homogenising ‘the international student experience’, since exchange and degree-seeking international students may have very different motivations and institutional affordances, and consequently experience trajectories of agentic self-­ formation in significantly different ways. We have exchange students coming in every semester from multiple countries. But they have a bit of different attitude than regular students. … exchange students can take whatever subjects they prefer. They don’t have the requirement to learn the [Japanese] language. They can, but they don’t have to. … Since you are an exchange student, you know your time is limited. So you go for a lot of field trips, like road trips, like every weekend you’ll try to do, go, see something. But for us, we have schoolwork. We are used to this place. So we don’t see those opportunities as much now. (Lina)

Another example of institutional constraints on students’ cosmopolitan agency and self-formation that should receive more attention is language policy. As mentioned above, in non-Anglophone countries such as Japan, there is a growing institutional expectation to produce globally competitive graduates through curricula that use English as a selective or sole medium of instruction (Hashimoto, 2018). Most of the students in my study, consisting of domestic students and international students from both English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries, accepted the use of English for intercultural interactions as a de facto reality, except in cases where international students were highly proficient in Japanese. While this circumstance favours students with advanced English proficiency, it puts other students at a disadvantage, (re)producing unequal intercultural relations (Jon, 2012). In some cases, English speakers studying in international programmes who taught in English would retreat into an English bubble with students who are fluent at English or want to practise English or isolate themselves because they intimidate students who are not comfortable speaking English (Song & Xia, 2021). Furthermore, Kudo (2016) found that a university with a Japanese-­ English bilingual policy allowed students to study in their preferred

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language, which contributed to the creation of the ‘study-in-parallel’ situation, in which domestic students tend to take courses taught in a local language, while international students tend to study in English-medium courses. These examples suggest that language policies, exacerbated by variations in students’ cosmopolitan capital such as English proficiency, can curtail the prospects for students to exercise cosmopolitan agency, thereby narrowing their potential for self-formation.

Critical Cosmopolitan Agency Despite Institutional Constraints What has been discussed above can be seen as a top-down perspective of agency and self-formation, according to which students are placed in an environment that they cannot control and change. However, this is only one side of the coin. Students can exercise agency as resistance in order to fight against undesirable or unjust situations (Tran & Vu, 2018). This bottom-up perspective leads to the third proposition that cosmopolitan agency, prompted by cosmopolitan capital with a critical eye on institutional constraints, can enhance institutional affordances through intercultural interactions (see Fig.  7.1). In other words, institutional constraints can serve as affordances for the emergence of ‘critical cosmopolitan agency’ (Kudo, 2023a) if students are able to mobilise cosmopolitan capital with a critical spin accumulated from previous learning experiences. Critical cosmopolitan agency, for Kudo (2023a), is a reflexive expression of openness, inclusion and morality with a critical view of unequal power relations. An important difference of this agency from the cosmopolitan agency described earlier (which Kudo calls ‘amicable cosmopolitan agency’) is the collective negotiation of institutional structures for the betterment of the self (i.e. self-formation), others (i.e. enhancing the self-­ formation of other students) and the environment (i.e. enhancing both institutional and non-institutional affordances) on and off campus. It is worth noting that the display of critical cosmopolitan agency can be conspicuous or inconspicuous. As illustrated in Kudo (2023a), critical cosmopolitan agency is highly visible when a group of students exercise critical cosmopolitan agency to engage in collaborative actions that represent inclusion (e.g. attempting to mitigate the lack of positive interactions between international and domestic students by creating a student organisation) and philanthropy (e.g. initiating a donation in a local community

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for international students coming from countries affected by natural disasters or war). These actions were intended to fill the lack of interactional opportunities engineered by the university. Another form of critical cosmopolitan agency which deserves more scholarly attention emerges in the private world and may be at odds with mainstream institutional discourses. Nari, a descendant of a historically marginalised ethnic minority in Japan, embraced ethnic teasing as a positive expression of connection and intimacy across cultural and personal differences (Douglass et  al., 2016). She would not use ethnic jokes in public because she felt it was too risky. However, she expressed her acceptance of using them to address sensitive issues such as racism with humour, rather than being silenced by the political correctness and cultural relativism espoused by the university: I’ve been nicknamed [an ethnic name]. It’s a form of affection. Because I recognise them as my friends, it’s pretty great. Personally, I think it’s great that there is an environment where this kind of expression can be born in interactions between immigrants and between immigrants and non-­ immigrants. People say it’s not acceptable. But from a perspective beyond that, I think it’s fine. I do hear that such things are wrong in the classroom, though. (Nari)

Nari also provided a critical perspective to the widespread institutional discourses of global human resources, based on her extensive intercultural experiences as a residential assistant in a culturally mixed dormitory and as a teaching assistant: The university stresses the importance of language and communication skills, but I think people who can become friends and be active as global jinzai (global human resources) are tolerant, empathetic and open-minded. It has nothing to do with how much leadership you have as an individual … There are many people who have leadership and communication skills, but that does not mean they are successful. There are many such people.

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to identify the extent to which critical cosmopolitan agency displayed through organic relationships, such as friendships, can bring about impactful transformations in HEIs that redress unequal intercultural relations (Colvin et al., 2015; Jon, 2012; Yu, 2021). Much more uncertain is the extent to which such agency influences students’ self-formation in the long term, particularly after the end

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of their studies. However, the presence of critical cosmopolitan agency suggests the need for more researchers to listen to the inner voices of students as self-forming agents in search of a better future through encounters with cultural others.

Conclusions This chapter has sought to provide new insights into student agency and self-formation by bringing together an ecological and person-in-context perspective on cosmopolitan agency and intercultural interactions, the literature on agency and self-formation in international higher education, and interview data collected at two Japanese universities. Specifically, it presented a preliminary conceptual framework of the cyclical relationships between cosmopolitan agency and self-formation amidst institutional affordances/constraints. The validity and generalisability of this framework must be treated with due caution, as different national and institutional contexts are likely to afford and constrain different student experiences. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this framework will serve as a heuristic device to stimulate research on the role of HEIs in fostering the intercultural dimension of student agency and self-formation. A number of avenues for future research deserve attention. First, with regard to the role of cosmopolitan agency in self-formation (Proposition 1), more nuanced perspectives of interculturality are needed. As problematised by Kudo (2023b), students’ and, more fundamentally, researchers’ understandings of culture in students’ intercultural interactions are largely dependent on nationality, ethnicity, race, language and religion. Although gradually expanding, such a limited perspective of culture has made it difficult to explore the role of other cultural dimensions related to gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, locality and so on, in the display of cosmopolitan agency and self-formation. As Marginson (2014) may have hoped, there is a need to further explore a wider range of hybridity and multiplicity of student identities as resources for agentic self-formation, sustained and transformed through intercultural interactions. Consideration also needs to be given to constructs associated with the intercultural dimensions of self-formation other than intercultural transformation (e.g. global citizenship), particularly those relevant to domestic students who do not necessarily experience international mobility. An important line of inquiry implied by my empirical data was to examine the place of neoliberal

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discourses, such as global human resources (Spero, 2022), in students’ cosmopolitan agency and self-formation. Moreover, the dynamic interplay between institutional affordances/ constraints and students’ cosmopolitan capital in the (non-)emergence of cosmopolitan agency (Proposition 2) requires further research. The conditions for institutional affordances that may facilitate the emergence of cosmopolitan agency, such as conviviality and ownership of interactional environments mentioned above, warrant conceptual refinement. Related to this is the need to examine the role of institutional staff, particularly those responsible for managing informal, as well as formal, curricular environments such as culturally mixed dormitories and student organisations (Breaden, 2012). The complementary role of off-campus stakeholders, such as alumni and local community members, who can engage students in agentic self-formation through service learning and volunteering (Tsunematsu, 2022), should also be explored. With the rapid development of information and communication technology, it is an important task to explore the role of online or hybrid/hyflex modes of interactions beyond in-person interactions in providing multimodal and multisensory experiences of cosmopolitan agency and self-formation (cf. Ou et  al., 2022). In pursuing these themes, research is needed to identify the concrete components of cosmopolitan capital, other than intercultural competence and multilingual (especially English) skills, that are conducive to the emergence of cosmopolitan agency. From an educational point of view, it can be suggested that if an important mission of higher education is to educate the self-forming agents who can live and engage responsibly in the globally interconnected world, then HEIs should provide them with an appropriate curriculum or programme for the exercise of cosmopolitan agency. Importantly, as Ranil experienced in the kitchen of his culturally mixed dormitory, the interactional environments afforded and constrained by HEIs are not single but multiple, often cross-fertilising each other (Kimmel & Volet, 2012). That is, students develop their own ‘affordance networks’ (Rasi et  al., 2015) that enable them to exercise cosmopolitan agency in a web of multiple curricular and non-curricular environments over the course of their enrolment. Therefore, research focusing on the conditions necessary for the development of affordance networks for cosmopolitan agency is urgently needed. This kind of knowledge will be useful not only for students but also for HEIs that do not have the resources to make significant financial investments such as building culturally mixed dormitories.

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It may also be an important task to provide a critical perspective on cosmopolitan agency and self-formation. Cosmopolitan capital, proposed in this chapter as a contributor to cosmopolitan agency, has often been criticised for ultimately privileging already dominant national and transnational classes (Engel & Gibson, 2022). In line with this critique, Friedman (2018) has shown how the institutional hierarchy of higher education provision in the UK unequally positions students for the global economy. Similarly, Kudo and Hashimoto (2011) argue that the internationalisation strategies and activities of HEIs in Japan are characterised by diversification and stratification, leading to a ‘winner-takes-all’ situation in which elite and innovative universities are almost always more advantaged in international engagement than other universities. This is likely to affect student agency and self-formation. Thus, there is a need to examine how institutional reputations and hierarchies within the national and international higher education systems affect students’ cosmopolitan agency and self-formation. Furthermore, future research should pay explicit attention to the implications of critical cosmopolitan agency for the formation of self, others and environments within and beyond HEIs (Proposition 3). As this chapter has shown, both cosmopolitan agency and self-formation involve student reflexivity, although in some cases they may also be habitually undertaken. Importantly, critical cosmopolitan agency requires ethical and moral reflexivity. This agency, especially when expressed publicly and collectively, becomes a hallmark of the formation of a new social reality by addressing problems on campus (e.g. the lack of meaningful interactions between international and domestic students) and beyond (e.g. climate change, international conflict). Research on student cosmopolitan agency and self-formation in this direction will be a welcome addition to the literature on student activism within and beyond the campus environment (e.g. Dimpfl & Smith, 2019; Falch & Hammond, 2020). Finally, some methodological suggestions for future research should be mentioned. In principle, any research should use the method(ologies) and techniques that best serve the research aims. In exploring the relationships between student agency and self-formation, it may be preferable to use multiple sources of data and methods of analysis that allow both individual (i.e. reflexive/cognitive and behavioural) and environmental (i.e. affordances and constraints) dimensions to be unpacked. On the one hand, students’ (cosmopolitan) agency emerges in a given moment, sporadically or routinely. This requires a close examination of moment-to-moment

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interactions between individuals in particular contexts, preferably using observational data. On the other hand, students’ self-formation is a time-­ consuming, self-reflexive process that extends before and after the period of study. This requires the collection and analysis of longitudinal as well as retrospective data that touch on students’ long-term reflections. In addition, comparative institutional research in different countries is desirable in order to unpack the institutional affordances/constraints desirable for students’ (cosmopolitan) agency and self-formation. Intervention research with a control group in one or more institutional contexts over an extended period of time is another potential approach to identifying the concrete institutional conditions that facilitate (critical) cosmopolitan agency and self-formation.

