An Ecological Approach Toward Agency Of Secondary School High-level EFL Learners

As a construct of individual differences,learner agency plays a significant role in the process and outcomes of language learning.The agentive learners are positively prepared for opportunities and challenges both within and beyond the language learning classroom,yet how agency is developed and achieved through the interplay of individual efforts,available resources and contextual factors has been understudied,especially for EFL learners below the tertiary level.Against this background,the current study reports on the investigation of the agency of a group of high-level EFL learners from a key secondary school in Shanghai,China.It takes an ecological perspective to investigate the developmental characteristics of their agentic capacity(measured through strategy use),will to exercise agency(measured through motivational elements),and the mediating effect of perceived affordances based on their self-reported learning experiences with an aim to shed more light on the underrepresented EFL learners in basic education in China,to specify a variety of facilitating contextual factors for EFL learning from the learners’ perspective,and to hopefully provide preliminary evidence for the possibility of taking an ecological approach to understand EFL teaching and learning practice in the Chinese context.This study was guided by two research questions:(1)How does the agency of high-level EFL learners at a secondary school in Shanghai develop?(2)What affordances provided by the learning environment mediate the development of their agency? And how?Altogether 26 participants were selected from a key secondary school in Shanghai according to the sampling strategies proposed by the researcher with reference to previous literature.Qualitative data including retrospective narratives and semistructured interviews were collected from these learner participants.To achieve data triangulation,4 parents of the learner participants and 2 teachers from the subject school were also included,with whom semi-structured interviews were conducted.The data bank,totaling 506,553 Chinese words of qualitative data,consists of learner interviews of 379,757 Chinese words,narratives of 81,402 Chinese words,and parent and teacher interviews of 45,394 Chinese words.Data analysis was conducted inductively and iteratively in accordance with norms of practice in grounded theory research.The open coding and axial coding completed in NVivo generated 171 open codes,19 coded themes,and in turn 13 patterns.According to the themes that emerged from data,the learners’ agentic capacity included three aspects:(1)self-initiated learning behaviors;(2)regulation strategies and related behaviors;(3)exam-oriented strategy use.Their agentic will has been underpinned by four motivational dimensions:(1)academic self-concept;(2)self-efficacy beliefs;(3)interest;(4)goal-orientation.The affordances they have perceived in the learning environment came from six sources:(1)parents;(2)teachers;(3)peers;(4)the school climate;(5)after-school education;(6)learning materials.The data analysis resulted in the following findings:(1)The participants’ agentic capacity was manifested in self-initiated learning behaviors,regulation strategies,and different extent of exam-orientedness.The learners developed agentic capacity through self-initiated learning behaviors which were mostly interest-driven or use-driven.Their regulatory capacity underwent a developmental process from other-regulation to self-regulation,as other-regulated learning behaviors were more often seen in the early stages of English learning and had the potential to develop into self-regulation if the learner realized the utility of a certain practice.Distinctive degrees of exam-orientedness were demonstrated in the participants’ agentic choices,with different strategies adopted in their completion of assignments and self-directed learning activities.(2)“Steady growth”,“mild fluctuations”,and “radical rise and fall” were revealed as three types of developing trajectories of learners’ agentic will.The three types of learners demonstrated different characteristics in terms of their academic self-concept,self-efficacy beliefs,interest,and goal-orientation,which provided internal support for their will to exercise agency.For the learners whose agentic will was developmentally stable and positive,their strong interest for English facilitated the perception of mastery goals and provided intrinsic motivation for their agentic choices.Their early learning experiences helped to construct a solid foundation in the language as well as healthy study habits that were beneficial for achieving academic success efficiently,hence their positively formed self-beliefs.With regard to fluctuations in agentic will,the demotivators included environmental changes and the challenges encountered in the learning process,while the upward shifts resulted from progress-making and the consequent positive development of academic self-concept.The more radical degree of fluctuations was closely associated with exam-related failures or achievements.(3)The most prominent sources of affordances perceived by the focal learners include parents,teachers,peers,the school environment,after-school education and learning materials.The learners’ external manifestation of and internal support for their agency were mediated by the diverse affordances,with strategy use largely influenced by teachers,peers,and after-school tutoring,and their motivation chiefly influenced by parents,teachers,learning materials in early stages,and by school environment and peers in more advanced stages of their English learning.This study also reveals heterogeneity in these high-level EFL learners’ agency as a result of diverse interactional patterns between their strategy use,motivation and the perceived affordances in the environment.Based on the research findings,an exploratory model of the agency of secondary school high-level EFL learners is proposed.With reference to Bronfenbrenner’s model of nested ecosystem,the affordances are also positioned into different levels of systems which then construct an overall ecosystem conducive to successful EFL learning in the Chinese context.