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PART III

Linking Student Agency in Higher Education with the Wider Society

CHAPTER 8

The Civic Aspect of Student Self-Formation in International Higher Education: Apprenticeship in New Worldviews Yusuf Ikbal Oldac

Introduction International higher education (IHE) is not limited to the four walls of the school or the credentials students obtain. Students monitor and develop themselves through engagement in social experiences and knowledges inside and beyond the classroom (Klemencic, 2017; Marginson, 2023). This self-formation process depends on and augments an autonomous and reflexive agency carried out throughout the IHE experience (and beyond) as students move away from their home cultural society and immerse themselves into a brand new one. Apprenticeship is defined as “the state or position of any learner or novice” in the dictionary (Dictionary.com, 2023). The term is used in the same meaning in this chapter, but with a focus on being a novice and

Y. I. Oldac (*) School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun District, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_8

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learner towards new civic values in IHE. The host society is a new environment in which students are confronted with different civic values and attitudes. Civic values are defined as people’s critical awareness of the wider society and their views about how they can contribute to the well-­being in their communities “in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community’s future” (Adler & Goggin, 2005, p. 241). The civic value development is already discussed as an important impact of colleges on students as the extensive review conducted by Pascarella and his colleagues (see chapter 5, Mayhew et al., 2016) pointed out, but how this happens in IHE is understudied. IHE could be influential on the civic dimension of the student formation because it influences the life of international students, and also the wider society (Chankseliani et al., 2020; Oldac, 2022). IHE students have been shown to have a significant impact on the political environment in their countries of origin (Spilimbergo, 2009) as well as preventing negative political phenomena such as coups in their countries of origin (Puryear, 1994). However, inadequate scholarly focus is devoted to civic development of IHE students, particularly considering that IHE may have different mechanisms than studying in home country due to immersion to a different host society culture. Main Trends in the Literature for Civic Development in International Higher Education Reviewing the scholarly literature on this topic highlights that there are studies that focus on civic development, but these studies do not necessarily examine IHE, and those studies that do focus on IHE do not pay adequate attention to the formation of civic perspectives by students (Chankseliani, 2018). For example, many studies that concentrate on the civic dimension of higher education suggest that it can help students increase their awareness and become active citizens (e.g., Biesta, 2002; Bowman, 2011; Crossley & Ibrahim, 2012; Mayer, 2011). The comprehensive review of student experiences in college education by Mayhew et al. (2016) also highlights that university education overall is associated with positive shifts in civic values and understandings, though the level of this may change by academic major, gender, private/public universities and other factors. However, as highlighted earlier, these studies do not focus on the international aspect specifically, which has different dynamics.

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By contrast, the majority of the studies that do examine IHE highlight micro-level decisions at the level of an individual (e.g., Brooks & Waters, 2010; Rienties & Nolan, 2014) and the macro-level impacts on community through the political involvement from IHE alumni (e.g., Chankseliani, 2018; Puryear, 1994; Spilimbergo, 2009). A few studies also study macro-­ level changes in international students’ home societies and nations by looking at the effects of brain drain, gain, circulation, and brain drain (e.g., Perna et al., 2015; Welch & Hao, 2016). The literature available on this topic is mostly focused on the specific economic utility for universities, individuals, or even states. Global citizenship literature can also be associated with civic value formation through “cultural exposure, the development of intercultural capabilities” (Yemini et al., 2018, p. 5). However, a systematic review of global citizenship literature indicates that these studies mostly focussed on high school students aged 13–18, and they concentrated on developed nations (i.e., UK’s high school curriculum) (Goren & Yemini, 2017). Also, most studies that focus on global citizenship tend to focus on teaching and the curriculum of an institution, rather than students’ political development while studying abroad (e.g., Aktas et  al., 2017; Oxley & Morris, 2013). There is limited but increasing scholarly literature that focuses on IHE and civic values in the student experiences literature (Mayhew et  al., 2016). This line of literature mostly suggests that studying abroad positively impacts students’ civic values development, such as increasing their civic awareness and participation to voluntary and social events (e.g. Jones et  al., 2012; Lott, 2013; Mitic, 2020; Myers et  al., 2019). However, though these studies focus on the impact of study abroad programmes, they tend not to focus on degree mobility, which usually requires a longer stay in the host country for finishing a full degree. Some of these studies even focus on week-long visits (e.g., Jones et al., 2012). The findings that short-term mobility affecting students’ civic value development positively can be considered a significant indicator that a longer degree-mobile immersion could trigger a more fundamental student transformation. Further, what is specifically missing in the civic formation literature is how students transform themselves in the immersive IHE experience. The students’ role in their formation has not received adequate attention (Marginson, 2014, 2018). In higher education, and within that IHE, students engage with social experiences and knowledges inside and beyond the four walls of the classes and develop themselves (Klemencic, 2017;

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Marginson, 2023). This is a self-formation process which builds on and expands the autonomous and reflexive agency carried out throughout the IHE experience (and beyond) as students navigate between the cultural environments of their home and the host countries. Marginson’s (2014) study has proved influential in establishing the new paradigm of studies focused on students’ self-formation within IHE (Bedenlier et al., 2018). There is a growing research stream of publications that examine the process of student self-formation within IHE in different research areas (e.g., Yang, 2022; Streitwieser & Light, 2018; Tran, 2016). However, the newly emerging stream of studies in the self-formation paradigm has not focused specifically on the civic dimension, which is an important part of IHE. To fill these gaps, the study will focus on students’ self-formation journey related to the civic dimension of IHE, by focusing on degree mobile students from a developing country. The study will focus specifically on the international students’ apprenticeship in new worldviews as a part of their civic self-formation (Oldac, 2021). The notion of apprenticeship in new worldviews is based on Chankseliani’s (2018) study about “apprenticeships in democracy” (p.  282). Chankseliani (2018) explains apprenticeships in democracy in the following way: While studying abroad, individuals may undergo changes in how they think about state systems and socio-political, cultural and economic developments around them, and their own role as citizen-contributors to their communities. Amongst other influences, mobility may be transformative for student migrants’ civic consciousness and their understanding of what democracy entails. (p. 281)

Chankseliani (2018) established a quantitative relationship between the political structure of international students’ host and home countries. The focus was on the relationship between the number of international students and the democracy level of the home country. This current study, on the other hand, focuses more on the inner mechanisms involved in international students’ self-formation process. In this chapter, I employ the term apprenticeship in new worldviews rather than the term apprenticeship in democracy, since the intention is not to establish any specific political structure in the home country as a normative centre. As part of their self-formation process, IHE students encounter, interact, and transform themselves through their reflexive agency.

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Theoretical Framework: Apprenticeship in New Worldviews as Part of Student Self-Formation The study frames apprenticeship in new worldviews in IHE as an element of student self-formation. Self-formation is a relatively novel approach to conceptualise the transformations students experience throughout their IHE experience (Marginson, 2014, 2018, 2023). The self-formation approach forefronts the active positioning of international students and emphasises their agency. International students do not passively accept everything in their host cultures in building their civic beliefs that would be other-formation. In contrast, they self-form through their active agency navigating through the new circumstances they experience in the host society. To this understanding, international students are not empty vessels to be filled with novel experiences/observations they encounter in host society. As discussed earlier, there is an interest in studying the civic development of international students in the literature; however, these studies don’t adequately portray students as self-forming, active agents (Marginson, 2014, 2018). To this end, this study built on Archer’s (2003, 2010) research on the morphogenetic approach to agency. Archer’s perspective, as outlined in a 2010 article, proposes three stages on how agency operates: structure, action, and structural elaboration. This study adopts these stages for international education settings and proposes that apprenticeship in new worldviews occurs in three temporal stages: encountering the new, interacting with the new, and agential elaboration (see Fig. 8.1). The first stage, encountering the new, is a crucial phase of apprenticeship in new worldviews because its primary function is to initiate the internal processes that lead to self-formation. The “new” in this stage is relevant to what is described as the structure in Archer’s research (2003, 2010). This stage always predates the agentic responses of students and conditions them but never completely controls them. This stage is discussed in the literature in multiple contexts for different purposes, which indicates its relevance and importance. For example, the contact hypothesis described by Allport (1954) highlights the effect of encountering the new and how such encounters lead to decrease in prejudices. As international students immerse themselves in a novel societal context during IHE, encountering the new becomes almost a daily practice, which triggers their internal process.

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Fig. 8.1  Study’s framework for apprenticeship in new worldviews in IHE

The next stage, interacting with the new, is international students’ response to the novel challenging circumstances they encounter in the host society. This is similar the Archer’s (2010) action stage. While encountering the new stage conditions of international student actions, it is their interactive response to it that shapes the apprenticeship process. Each international student may have different first-hand interpretations and accounts and hence varying agential responses from them. Agential elaboration can be described as the last of the three temporal stages. In this stage, international students’ interaction with the new results in the transformation of the self in a host of new social possibilities. This temporal stage is comparable to Archer’s (2003, 2010) structural elaboration and Tran and Vu’s (2018) argument on agency as becoming. A successful interaction with the new results in reflections and elaborations on the self, which result in the transformation of the self within the “space of possibles” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 30). The student can choose to go with multiplicity (employing different civic values in home/host contexts) and hybridity (creating hybridised civic values from home and host contexts) (Marginson, 2014). Because these three temporal stages occur in a unique setting of the host country, international students’ space of possibles are broader than students who studied at home given the former’s ability to draw from a broader range of sources.

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There are a variety of mechanisms that could be facilitating these temporal stages. Reflexivity as proposed by Archer (2003) is a key mechanism facilitating the three temporal stages, where international students elaborate the novelty they encountered and how they will respond to it, eventually resulting in self-formation. However, although Archer’s three stages constitute the backbone of this proposed framework, the empirical findings of the current study (as will be dwelled on later) indicate that the three stages do not explain the phenomena fully. The empirical findings, as reported later, indicated that Festinger’s (1962) cognitive dissonance theory and Vygotsky’s (2012) study of sociocultural learning are also relevant, especially when explaining reflexivity. There is an outside-in flow, as described in Vygotsky’s works, that triggers students’ self-formation, especially in encountering the new phase. Subsequently, this leads to a cognitive dissonance in the students’ mind (c.f. Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Festinger, 1962), which can be summed up as the cleavage in mind created by the difference between the civic values existed in a student’s mind and the novel ones s/he encounters in the host society. The cleavage in the brain naturally creates cognitive dissonance that can be resolved through reflexivity. These theories approach the phenomenon from different angles, and they all contribute to understanding apprenticeship in new worldviews as part of student self-formation. Also, while Archer (2010) acknowledges the temporal nature of these stages, the cyclical nature of the phenomenon is not highlighted adequately. Apprenticeship in new worldviews is a dynamic and cyclical process, and these three temporal stages follow each other in a fluid way. International students frequently experience encountering the new stage as part of their daily routine in IHE.  Such encounters with the novelty activate the agency and subsequent temporal phases follow. The cycle repeats as the apprenticeship continues. The three stages, and especially the final two, do not function in total separation, and they complement each other via feedback loops. Figure 8.1 shows the study’s conception of apprenticeship in new worldviews. Simplicity of the framework should not be misleading. The reality is always messier than theory-building (Sayer, 2000). This visualisation is merely to help us better understand the underlying mechanisms of apprenticeship in new worldviews as part of student self-formation

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Methodological Approach This study built on Archer’s theoretical work to propose its conceptualisation and further collected empirical evidence to improve the framework it proposes. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the research question of “How do international students go through apprenticeship in new worldviews during their IHE experience?” The majority of interviews occurred between September 2018 and March 2019, and the vast majority of the interviews were conducted in person through an international-comparative fieldwork. This study takes a critical realist stance and explains the phenomena as they are (Sayer, 2000). Social phenomena exist independently of us, the observers. I investigate the phenomena as it is and establish connections based on these empirical observations, accepting the situation that reality is always more complex than theory-building. With this perspective in mind, all IHE students go through an apprenticeship in new worldviews in their host society, and the endeavour here is to uncover the underlying processes. This chapter results from an extensive doctoral research project about international students’ self-formation and their societal contribution (Oldac, 2021). The current chapter concentrates on the findings related to apprenticeship in the new worldviews as part of student self-formation during IHE. The interview questions comprised before, during, and after-­ mobility aspects to understand the underlying processes of apprenticeship in new worldviews; hence, allowing temporal reflections. The process of interviewing was assisted by life-timeline forms drawn by participants (cf. Abbas et al., 2013). The life-timeline forms were mostly unstructured and served to (1) lead participants to think about their personal experiences prior to the interview; (2) guide the interview that followed and (3) to triangulate the examination of temporal reflections gathered from the interviews. Participants: Turkish International Students The study’s data is collected from Turkish international students. International students are defined as those who physically relocated from one country to another in pursuit of a degree (OECD, 2017). Based on this definition, there were approximately fifty thousand Turkish student internationals in the year 2018 (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2021).

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Turkish international students share both similarities and differences in comparison to other international students. An important similarity is that all international students move across national borders to pursue a degree in a new societal context, leave behind their existing support networks and are exposed to new civic beliefs in new societal settings. Thus, the selected group can be instrumental in obtaining a better understanding of how international students perceive their apprenticeship in new worldviews (Ragin, 1992; Stake, 1996). In contrast, Turkish international students differ from other international students in that their home country had been experiencing a volatile political environment during data collection in 2019, particularly following the coup attempt in 2016, as acknowledged by various international organisations like The Economist Intelligence Unit (2019) and Freedom House (2020). Thus, Turkish IHE graduates also have intrinsic worth (Stake, 1996) for studying apprenticeship in new worldviews. This study, however, doesn’t position Turkish students as a homogeneous group as the data will also corroborate later in the study herein. Turkish students were chosen because the databases that are available to select international students, including UNESCO and the World Bank, are based on the classifications of nation-states. International Study Destinations Fifty Turkish recent IHE graduates who studied in a variety of host countries were chosen as participants in the study. Four countries, specifically Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany, and the UK, were purposefully chosen to explore the shared traits of apprenticeship in new worldviews across country contexts. These countries were selected from the top 10 destinations for study by Turkish students (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2018) to ensure diversity while maintaining feasibility. The countries were selected by a variety of factors, including the differences in their political economy, cultural and historical connections, and the academic quality of higher education institutions. Participants who stayed in their host country following the completion of their studies were interviewed in their respective host countries, whereas returnee students were interviewed in Turkey. Table  8.1 gives details about the distribution of participants based on the host countries and the universities they attended. Only students studying at universities that are located in capital cities of each country were interviewed for feasibility

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Table 8.1  List of universities the participants obtained their degrees from with regard to country locations Country of study

Participant universities

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan State University of Economics Baku State University Azerbaijan Technical University Baku Engineering University (Old name: Qafkaz University) Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of National and World Economy Technical University—Sofia Medical University—Sofia Humboldt University Free University of Berlin Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Technical University of Munich University of Oxford University of Cambridge University College London Imperial College London London School of Economics University of the Arts London

Bulgaria

Germany

United Kingdom

Number of participants

Interviewed in host/ home country

12

5/7

12

5/7

14

8/6

12

6/6

reasons and to account for the disparities in future prospects provided by capital versus non-capital or small versus big city distinctions. These differences could be important when it comes to post-graduation prospects for international students and the impact it has on their self-formation. The participants were chosen through a combination of snowballing and LinkedIn’s Search tool. There was a gender-balanced distribution (female = 20; male = 30) considering the gender balance of the international students. The participants were also balanced regarding their return status (migrant graduate = 26, returnee graduate = 24). “Migrant graduate” refers to IHE graduates who resided in their host country at the time of interview, while “returnee graduates” were those who had returned to Turkey during the time of interview. Participants were graduates from diverse disciplines like engineering, social sciences, and sciences. The study

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did not include students who received Turkish government scholarships, since they could be selected by government officials with certain traits that could lead to selection biases. Data Analysis The entire interview transcript was manually recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis as explained by Miles et al. (2019) was utilised for data analysis. The analysis began with the first-cycle coding where a close reading of all the interview data and participant-timeline was formed to identify meaningful segments for coding or memo creation. A start list of codes was compiled from prior research to be used for the deductive aspect of the analysis. The code list was updated and new codes were added inductively as the analysis continued. In the second-cycle coding, main focus was on establishing patterns. The codes generated during the earlier stage were scrutinised and grouped to form themes. The data analysis was conducted in Turkish, but selected excerpts were later translated into English for publication.

Findings IHE graduates form a more nuanced perspective towards the civic understandings of their host countries. Apprenticeship in new worldviews as part of self-formation is a context- and individual-dependent process. This section will share the findings related to this phenomenon, as emerged from the interviews. The findings section is organised accordingly with the three temporal stages proposed in the theoretical framework section. Encountering the New Stage: Activating the Internal Process Encounter with the new usually comprises strong elements, such as being impressed, shocked, and bewildered in the initial stages of mobility, which were apparent in most participants’ interviews. For instance, Aykut explained his first moments upon arriving at Sofia (the Bulgarian capital) in the following manner: “When I first arrived, I was cold and hot all over. Beginning from the very first second” (Aykut, Bulgaria). Later, he said that he previously had different ideas of Sofia as being a “European city,” but what he encountered was different and totally new to him. Encountering the new stage is not easy and activating the inner processes

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of self-formation needs a strong catalyst. International student mobility is capable of providing this catalyst, as students leave one societal context behind and immerse themselves to another. Other participants shared similar strong initial encounters with the new. For instance, Melis expressed: “the first day when I arrived [at Baku], I told myself that I would return tomorrow” (Melis, Azerbaijan). Melis cited stark differences between her host country (Azerbaijan) and home country (Turkey) for her first encounter in 2004, when she arrived there for studying. Fortunately, there was no direct flight that day and she had to wait for three days before she could return. During this time, she chose to give her host country a shot. The term “fortunately” is used on purpose here because Melis eventually became a successful professional in Azerbaijan after graduating. The same is the case for Aykut above who studied in Bulgaria. The destination countries selected for this study were among the top destinations for Turkish students. Some studies suggest that cultural and geographical proximity could be a reason behind the high levels of student mobility between host and home countries (Kondakci et al., 2017). This argument can be argued for the cultural and geographical proximity of Azerbaijan and Bulgaria to Turkey. However, the findings indicate that the encounter with the new and initiating the internal process occurs even in the mobility between countries with cultural and geographical proximity. Encountering the new stage is therefore a powerful temporal stage of self-­ formation for international students. To illustrate below, Rana provided a detailed account of her unexpected encounter of the new in Azerbaijan: What we know about Azerbaijan? it is a small country, it is very close to Turkey blah blah a lot of crap. I was shocked as soon as I landed. It was a very different country than I imagined. It was independent from Russia for 20 years when I left. An incredible culture. (Rana, Azerbaijan)

The comment of Rana on Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet background was a frequent topic among students studying there. The cultural differences between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which are associated with being post-­ Soviet, are evidently at unexpected levels for Turkish international students. The encounter with the unexpected led the participants’ internal process of apprenticeship in new worldviews. The focus on post-Soviet was evident for Bulgaria too; most of the participants who attended

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universities in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria highlighted their host country’s post-Soviet background. The experience of encountering the new was also important for students studying in Germany and the UK. International students leave their support structures and the familiar cultural environment in their countries of origin, which then triggers an internal process of self-formation. To illustrate, Eylul below, who studied in Imperial College London, explains her initial impressions about London in the UK: “London is such a cosmopolitan place, it has people from all over the world. London has no one type of person, quite the opposite, many types of people. There is an extra challenge that comes from that” (Eylul, UK). Contrary to Azerbaijan and Bulgaria, the participants were more aware of the expectations they had for the UK and Germany. The data indicated less of a shock and more of being impressed. In any case, it is clear that encountering the new is a salient temporal stage of apprenticeship in new worldviews that activates the process self-formation. Then comes the interacting with the new stage. Interacting with the New: First-Hand Interactions and Experiences Interacting with the new includes elements like observation and direct experiences in the host society, leading to critical internal reflections related to the new worldviews encountered in the host society. Excerpts from various interviews are included below to give concrete examples of what these possible new worldviews could be. For example, Rana reflected on her observations about the remnants of Socialism within Azerbaijan and discussed her feelings of being impressed by the positive comments about Socialism, particularly in contrast to the way it is perceived in Turkey: Capitalism is recent [in Azerbaijan]. This is a culture that I have never seen before. That was the thing that changed me. You grow up with capitalism here [Turkey], and you see socialism there. We have always been told that socialism is bad. … We characterise socialism as an unwanted regime that people are forcefully held part of. Then you go there and hear people say they were happy back then. (Rana, Azerbaijan)

This excerpt suggests that Rana took a less negative attitude towards what she perceived to be the socialism in Azerbaijan. Contrarily, Melis also

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studied for her bachelor’s education in Azerbaijan within the exact area of study as Rana. Melis also spoke about the opportunity to observe the change in Azerbaijan’s political system from “Communism” to “Capitalism” however in a different way. She seems to have developed an unfavourable view of the former, in contrast to Rana. The terminology the participants select to use is noteworthy. Some participants who studied in Azerbaijan employed the term “Socialism,” while others employed the term “Communism” to describe the same political entity. This suggests that the participants could be liberal in their choice of words. When we first went there [Azerbaijan], they were recently attempting to transition to capitalism. It was incredible to see that transition. … I saw that communism is not something like the communists in Turkey dream of. (Melis, Azerbaijan)

Melis continued her reflections regarding the remnants of “Communism” in Azerbaijan and offered more detailed information. Below is an excerpt of her interview that includes some of her comments to support her earlier reflection: First, in the simplest terms, you get bored. I was having a hard time finding my house because all the houses are the same! I mean there is a Stalinski type of house and a Leninski type. … Then, I see that I have many friends in the public sector who defend communism, but they, at the same time, make an unbelievable effort to get promoted to a higher position. Actually, communism is against this. You may be working harder, and I may be working less, but we should all have the same facilities and opportunities. (Melis, Azerbaijan)

These first-hand experiences appear to have led to the process of reflection and critical thinking which are essential to the interacting with the new stage. These excerpts from interviews with Rana as well as Melis above show the way that the two IHE graduates were apprentices in new worldviews in the same host country, yet their agentic reactions to their novel encounters led them to different trajectories. Both Rana and Melis share a number of similarities: they both grew up in Istanbul prior to moving to Baku to complete their undergraduate studies, they both studied the field of international relations (though at different universities in Azerbaijan), and they both all returned to Istanbul following graduation. However, despite

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the similarities, one claimed that she could be able to observe “Socialism” more closely and developed a less negative stance towards it, whereas the other developed a more negative stance towards “Communism,” which she claimed was the ruling system in Azerbaijan until recent times. The study’s theoretical framework suggests that the way that international students interact with their encounters of the new in their host country generates distinct self-formation trajectories. Encountering the new may condition students’ agentic interactions, but international students are active agents who make their own ways. Below is a different example of interacting with the new in IHE, this time in the UK. Kemal below discusses his observations during his study in London: Their parliaments and democracy are awesome. On the street, an MP is walking to the parliament, a journalist man comes next to him walking, asks a question and the MP answers. In Turkey, two opposition MPs can’t even come face to face in a TV program. That’s why their understanding of democracy is great. Now I’m watching the live broadcasts from their parliament. (Kemal, UK)

In this case, the emphasis shifts away from communism and post-Soviet to the “understanding of democracy” and the ways in which the parliament operates. An entirely different encounter of the new in the host country leads to different interactions: the novel structure that international students encounter in the UK is already there as a conditioning factor, but agentic interactions with this encounter result in unique apprenticeship journeys. Similarly, participants also went through the interaction with the new temporal stage in Germany, but this time interacting with a different broad worldview, with the majority of participants describing it as social democracy. Ahmet (below) explained about how his time studying in Germany helped him develop his understanding of social democracy. He also acknowledged the significance of IHE in this: I always had in my mind that capitalism does not work. But I couldn’t call myself a socialist or anti-capitalist. Because although I could think and question that capitalism does not work, I could never prove it to myself. After I came here [Germany], I was able to develop these thoughts more easily. (Ahmet, Germany)

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This and the other excerpts that precede it illustrate the importance of interacting with the new in host country through first-hand observations and experiences. As explained in the theoretical framework earlier, although this stage comes prior to the third one, the agential elaboration stage, these two stages don’t have clear-cut boundaries. There is an inherent flow between the two stages and the process is not always linear. The two form a feedback loop. Therefore, the next temporal stage is the agential elaboration stage, in a manner that it already began with the interacting with the new stage. Agential Elaboration This section comprises the findings related to agential elaborations leading to formation of the self within IHE.  The emphasis will be on the civic worldviews since they are the subject of this chapter. Building from the last excerpt shared in the previous section, I asked a probing question to Ahmet to further understand his self-acknowledged apprenticeship in Germany. He elaborated further and gave a reflexive explanation of his formation process: The people around me helped me with this, not by teaching, but they gave me food for thought. They would tell me a book name, and I would read it. My world would change afterwards. … Or I would say something that would challenge them. Talking about things opposed to my worldview pushed me to do further research. I formed a more critical perspective. I think I can look at the world in a more realistic and better way now. I learned that accessing alternative information can be easy. (Ahmet, Germany)

Ahmet’s encounter with the new nearly caused a cognitive dissonance for him (Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Festinger, 1962). Subsequently, he began to interact with the new as the previous section highlighted, leading to agential elaboration. Such process continued until his mind was at ease (i.e. the reduction of cognitive dissonance). Another interviewee, Ömer, began answering my questions by reflectively describing himself prior to his study in the UK. Ömer’s remarks suggest that he had no proper civic knowledge and hence no civic involvement prior to his IHE:

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In Turkey, in high school, rightist and leftist people would argue among themselves, and I wished that I knew a little about such issues so that I could get involved with the discussions. I had no clue. At some point, I thought I needed to learn more about such issues as I was about to start voting, and I did not know whom to vote for. (Ömer, UK)

It should be noted that he became aware of his situation following his mobility to the UK. As argued earlier, IHE leads to greater awareness of self and a person’s contribution as a citizen of the society as part of apprenticeship in worldviews. After probing further onto his development in this matter, he expanded on his earlier reflections: My coming to the UK and learning English had a profound impact on my developing an understanding of the world. I watched objective documentaries. I listened impartially, objectively, because there is some truth to be taken from all sides. I developed a certain perception, a certain understanding. (Ömer, UK)

As can be seen, learning English and having access to English sources played an important role in leading Ömer’s understanding of the world around him and transform himself in the process. It is similar to the earlier point on Vygotsky’s (2012) argument about how self-formation and education is an external-in flow, acknowledging the role of host society. Self-­ formation is a socially contextualised phenomenon (Marginson, 2018). These reflections suggest that even when encountering the new stage does not shape the process of self-formation completely, it still has conditioning effect on the process of international student apprenticeship in new worldviews. For instance, international students who studied in Azerbaijan and Bulgaria experienced different apprenticeship trajectories. The excerpt from Melis’s interview below is a good illustration of international students who studied in Azerbaijan: Four years of education and the experiences I had there showed me that in most countries in the world democracy is just a name on paper. This includes Turkey. … We have no influence or contribution to politics or governance as individuals. It was sad to see this. My hands are completely tied. Even my vote doesn’t help much. Even in countries where voting may make a difference, they are influenced so much by market and PR activities beforehand. Because what you see in media is what becomes reality. (Melis, Azerbaijan)

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Melis’s reflection suggests a decrease in conviction in civic engagement and democratic values. In this case, an international student who travelled into a less democratic societal context according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (2020) indicators, results in a decrease in the belief in civic engagement and democratic values. Melis’s interaction with the new might have led her to a different path, but it did not in this instance. The same pattern of apprenticeship isn’t observed for students who studied in Germany or the UK. Thus, encountering the new stage has a conditioning power on international students’ apprenticeship in new worldviews.

Discussion and Conclusions This research examines international student apprenticeship in new worldviews as part of their self-formation. With this, it contributes to the literature on comparative and international higher education and studies focusing agential approaches to student experiences in higher education. The study proposes a fresh conceptualisation that is further developed by empirical evidence to comprehend the inner processes that occur during apprenticeship in new worldviews in IHE. In line with Archer’s morphogenesis approach (2003, 2010), this study argued for three temporal stages: encountering the new, interacting with the new, and agential elaboration. The encountering the new stage arguably becomes part of the everyday life in IHE, as students immerse themselves in an unfamiliar societal setting. The encountering the new stage activates the agential responses through which the students interact with newness, which results in the development of the self. This process continues until the cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962) caused by the new encounters are resolved through an Archerian reflexivity (Archer, 2003), which mediates the three mentioned temporal stages. In the words of Vygotsky, “[T]he true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social, but from the social to the individual” (Vygotsky, 2012 at p. 38). The study’s analysis suggests a pattern of international student apprenticeship in new worldviews that begins in the outer realm and shifts to the inner levels afterwards. Agency remains the driving force behind the change, because similar social contexts can still result in distinct self-formation paths as illustrated in this study. International students who undergo an apprenticeship in new worldviews during their IHE experiences are largely in line with the existing scholarship. Higher education, particularly IHE, can play a role in the

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creation of more civically aware and active citizens (e.g., Biesta, 2002; Crossley, 2008; Crossley & Ibrahim, 2012; Mayhew et  al., 2016). However, unlike the existing research, this study examined how the internal process takes place, focusing on the students’ roles in the formation of their civic beliefs and their perspectives through an international cross-­ cultural fieldwork. Also, the analysis of the results indicates a process of apprenticeship in new worldviews by international students regardless of host countries but with potentially differing trajectories in different host cultures. The findings also suggested that the expansion and revision of Chankseliani’s (2018) “apprenticeship in democracy” to “apprenticeship in the new worldviews” was justified because, as the analysis indicated, international student apprenticeship is not only about being more prone to democracy or not. International students go through apprenticeship in new worldviews in their host countries regardless of the nature and level of democracy at host country, as they encounter the new, agentially interact with the new, and transform themselves in the process. “Higher education is a place for remaking the self” (Marginson, 2023, p. 68). The empirical analysis shared herein indicates a remaking of the self as related to civic beliefs through apprenticeship in new worldviews. The important role of universities should also be recognised. Universities have played a role in the development and creation of democratic systems throughout the world (Marginson, 2018; Biesta, 2002). Particularly, the Humboldtian tradition, which has been influential in the idea of the university in both the West and worldwide (Kerr, 2001), emphasises the vital contribution of universities to the formation of individuals who, in turn, build the civic societies essential for democratic systems (Atkinson, 2010; Biesta, 2002; Chankseliani, 2018). The roots of this approach can be traced back to the enlightenment era idea of Bildung (Biesta, 2002; Taylor, 2017). This study however focuses on the international aspect: a student studying abroad, rather than studying at home. IHE experience leads to apprenticeships in new worldviews as students immerse themselves into a new societal context. “The most powerful meaning of democracy is formed […] in the details of everyday life” according to Apple and Beane (1995, p. 103). Through their experiences in the everyday activities during IHE, international students can have a comparative look at their host and home societies and form themselves through their apprenticeship. IHE is also viewed as a means to develop human capital at the country of origin by sender countries (Perna et al., 2015; Welch & Hao, 2016).

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This study, however, suggests that international students return with much more than newly equipped skills and credentials. In this sense, this study echoes, Marginson’s claim that “self-formation is the best response to the economism of neo-liberalism, the subordination of education to an external system of valuation based on capitalist economics” (2023, p. 82). Future research may study the inner mechanisms taking place in the three temporal stages proposed. For instance, what are the internal mechanisms taking place during the agential elaboration stage? Is it hybridisation of existing worldviews or formation of new ones? What mental sources do international students rely on during their apprenticeship in new worldviews? Longitudinal studies may better help in answering these questions. Also, this study focussed on the civic aspect self-formation, but there are other domains like academic self-formation (cf. Lee, 2023) which should be studied further to develop a fuller understanding of the relatively new idea of self-formation. Acknowledgments  This work was supported by the British Association for International and Comparative Education under Grant [number 20181101] and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies [Ref. SFF1718_OCIS_1108067]. The author is a Hong Kong Research Grants Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Lingnan University, and his Fellowship is being funded by Hong Kong University Grants Committee.

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CHAPTER 9

New Spaces for Agency in Doctoral Education: An Ecological Approach Kelsey Inouye and Søren Bengtsen

Introduction Agency, broadly understood here as the capacity of individuals to act within their (temporal) environments (see Emirbayer & Mische, 1998), has emerged as a concept of interest in the field of doctoral education. Traditionally, PhD education was framed as a socialisation process through which PhD researchers enter into apprenticeships with supervisors in their disciplines, learning the language, practices, and research skills necessary for acceptance into the academic community (Gardner & Mendoza, 2010; Golde & Walker, 2006). However, as the nature of doctoral education has changed, moving from a vehicle for gaining entrance to the academy to a means of training researchers to work across sectors and contribute to

K. Inouye (*) Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Bengtsen Department of Educational Philosophy and General Education, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0_9

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innovation and knowledge in various parts of society (Cuthbert & Barnacle, 2021; Mantai & Marrone, 2022; McAlpine & Norton, 2006), so too has the purpose of the PhD itself and, we shall argue, the meaning of doctoral agency. The PhD was originally conceived of as a search for truth and wisdom (see Barnacle, 2005), but has evolved within the contexts of neoliberalism and the knowledge economy to become increasingly multipurposed with strong connections to employability agendas in the various national arenas. Concerns about time to completion, employability, and intellectual and societal impact have altered the nature of research training and supervisory responsibilities as well as the meaning of the doctoral thesis (Andres et al., 2015; Gokhberg et al., 2016). This evolving meaning of the PhD has inspired discussions about PhD researcher  agency and the relationship between agency and researcher identity development. For instance, as an ongoing theme in the work of McAlpine and Amundsen (2018, p.  37), agency in doctoral and post-­ doctoral learning and career trajectories is defined as “the ability to deal positively with challenges, to bounce back emotionally or adapt successfully to adverse circumstances, essentially to develop and demonstrate resilience”. Further, as the PhD is no longer solely preparation for academia, PhD researchers embark on increasingly varied trajectories shaped by choices and actions that affect their research topics, training, writing styles and audience engagement, and career trajectories—all of which influence and reflect their goals and intentions (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2018). Despite the growing focus on societally entangled forms of agency, the notion of agency in the literature has been connected mainly to the individual doctoral learning journey, understood as being embedded in various social, cultural, and professional contexts. Although we are not discounting the importance of individual intentions as expressions of agentive acts that influence doctoral researchers’ trajectories, due to the structural and cultural changes in expectations of doctoral researchers and PhD holders, we argue that a more societally wide and entangled understanding of agency must be explored to complement personalised understanding. Here, we build on the philosophical approach and ecological understanding of agency found in the work of Ronald Barnett (2018, 2022). In this chapter, we focus primarily on doctoral education in the humanities, arts, and social science (HASS), the disciplines in which we work and research. While there is much to explore in STEM that is

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relevant to the topic of this chapter, we believe the particular challenges of HASS doctorates and HASS research give rise to a set of useful discussions in which HASS PhD researchers must navigate discourses around social impact, research evaluation, and careers in fields where impact and expertise/skills are often not as readily apparent as in STEM research (Bengtsen et  al., 2021; Bengtsen & McAlpine, 2022). In the following sections we identify four areas in which to further explore PhD student agency: (1) careers, (2) doctoral writing, (3) citizenship, and (4) justice. We first explain our theoretical orientation for discussing doctoral agency before examining the areas described above.

Towards an Ecological Understanding of Agency We argue that agency in doctoral education should neither be limited to the intellectual agency within one’s discipline nor limited to the wider informal learning within the institutional infrastructure and informal learning spaces in academic communities. We argue that the agency of doctoral learners should also be understood in terms of wider societal and cultural meaning, including academic and professional careers, genres of writing also extending beyond academic circles, and notions of citizenship and social justice. In the examples (the four sections) below, we show how new opportunities for meaning-making emerge in the interconnected PhD. Biesta and Tedder (2006) proposed an ecological understanding of agency, which was developed in response to Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) temporal-relational conceptualisation of agency. Biesta and Tedder argue that an ecological agency positions “actors acting by-means-of-anenvironment rather than simply in an environment” (2006, p. 18). They approach ecological agency from a lifecourse perspective, in which agency may be used to understand individuals’ agentic choices within their broader lives, examining how capacities for agency may evolve over time and within contexts. While acknowledging this earlier attempt to form a more general ecological theory of agency, we base our theoretical stance within the philosophy of higher education, and more specifically in the theory of the ecological university as promoted by Ronald Barnett (2018, 2022). According to Barnett (2018, p. 17), the very “idea of ecology points to the interconnectedness of all things in the world (and even beyond)”. Knowledge and education produced and created in universities are impossible to separate from the wider political and social expectations, the

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cultural historicity, and the legal and educational traditions of a specific country or region. However, and very importantly, as Barnett points out, “the university is not merely interconnected with the world but its work has influence in the world” (ibid.). How the influence may become pursued, negotiated, and made manifest depends on an ecology of actors or stakeholders. Within the university, the doctoral researcher is a key stakeholder and may influence the surrounding societal contexts through her research, whether it be via structural external partnerships, research collaborations, or researching into a specific public or private institutions, civil initiatives, professional practices, social or cultural histories, and value systems. As Barnett (2018, p. 21 and 27) underlines: The university moves within its ecological fields and establishes a new ecological configuration. It re-territorializes itself across its ecological spaces. (…) To speak of the ecological university, therefore, is to assert that the university has spaces for agency; indeed, its own ecological agency. (Emphasis added)

An understanding of ecological agency states that agency is connected to formalised and institutionalised teaching and learning is, of course, highly important. However, the ecological element points beyond mere formal and institutional spaces for agency. Doctoral researchers are situated in a wide range of social and cultural realities, and their agency is inextricably entangled within wider societal ecozones. As Barnett (2018, p.  108) points out, “the learner is also a learning ecology at a further level; namely, that of the interlocking of her/his own learning ventures with the learning processes of the wider world”. A central tenet in the notion of ecological agency is that the ecological learner is unavoidably “implicated in her own learning ecology” (Barnett, 2018, p. 109) and that “the ecological learner has a concern for all of her environments, plural, and has possibilities for future growth in all of those environments” (Ibid.). In this way, spaces for agency in doctoral education must be understood as wider and more entangled than is often projected through institutional learning designs and curricula based on learning goals controlled and pre-set by the programmes independent of individual, social, and cultural circumstances of doctoral researchers and their research journeys. Such circumstances—or ecologies—may include political agendas and societal discourses around research impact, funding landscapes, the ‘publish or perish’ narrative around academic productivity, the precarious

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academic labour market, disciplinary and institutional research cultures, and the purpose of the doctorate and of the university as viewed within national, economic, and cultural contexts. As also stressed by Barnett (2018, p. 111), doctoral researchers should not be cast in the role of life-­ long learners but as “lifewide learners”, who are “engaged in learning across multiple learning sites and seeking to make a continuing and integrated life-story out of those manifold experiences”. In the following four sections, we will argue for, and give examples of, expanded spaces for agency in the doctoral learning journey. We have chosen four section themes that are all increasingly in the awareness of policy-­ makers, institutional leaders, and doctoral researchers themselves. In our previous research, both authors have had a particular interest in the dimensions of the doctoral learning journey that are not typically part of the formal curriculum. Our interest in such dimensions such as doctoral writing genres, careers, and social and cultural contexts intersects with the formalised institutional learning spaces. In this chapter, we have combined our mutual interest in these curricular ‘grey-zones’ and doctoral ‘twilight-­ spaces’ to form a complementary research focus on doctoral agency. All four examples below show how agency in doctoral education intersects, simultaneously, with various social and cultural contexts. We begin each section by describing the current context and relevant changes to/implications for the PhD, and then examine the spaces in which PhD researchers exercise agency.

PhD Careers The evolving PhD career landscape is a timely context in which to discuss agency. Factors including rising numbers of PhD graduates, growing competition for research funding, and fixed-term positions have contributed to a complex and challenging academic labour market (see OECD, 2021). It is now well-documented that most PhD holders are finding work in sectors beyond academia (Auriol et al., 2013; Hancock, 2021), due in part to the scarcity of academic positions and growing discontentment with the precarious nature of early career academic life (Burford, 2018). These changes in the PhD labour market require a shift in both the PhD researcher’s perspective on career preparation and in how universities and PhD supervisors support doctoral researchers. Such changes in thinking about the PhD and PhD careers are reflected in an increase in research on the topic over the past ten years (see Skakni et al., in preparation) and

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in changes to doctoral programmes that typically involve structured research training and expanded provision for career support. For instance, in 2009, Doctoral Training Centres for the social sciences were established in the UK to promote interdisciplinary and cross-sector work as well as increase the quality and breadth of research training, preparing doctoral researchers for both PhD research and future careers (see Lunt et  al., 2014). More recently, a UK-based policy initiative called the Concordat to support the Career Development of Researchers was introduced, to which over 100 institutions have committed in an effort to provide more comprehensive career development support for research staff (see Concordat Strategy Group, 2019). While more is known about STEM PhD careers than HASS careers (see Barnacle et  al., 2020), research suggests that HASS PhD graduates are more likely to stay in higher education when compared with STEM PhD graduates (Diamond et al., 2014). However, there are also proportionally more academic positions open to researchers in the sciences (Hancock, 2021), and STEM graduates are more likely to take up scientific research positions in industry: the “demand for the research skills of arts and humanities and social science graduates in the UK is less certain” (Ibid., p. 529). Instead, HASS PhD graduates who leave higher education are employed in a range of public and private roles in a variety of areas such as marketing, publishing, consulting, and policy (Guerin, 2020). Skills such as project management, critical thinking, the ability to synthesise and analyse information, and communication in oral and written genres, have been identified as valuable in the range of positions HASS PhD holders enter following graduate school (ibid.). Thus, acquiring skills and knowing how to apply them in a range of contexts may be crucial in post-PhD career success. Spaces for Agency While the changes in the PhD labour market are often framed as challenges, particularly for those in HASS, these changes also present opportunities for agency. Given the range of career possibilities and increased attention to skills and professional development, doctoral researchers have more space to shape their own doctoral experiences by engaging in courses, seminars, and networking events that assist them in identifying desired career paths through interacting with people from across disciplines and sectors. In this section, we identify three ‘spaces’ for doctoral researcher

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agency: (1) skills training and professional development, (2) interdisciplinary work, and (3) job seeking. Skills training and professional development is the first space in which doctoral researchers may exercise agency. Many PhD researchers are presented with a growing range of options for skills training and professional development during their doctoral programmes, asked to think about and prepare for many possible career trajectories. Given the current labour market for doctoral graduates, PhD researchers can be proactive in preparing for careers within and beyond academia to shape their career trajectories. Research on PhD graduates’ satisfaction with their doctoral programmes suggests that perceived value of the PhD is largely influenced by a combination of career and personal expectations—“whether their doctorates had allowed them to achieve what they had set out to” (Guccione & Bryan, 2023, p. 90). Managing expectations for the doctorate is important; PhD researchers and those considering a PhD need to be aware of the realities of the academic job market and think about why they are doing PhDs: is it for career reasons alone or are there also personal or intellectual reasons? Having a good understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of doing a doctorate, exploring different career paths and participating in professional development and skills training opportunities that align with one’s interests and desired careers, are examples of how PhD researchers can be agential in strategically designing their doctoral experiences in preparation for the job market. Engaging in interdisciplinary work and public engagement may present another opportunity for doctoral researchers to acquire knowledge and experience that is valued in a variety of career paths. In the humanities there has been an increase in interdisciplinary work that showcases the ways in which the humanities are relevant to society. For instance, the digital humanities and medical humanities draw on expertise from humanities and science fields to create new frameworks, practices, and technologies. PhD researchers conducting work in these fields may thus develop suites of interdisciplinary skills, such as digital and technical skills and communication and intercultural skills, which may be appealing to employers in non-academic sectors (e.g. Cannelli et al., 2021). PhD holders who have been particularly effective at transitioning from academic to other sectors are strategic in job seeking: they attended job fairs and made efforts to network with people beyond the academy, ‘cold called’ companies and other institutions to inquire about job advertisements, and drew on their personal networks to learn about possible

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openings (McAlpine et al., 2021). The ability to explain the relevance of one’s research and the technical and ‘soft’ skills developed during the PhD is also critical, as employers in non-academic sectors need to understand how and why research expertise is valuable. The current PhD labour market thus requires PhD researchers to have an awareness of the range of career possibilities and the types of skills and competencies most valued in different career paths. Because academia is no longer the common destination for PhD holders, flexibility and creativity in employing and explaining research skill sets is critical, and has risen to the attention of university and national policy agendas (Tazzyman et al., 2021; Concordat Strategy Group, 2019). For PhD researchers, the career landscape and range of skills training and professional development resources appearing at universities present the opportunity to exercise agency in exploring and preparing for multiple career trajectories. At the same time, there is much variation across PhD programmes and supervisors as to the extent to which multiple career paths are encouraged and understood. Thus, PhD researchers must navigate the doctoral journey with differing levels of support (Elliot, 2022).

Doctoral Writing A tension exists between the conception of the PhD as a vehicle for knowledge construction and truth-seeking (Barnacle, 2005) and the commodification of research, as illustrated in PhD publishing requirements and academic employment and promotion practices (Mantai & Marrone, 2023). The diversification of thesis genres reflects these changes in academic research cultures. The PhD thesis is the central piece of work that doctoral researchers must produce, as the thesis represents the PhD research project. Traditionally, the PhD thesis was a monograph—a single long form document typically containing literature review, methods, and results chapters. The purpose of the thesis is to show examiners that the PhD researcher has the knowledge and research skills required of the degree and has contributed new knowledge to the field (Nightingale, 1984; Park, 2005; Tinkler & Jackson, 2000); the thesis is a mechanism for knowledge production. However, understandings of doctoral research (and the PhD thesis) appear to have shifted due to concerns about graduation rates and time to completion, turning to focus on ‘scope’ and feasibility, placing less emphasis

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on significant disciplinary knowledge contribution (Mullins & Kiley, 2002; Park, 2005). In recent decades other forms of PhD thesis, principally thesis by publication, have emerged. Thesis by publication is increasingly common in STEM fields as well as in the social sciences. It is also beginning to take hold in the humanities in some country contexts (Mason & Merga, 2018; Skov, 2021). Thesis by publication, occasionally known by other terms such as thesis by integration, is a genre in which the thesis is comprised of several self-contained research papers (in the format of journal articles), sometimes framed by introduction and discussion chapters or other connective material. While the precise requirements differ across institutions and even departments, PhD researchers are often required to have published, or at least submitted, one of the papers in a peer-reviewed journal. However, not all doctoral research is designed to fit into discrete sets of papers. The journal article serves a different purpose from that of a traditional doctoral thesis, as the monograph aims to display the writer’s depth of disciplinary and methodological knowledge, while the journal article succinctly communicates the key findings from new work and may not have the space to show the same level of depth as the monograph (see Lee, 2010). Further, doctoral researchers may view the thesis by publication through ‘instrumental discourses’ that frame the thesis as a product that assists them in publication-related career goals rather than as a medium for knowledge production (Skov, 2021). Spaces for Agency Despite mild scepticism surrounding the emergence of thesis by publication, the genre may provide spaces for agency as PhD researchers may choose from different thesis formats, selecting the one that best aligns with their research designs and professional goals. An obvious benefit of the thesis by publication is that PhD researchers may get a head start on publishing, as they can publish (i.e. ‘chapters’) from their thesis during the doctoral programme; they do not need to reshape a monograph into articles. As the journal article remains the primary currency in the academic labour market by providing evidence of scholarly contribution and acceptance by the disciplinary community, publishing during the doctorate may be a positive indicator of future research productivity (Horta & Santos, 2016) and help PhD students be more competitive when seeking employment. Publishing during the PhD also means doctoral researchers receive

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peer-review comments on their work, which may strengthen the quality of the research. Publishing may also give the doctoral researcher greater confidence (see Cuthbert & Spark, 2008; Frick, 2019; Merga et al., 2020), and also provide a sense of legitimacy to thesis examiners (Mullins & Kiley, 2002). At the same time, the peer-review process is notoriously lengthy, and often places additional pressure on the supervisor in terms of workload (Merga et al., 2020; Robins & Kanowski, 2008), so publishing practices will need to be managed between researcher and supervisor. Even while the form of the PhD thesis evolves in response to the neoliberal academic context, researchers are increasingly reflecting on the relationship between decolonisation and research writing, recognising that there are multiple ways of legitimately constructing and communicating knowledge beyond English language research genres such as the journal article (Trahar et al., 2019). For instance, Naomi (2021) reflected on how she wrote her thesis in ways that resisted conventional thesis writing by employing different styles of argument and performative narratives (Naomi, 2021). The thesis is also being reimagined in creative ways, such as by incorporating poetry or fiction to “to put our representations (of people and their talk/actions/claims/rationalisation) under the microscope, making visible clichés, assumptions, and (over-)simplifications, and, perhaps, moving towards accounts that are rich in detail and that show complicity and nuance” (Gibson, 2021, p. 243). PhD researchers are thus beginning to bring their own epistemologies and writing styles to thesis writing, stretching and resisting the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable in academic discourse communities. Doctoral researchers are also engaging in various written genres beyond the PhD thesis and academic journal articles, as they must now consider the impact of their work (see Laundon, 2017). Perhaps influenced by the discourses around research impact and public engagement, PhD researchers are communicating their work to an array of audiences through genres including op-eds and blog posts, public seminars, and other social and visual media. These different forms of engagement represent opportunities for doctoral researchers to express their work in creative ways and reflect upon the wider relevance and practical implications of their research for those beyond the academic circles in which they typically engage. Writing continues to be considered the primary medium of intellectual output in academia and is therefore central not only to knowledge production but to PhD education. As PhD researchers represent the next generation of research leaders and how doctoral programmes are

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structured in turn shapes the nature of academic research and its written forms, the PhD thesis serves as an indicator or mirror of changing understandings of academic knowledge production. The rise of thesis by publication and other doctoral thesis forms (such as thesis by prior publication (Peacock, 2017)), show the ways in which academic publishing cultures and the role of academic publishing in academic careers, research valuation, and impact have permeated understandings of the doctorate and its purpose. Although it is easy to frame this context as one that is restrictive and places value on specific modes of knowledge communication, doctoral researchers have the opportunity to reframe the situation as one that facilitates choices and agency as to how to the write the thesis in terms of form and, increasingly, style, while also exploring the potential of research to be shared with multiple audiences.

Citizenship The PhD curriculum is still widening to a larger extent beyond its traditional disciplinary and institutional boundaries. As Hazelkorn argues (2015, p. 26), humanities research takes the form of negotiations between institutions, governments, corporate stakeholders, and the public sphere as a way of “sealing a ‘social contract’ between the taxpayer, structured government financing and the research community”. Humanities research is increasingly expected to have societal impact, which is nudged through governmental policies and funding bodies strategically framing the purpose and focus of HASS research (Belfiore, 2014). As McCowan (2018) points out, multiple actors (policy-makers, funding bodies, industry lobbies, public and private organisations) seek to inscribe their own agendas into the discourse of research. Increasingly, HASS PhD scholarships are co-financed with external partners in the public or private sector, who may have different expectations for PhD research and different understandings of what constitutes research and doctoral education. The permeable boundaries of the HASS PhD give rise to ongoing negotiation about the purpose and societal role of the PhD, which have led Elmgren and colleagues (Elmgren et al., 2015) to describe doctoral education as a ‘boundary object’. Few question the societal imperative for the HASS PhD to respond efficiently and concretely with solutions to impending global challenges such as the climate crisis, the pandemic, and refugees fleeing from zones of war and armed conflict. Cuthbert & Barnacle (2021, p. 101 and 105)

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describe this situation as agendas of societal outreach made manifest in the doctoral curriculum through “public and persuasive PhD programmes” with a “commitment to outreach” that would generate more “community engagement and career paths” for doctoral researchers. The goal here is to transform doctoral researchers into “stewards of the Earth” (Cuthbert & Barnacle, 2021, p.  106), where research and knowledge creation must serve the ever-present (global) goal of sustainability. An expectation of the HASS PhD as a catalyst for societal and cultural interconnectedness has inserted itself into the doctoral curriculum, which Bengtsen (2019) has termed the formation of doctoral ecologies surrounding the PhD. As Arvanitakis and Hornsby (2016, 2018) observed several years ago, there is a widespread political, societal, and institutional craving for the emergence of the so-called citizen-scholar. In the figure of the citizen-scholar, citizenship and societal responsibility are inextricably interlinked with research and doctoral education. Spaces for Agency The widened citizenship dimension of doctoral education and the PhD opens new possibilities of doctoral becoming (Barnacle, 2005), where doctoral researchers may find renewed meaningfulness in their societal and cultural connectivity during (and not only after) their doctoral studies. Interacting with external partners from professional and corporate realms may aid doctoral researchers in connecting their knowledge, skills, and competences as integral to the research process and not only through generic courses and skills training programmes. Doctoral researchers may develop agency in co-constructing and influencing what Muhonen et al. (2020) term impact pathways—i.e. the various and diverse ways research may integrate and interweave with professional, societal, policy, and civic realms beyond the university context. An example is given by McAlpine (2021) in her description of a PhD research project focusing on the problem of building sustainable playgrounds for preschool children using only recycled materials. In this example, the doctoral researcher, her supervisors, and other colleagues collaborate with a daycare institution (leader, preschool teachers), a local municipality, playground designers and developers (private company), and parent interest groups. The PhD project becomes a nested (ibid.) form of learning and becoming that is inextricably embedded within institutional, private, professional, and pedagogical realms. The various partners all contribute various forms of knowledge,

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experiences, expertise, networks, and resources relevant to the research project. They are not ‘merely’ informants but co-researchers, and to some extent co-educators (co-supervision, mentoring, advising). This new tendency towards citizenship-imbued doctoral education enables doctoral researcher agency through societal, cultural, and political engagement during their research process. Elements of this trend align with Barnacle’s (2018) call for a greater capacity to care for society (and the wider world) in a ‘care-full PhD’ (ibid.). When research is interconnected with, and interdependent on, external social and cultural realms, doctoral education (and research itself) is allowed to step beyond its sometimes assumed disinterested and dispassionate distance to care for the world it researches into. Through doctoral citizenship, research can take place from and with the world. At the same time, whether doctoral researcher agency is better developed in close collaboration and alignment with a host of external partners, or perhaps also in critical contestation of professional and socio-cultural work taking place in society, can be critically discussed. As Nørgård and Bengtsen (2016) argue, the meaning of academic citizenship does not entail social, professional, or cultural compliance but critical engagement that may, sometimes (and even unintentionally), unearth underlying problematic social and cultural mindsets, value systems, and assumptions inherited from an uncritical or undemocratic past. The notion of citizenship may encourage greater agency in doctoral researchers but it may not promise an automatic more fulfilling, rewarding, or easier learning trajectory in the superficial sense. The meaningfulness of the citizenship dimension may catalyse or provoke, carrying doctoral researchers into unsettling existential, epistemic, or ontological realms, where even more foundational social and cultural issues emerge.

Justice Despite being connected with the citizenship dimension discussed above, we suggest that a differentiated dimension (perhaps as a sub-category of citizenship) of ‘justice’, is helpful due to the specific focus on power and power-relationships (which is not necessarily the case with the broader dimension of citizenship). Notions of power, freedom, and emancipation as central dimensions of doctoral education and the PhD have been highlighted in the literature over the last two decades. Grant (2008) has discussed how power dynamics in doctoral supervision may enable progression and growth in the learning of the doctoral student—but also, perhaps

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unintentionally, stall progression and suppress creativity. The PhD dissertation itself may play out as a battleground where different parties use the dissertation to gain influence and prestige (Robertson, 2019). As Manathunga (2005) has shown, new power struggles between different institutional layers have become visible with the expanding regulatory mandate of Graduate Schools (and their leaders), sometimes in conflict with the doctoral supervisors and students. More recently, both Kelly (2017) and Manathunga (2014) have discussed how more subtle forms of power and hierarchies are woven into the very understandings of criteria for how to identify and assess knowledge, methodology, and rational and critical argumentation applied in the PhD curriculum. The studies have unmasked the so-called neutrality of the supervisory dialogue and pointed to possible influences of gender, age, ethnicity, and social and cultural background in the doctoral pedagogy. Manathunga (2019) has also pointed to inscribed Western understandings of time and temporality doctoral researchers and supervisors experience through institutionalised regulations and communication about knowledge and learning. The focus on power and freedom within universities and the PhD curriculum has recently become merged with discussions of a possible moral responsibility of doctoral researchers towards the wider society during their research—i.e. PhD research projects should have an explicit and incorporated social justice dimension. Barnett (2022) argues that agendas around social and epistemic (in)justice are increasingly seen as the (co-) responsibility of researchers themselves: researchers must not only comment on but also work to create change, both in institutions and through research projects. As Davids and Waghid (2021) point out, the discussion around ‘academic activism’ blurs the line between research and politics and threatens to undermine the foundation of criticality that marks out research from ideology. At the same time, research in the humanities and social sciences has a distinguished reach into the lived experiences within the social and cultural margins and peripheries and may give voice to the silent or silenced and reveal what is otherwise socially or culturally unrecognised and overlooked in the mainstream or habitual common view. As Bengtsen (2022) argues, the line between enabling social emancipation through research and becoming a mere tool in politically narrowed impact-­agendas may be very thin and hard to identify. As researchers in the humanities and social sciences rely increasingly on external funding with inscribed PhD scholarships, doctoral researchers may be lured into a project due to its forceful mission-driven social justice dimension only to later

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discover that the meaning and aim of the social justice dimension was politically or ideologically based. Doctoral education is faced with a moral imperative of justice that seems like a double-edged sword. Spaces for Agency The ‘justice ecology’ (our term) has certainly become a space for agency in doctoral education. Roland (2020) reports how doctoral researchers and lecturers on doctoral programmes collaborate, through a critical pedagogy approach, to create stronger awareness of possible implicit hegemonies embedded within doctoral curricula—for example, how doctoral students are encouraged and taught to understand the very process of science and research and what theories and conceptual frameworks are canonised and why. Spaces for agency in the justice ecology are also visible in informal learning spaces. In some universities, doctoral researchers have set up their own independent PhD Associations or Junior Researcher Associations to gain a political voice within their institutions when they do not feel fully acknowledged and recognised by the formal infrastructure of committees and boards (Bengtsen, 2021). In these agentic grey-zones doctoral researchers develop a critical awareness of how they navigate their formal institutional roles and informal researcher selves, which is not always easy as the two realms may sometimes contradict each other. Research itself may also be a space for agency. For example, Sigurdarson (2020) described how linguists and sign language experts researched alongside the signing community in Iceland. This work resulted in new laws where sign language and spoken Icelandic gained similar legal status, which led to a more open, nuanced, and inclusive public debate on the role and value of sign language and the signing community. With the new forms of social, cultural, and political interconnectedness emerging in doctoral education and researcher formation, it is of vital importance to revisit the notion of criticality. As one of the founders of critical pedagogy, Freire (2017) warns, if agency is not critically reflected upon it risks turning into a blind form of activism (and stops being action), where the agent either reproduces implicit hegemonies unknowingly or creates a counter-hegemony with reversed meaning that is just as oppressive as the one originally contested. Our point is here that it is crucial to probe and critically discuss whether the new justice ecologies necessarily bring with them new spaces for agency or whether the agency is another way of closing off other peripheries and margins hidden or

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unacknowledged by oneself. As argued by Barnett (1997) in his seminal book on criticality in higher education, the meaning of critical being is always three-fold and contains critical knowing (knowledge), critical doing (action), and critical self-reflection (formation). In this view, critical agency is not so much about asserting one’s own agendas whether they be social, cultural, or political but to catalyse and bring forward the voices of others who may not have the power, privilege, and possibility to take part in processes of democracy. Perhaps, as also argued elsewhere (Bengtsen, 2022), a turn is needed from justice ecologies to an ethical form of criticality and agency. This leads to a deeper and fundamental question about the foundational social and societal meaning and purpose of research, which may be a task for a future study.

Discussion and Concluding Remarks The four spaces for agency described in this chapter—careers, doctoral writing, citizenship, and justice—emerge from the growing interconnectedness of doctoral education (i.e. ‘doctoral ecolog(y)ies’). Although some of the contexts we have presented are often framed as challenges, we argue that such challenges can be refashioned into opportunities. These ‘spaces’ straddle and reach beyond the boundaries of the academy, presenting doctoral researchers with opportunities to shape and influence various aspects of their academic, social, and personal lives by preparing for and seeking a range of careers, experimenting with forms of the thesis and writing for different audiences, attending to the societal value of research through engagement with the political and public spheres, and reflecting upon and examining social and epistemic justice through their work. We framed these spaces for agency as emerging from Barnett’s philosophy of the ecological university, which we have used to understand how the various social, cultural, and political contexts within which the university is situated (and to which the university contributes—and sometimes tries to resist) enable and necessitate forms of agency by the actors (in this case, doctoral researchers) who are part of these various realities. As we have argued in this chapter, agency is situated within various social and economic domains (Barnett, 2018), meaning that agency is both exercised by individuals and supported, facilitated, or hindered, by the people and structures surrounding them. In this sense, spaces for agency are not always clear, raising questions about who acts and whose agency is being exercised, as the increased stakeholder complexity in doctoral funding schemes, research project definitions, and educational practices (e.g.

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co-­supervision with external partners) sometimes may cloud the understanding of who is the main agent in the PhD. However, the new spaces for agency unearthed in this chapter make clear that doctoral students, together with their institutional and academic belonging, have a marked societal and cultural reach. Doctoral researchers are not mere onlookers but real participants and agents of change during (and not only after) their writing processes, career reflections, societal and cultural involvement, and enactments. Using the ecological approach we aim to open an examination of the social and cultural changemaking taking place through doctoral education; doctoral education is not ‘merely’ a training ground or preparatory learning process. Due to the ecological entanglements presented and discussed in this chapter, we argue the case for an understanding of doctoral education as a form of social and cultural agency—and to encourage awareness in graduate schools, doctoral supervision, and individual learning processes of the possibilities and responsibilities, which follow. Spaces for agency are not automatically ensured but require pedagogical work and leadership. As described in the section on careers, universities vary widely in terms of the types of support offered to doctoral students looking to embark on non-academic careers, and on a broader level, access to information about career trajectories may be limited or constrained in different contexts. Similarly, the extent to which doctoral researchers may push the boundaries or conventions of writing and engage in issues of justice in their research is shaped in large part by the supervisors and institutional disciplinary cultures they must navigate in order to meet the university’s expectations for a doctoral degree. We thus need to think about how these spaces can be facilitated by all those involved in the ecologies of doctoral education. Spaces for agency within doctoral ecolog(y)ies are also linked to self-­ formation in higher education; as doctoral researchers exercise agency in relation to areas including career, writing/knowledge, citizenship, and justice, they make decisions that both represent and shape the people they want to become, while also situating them within their individual contexts. Career preparation may intersect with choices around written genres and knowledge exchange and engagement with citizenship and justice issues involving projections about what forms of citizenship and societal justice one wants to strive for in one’s individual life and society. In this sense, the concept of self-formation and the concept of doctoral agency overlap and interconnect in several ways. However, our focus on ecologies—and in turn social or societal, formation—may be seen as widening the research focus and conceptual range of self-formation literature. We

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argue that with the terms ‘ecology’ and ‘ecological agency’, we may also wish to discuss notions of formation as ecological (ecologies of formation) to dissolve the dichotomies of self and social and show that the dimensions are inextricably linked. Hopefully, in the endeavour of expanding the agency-vocabulary, new research approaches, both theoretically and empirically, may develop. Our discussion regarding doctoral ecologies and spaces for agency gives rise to several methodological, empirical, and practical implications. Research on doctoral education and agency may move beyond studies focused primarily on individual experience to also explore the intersecting contexts within which doctoral researchers are situated, examining how and why PhD researchers engage with spaces such as those discussed in this chapter. For instance, such studies may examine both PhD researcher perspectives through interviews as well as the structures they navigate (e.g. through analysis of departmental and institutional policy documents, interviews with supervisors, etc.). On a practical level, doctoral supervisors and career advisors may facilitate spaces for agency—and self- and social-­ formation—by engaging PhD researchers in discussions around career trajectories, the wider societal implications of their work, and the ways in which they communicate their research for a range of purposes. Doctoral education and the PhD exist in unsteady waters between multiple stakeholders and interests. Although agency in doctoral education is uncertain and unsettled given the current discourses around research productivity, and the role of academia within the wider society, there exists also as a real opportunity for personal and social involvement and self-­ critical reflection. With an understanding of ecological agency also should come an understanding of ecological criticality. When doctoral learning, and perhaps also writing and research collaboration, becomes entangled with wider professional, social, cultural, and political contexts, the normally applied practices around criticality in academic disciplinary communities must change accordingly to match the ecological change. Unanswered questions, which we would hope to pursue further in our coming research collaboration, relate to who is critically responsible in cross-sector and cross-institutional doctoral collaborations and how each partner, perhaps in different ways, must be held critically responsible and in what ways? New spaces for agency in doctoral education seems to call for a rethinking also of spaces for criticality in the research practices, supervision relationships, and individual learning journeys of doctoral researchers.

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Index1

A Academia, 218, 221, 223, 224, 226, 234 Academic knowledge, 90, 92, 93, 101, 106, 108, 109 Academic self-formation, 90–103, 105, 106, 108–110 Academy, 217, 223, 232 Active conformity, 103–106, 109, 110 Active learners, 3 Agency, 2–20, 68–83, 143–161, 193, 196–199, 210, 217–234 Agency freedom, 33, 34n1, 35, 42, 45, 46, 53, 56, 58, 59 Agency-structure, 76 Agency-structure relationship, 145 Agentic capital, 144, 159 Apprenticeship in new worldviews, 193–212

Archer, Margaret, 36, 38, 44, 45, 49–54, 56, 57, 93, 101, 199 Artefacts, 47, 49, 52, 55 Asia, 118, 124 Attribution theories, 99, 100 Australia, 143, 145, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 161 B Bandura, Albert, 98, 105 Barnett, Ronald, 218–221, 230, 232 Becoming, 117–138 Bildung/Bildung, 4, 5, 15, 30, 36, 38, 41–45, 68, 70, 79 Bourdieu, Pierre, 49, 52, 57, 148, 149, 151 Brain drain, 195

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 Y. I. Oldac et al. (eds.), Student Agency and Self-Formation in Higher Education, Palgrave Studies in Global Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44885-0

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INDEX

C Capability, 68, 71, 73, 78, 81 Capacity, 144, 148, 149, 151–154, 158, 159 Capitals, 144, 148, 149, 151, 154, 155, 158–160 Career trajectories, 154, 155, 159 Careers, 218, 219, 221–225, 227, 228, 232–234 Citizenship, 219, 227–229, 232, 233 Civic development, 194–197 Civic values, 194, 195, 197–199, 201, 211 Cognitive capacity, 98 Cognitive revolution, 98 Conflation, 93 Confucianism, 72, 75, 118, 123, 137, 138 Confucius, 30, 38–40, 42, 44, 51, 52, 54 Contextual structures, 151, 159 Cosmopolitan agency, 167–185 Cosmopolitan capital, 168–171, 174–177, 180, 183, 184 Cosmopolitanism, 168, 171 Critical cosmopolitan agency, 168, 180–182, 184 Critical literature review, 96 Critical thinking, 2, 10 Cultural environment, 122, 132, 136 Cultural knowledge, 119, 126, 127, 130–132, 135, 137, 138 Curricular context, 177, 183 Cyclic augmentation, 170 Cynics, 30, 54–56 D Deficit model, 12 Dewey, John, 30, 44, 45, 51 Disciplinary reflexivity, 106–110

Doctoral education, 217–234 Doctoral researchers, 218, 220–234 Domestic students, 168, 169, 169n1, 171–175, 177–180, 182, 184 Dualism, 48–49 Duality, 48, 49 E Ecological, 168, 169, 176, 177, 182 Ecological agency, 219, 220, 234 Ecological approach, 119, 130 Ecological university, 219, 220, 232 Ecology, 219, 220, 228, 231–234 Efforts, 91, 99–101, 104, 106, 109 Emirbayer, Mustafa, 36, 52, 53 Employability, 143–161 Employability agency, 143–161 Employability experiences, 144 Employment, 143–145, 153–155, 159, 160 Employment outcomes, 143, 145, 155 Engagement, 2, 3, 9–12, 16, 17, 19, 117, 120–122, 137, 138 English proficiency, 175, 179 Enlightenment, 4, 41–43 Environment(s), 69, 71, 78, 80–82, 151, 217, 219, 220 Essential needs-responding agency, 159 Ethnic community, 158, 160 Experiential interface, 176 External regulations, 104, 105 F Field, 144, 145, 148–151, 156, 159, 160 Foucault, Michel, 36, 38, 42, 45, 53–58 Free will, 73, 80

 INDEX 

G Giddens, Anthony, 30, 31, 36, 45, 48–52, 57, 58, 151, 152, 154, 156 Global citizenship, 168, 177, 182 Governmentality, 53, 56 Growth, 71, 78 H Habitus, 49, 57, 148–150, 156, 158, 159 Hellenic, 54, 55 Hierarchy, 103, 105, 107, 108 Higher learning, 3–8 History of higher education, 1, 4–6, 12 Holistic development, 3–7, 14, 15, 68 Home country, 151, 153, 154, 156 Home society, 193–196, 201, 204, 211 Homo economicus, 31, 57 Host country, 143, 144, 158 Host society, 194–209, 211 Human capital, 7, 8, 14, 68, 83, 176 Humboldt, Alexander von, 5 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 42, 43 I Idealism philosophy, 69, 70 Identity, 9–13, 144, 154, 155, 157, 158, 160 Immersive experience, 194, 195 Inner conversation, 38, 44, 49, 51, 52 Institutional affordances, 168–170, 176–180, 183 Institutional constraints, 168, 170, 177–182 Institutional interventions, 168

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Institutional policies, 168, 177 Interconnectedness, 219, 228, 231, 232 Intercultural adaptability, 121–124, 126, 137 Intercultural communication, 119, 126 Intercultural competence, 168, 174, 177 Intercultural engagement, 171 Intercultural interactions, 168–177, 179, 180, 182 Intercultural transformation, 169, 173, 174, 178, 182 Intergroup contact theory, 173 International graduates, 143–161 International students, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174–176, 178–181, 194–202, 204, 205, 207, 209–212 Internationalisation/ internationalization, 118, 122, 123, 130, 168, 169, 177, 184 Internationalized programs, 118, 119, 121–127, 129, 132–138 Intrinsic motivation, 105 Islamic Sunni philosophy, 69, 70 I-world interactions, 69, 70, 80, 82 J Jinzai, 175, 181 Justice, 219, 229–233 K Kant, Immanuel, 4, 15 Knowledge, 29, 32–37, 39–41, 44, 47, 49, 54, 55, 69, 73, 79, 81 Knowledge engagement, 89–110

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INDEX

L Labor market, 149, 150, 154, 158 Language development, 121, 124, 126–130, 132, 134–138 Language policy, 179, 180 Learning style, 126, 127, 133–135, 137 Liberal arts education, 68 Liberal education, 4–6 M Mead, G.H., 44 Mechanism of student agency, 89–110 Mediatory mechanism, 94, 108 Medieval university, 4, 6 Medium of instruction, 179 Mencius, 38, 40, 54 Mische, Ann, 36, 52, 53

Post-structural, 148, 149 Powerful knowledge, 35 PR visa, 149 Pragmatism, 36, 44, 45 Proxy agency, 105 Psychological perspective, 119 Psychology, 16, 94, 98–99, 102 Publishing, 222, 224–227 Q Qualification, 32, 33, 43, 46

O Object-centered theory, 148 Outcomes, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17

R Realist social theory, 93–95 Reflexive agency, 151, 158 Reflexive research design, 94–96 Reflexivity, 3, 15, 17, 19, 34, 40, 42, 44, 51, 52, 55, 77–79, 81, 82, 93–107, 109, 110, 167, 171, 172, 180, 184, 185, 199, 210 Relational identities-based agency, 160 Researcher formation, 231 Researcher identity, 218 Researcher(s), 217, 218, 226, 230, 231 Resources for self-formation, 101, 102

P Paideia, 5 Paradigm, 147, 152, 156 Permanent residency (PR), 145, 153, 154, 159, 160 Person-in-context, 168, 169, 176, 182 PhD education, 217, 226 PhD labour market, 221, 222, 224 PhD researcher(s), 217–219, 221, 223–226, 234 Political environment, 194, 196, 201, 206

S Self-criticism, 99–101, 109, 110 Self-cultivation, 36, 38–40, 42, 43, 52, 54 Self-determination, 30, 39, 45, 59 Self-determination theory (SDT), 77, 78, 104, 105 Self-effective theory, 77 Self-efficacy, 77 Self-formation, 2–9, 11–20, 29–47, 49–55, 57–59, 68, 70, 71, 82, 83, 167–185, 193–212

N Newman, John Henry, 5

 INDEX 

Self-reflection, 154, 156, 158, 159 Self-Regulated Learning (SRL), 79 Sen, Amartya, 33, 34n1, 35, 36, 45–46, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57 Skills, 217, 219, 222–224, 228 Social cognitive theory, 98 Social learning theory, 98 Social relationships, 119, 122, 126, 127, 137, 138 Social structure, 31–33, 36, 42, 45–50 Social theory, 31, 36, 45 Social-cognitive perspective, 120 Social-cognitive theory, 151 Socialisation, 32, 33, 44, 49 Society, 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 13–15, 17–20 Socio-cultural perspective, 120 Sociology, 13, 16 Spaces for agency, 217–234 Strengths-based agency, 160 Strong agency, 147, 151 Structural conditions, 36, 47, 54, 58, 119, 122, 130, 137 Structuration, 152 Structuration theory, 93 Structure, 148, 152, 156, 161 Structure-agency, 29–59, 93, 94 Student agency, 29, 32–34, 37, 45, 89–110, 117–138, 167, 169–171, 176, 177, 182, 184 Student development, 9–11, 16 Student empowerment, 68 Student engagement, 2, 3, 9–12, 99 Student experiences, 3, 9–13, 78 Student formation, 68 Students as consumers, 3, 5, 6 Subjectification, 30, 32–37, 43, 44, 46, 49, 51, 55, 57–59 Subjectivity, 151, 156–158

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T Teaching and learning, 35, 37, 42 Temporal environment(s), 217 Temporal stages agential elaboration, 197, 198, 208–210, 212 encountering the new, 197–199, 203–205, 207, 209, 210 interacting with the new, 205–208 Theory development, 94, 96 Three functions of education, 32 V Vietnam, 117–138 Visa-navigating agency, 160 Vygotsky, Lev, 36, 45–53, 55, 108, 109 W Weak agency, 147 Worldview, 70–72, 75 Writing, 218, 219, 221, 224–227, 232–234 X Xiushen (self-cultivation), 68, 72 Y Yeolsim, 99 Z Zero-sum, 31, 56, 57 Zone of proximal development, 47