Figure 4 - Flexible Learning Environments: Minoritized College Students’ Experiences in HyFlex

Figure 4
Agency in HyFlex Through the Lens of Heutagogy and Social Cognitive Theory
According to Bandura (1989), social cognitive theory is germane with a notion of
emergent interactive agency. Bandura explained people are not agents in a state of autonomy but
are neither conveying mechanically environmental stimuli. He contended instead, people
contribute cause to their own motivation and behavior through action; cognitive, affective, and
other personal factors; and environmental circumstances. Therefore, environmental events and
self-generated influences are contributing factors of agency. During one of our interviews,
Josephine recounted a conversation with a counselor that provides an example of environmental
events and self-generated motivation acting together to fuel a person’s sense of agency and self-
determination. She said:
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When I was a junior or senior I had a . . . like a counselor, like a school . . . like guidance
counselor telling me that, because of my grades . . . and because of like . . . I guess my
circumstance that I would never be successful in college like never . . . like he just he
said, like based on how you’ve done so far, like in your freshman sophomore junior year
and he’s like there’s just no way you would ever make it and go to college, and I think
that kind of put like a lot of . . . I don’t know angst and animosity for me to like want to
succeed, and like really try hard to continue to go back to school. And that’s why I’m
doing this now is because I just think like you have to have an education, you know, like
it’s just really important to have a broader perspective on like your life and other people’s
lives, you know? I’ve always kind of been like someone who . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve
always been someone who’s been like really bullied in school and had a hard time fitting
in so that, for me, has made me want to do well in school and hopefully help others do
well in school, like my goal is to do work in education and I want to get my master’s in
education and just be able to like maybe work as a principal or superintendent to kind of
transform the way people think about students, and think about students situations in
relation to school, you know, like their home situations they’re growing up like I think it
takes a big perspective, like a broad perspective to understand how to make students
successful in the long run, you know? It was more like I’m going to do this because you
said it’s impossible, you know?, or you said, like I’m not capable . . . because knowing
then like . . . if I would have taken in my life my whole life circumstance into that
situation . . . I had been like you have no idea, like the things that I’m capable of are far
past just graduating high school or far past just graduating college, you know?
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In this example, Josephine demonstrated how environmental events and self-generated
motivation act together as propellers for agency. Although the pressure from the counselor’s ill-
stated advice combined with her innate desire for personal growth are determinants of agency,
she also demonstrates an optimistic sense of self-efficacy. Difficulties, adversities, and inequities
abound in social realities, and a strong sense of self-efficacy is necessary to succeed (Bandura,
1989). Although the counselor’s comments could have planted self-doubt in her, Josephine did
not allow the adversity of the moment to hold her back. Similar to Josephine, Isabel has
experienced moments of adversity, impediment, inequity, and even criticism. Like Josephine,
Isabel has not allowed those external factors stop her from pursuing her goals. Josephine said:
And in Spain . . . I did feel that people didn’t really understand why I wanted to leave
home, you know? And I did get a lot of judgment, especially by men. Like I should be
ironing, and cleaning, like . . . you need to be home cleaning and then you go to college,
but then you marry and you have kids and you have to buy a house . . . and I did the
opposite. I went to study abroad. Even my father sometimes, he had a hard time
understanding why would I . . . you know, why are you going to grad school? Because I
like to learn and I want to learn, but what’s the purpose they ask. And I say to advance,
You know? Yes, it has been a downside to be a woman. So, I consider myself a smart
person. Now I’m wiser because I’m older, but I’m smart. And although my husband, yes,
my husband had more opportunity than me in education. You know? like, in education,
right? The disparity in salary is crazy, especially now with Covid, right? I’m a teacher. I
had to stop working because I have to support [care for] my child and who makes more
money? my husband does, but in my career, what I say go as a woman.
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These are two specific examples of how external factors act as motivators for self-efficacy and
agency. Josephine’s and Isabel’s examples are a sample of the many ways external factors figure
in. Although these examples were about negative interactions with people in their respective
environments, not all external factors are necessarily negative. The point of citing these two
examples is these events color the lived experiences of these individuals, and when they step into
a HyFlex classroom, these previous experiences are part of their lens and how they move around
the HyFlex environment.
In addition to external stimuli from the outside world, there are also events in the
classroom that allow for manifestations of agency to occur. This is where self-efficacy, a central
tenet of heutagogy (Hase & Kenyon, 2007), applies. Heutagogy enables students to participate
and access resources based on their own decisions (Cairns & Hase, 1996). Heutagogical
approaches recognize a learner’s need to collaborate and interact with other learners and the
instructor to make the learning experience better rounded to develop the learner more holistically
(Abraham & Komattil, 2017). Manifestations of innate individual factors driving motivation and
agency can be observed in the behaviors of students in learning environments that offer students
choices. Although the reasons for those choices vary, the motivation to make those choices and
the agency to act are innate factors within the individual agents. These factors can sometimes be
how a learner copes with difficulties or impediments that make it burdensome to participate in
one mode or another as Robbie’s example illustrated:
Oh, yeah, it’s specifically because of the flexibility regarding my like disabilities and also
my ADHD issues. Some days . . . I’m not currently on any medication. So it’s very
unmanaged, and some days are better than others with how I can kind of focus and direct
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my attention towards certain things. So being able to watch a lecture, you know, the next
day or before class next week instead of having to go each week is really good for my
ADHD. But it’s also good for my physical disabilities, my arthritis and my bad joints
specifically, because a lot of times, I’m just in too much pain too, I’m kind of bed ridden
for the day. And so it’s really nice to be able to still attend class at a much lower energy
level. That way, I can still have, you know, a lot of times I have to choose between, like,
do I want to go to class? Or do I want to, like take a shower? Or do I want to, you know,
prepare dinner. And so it’s nice to be able to prepare, you know, do all the rest of the
regular life things while also being able to attend class.
Jones (2019) defined self-initiated action as “the agency individuals demonstrate in directing
their conscious thinking and action toward an alignment of their inner and outer worlds in order
to succeed in life” (p. 1175). Behaviors as simple as choosing a participation mode are some of
the ways students can direct their conscious thinking to align their inner and outer worlds to
create the ideals conditions to succeed in the pursuit of their goals. Just as Robbie exercised his
judgement to choose how to participate, Josephine found herself constantly evaluating her daily
need to take care of her family in juxtaposition with her desire to graduate from college.
Although she preferred to attend in person, she usually attended in both modes to keep balance
between her inner world and her outer world. She said:
I attend class like, traditionally and online, and both work for me. But I like personally, I
always prefer to do it in class and be there, just because it’s easier for me to have like that
face-to-face connection with people. Like it’s just much easier for me to like, grasp that
knowledge and retain it. Rather than being online. Just because sometimes online, like
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takes you. I don’t know, like I can pause it but sometimes I have to walk away from it
and come back, you know?
These are two examples of participants acting agentively through their choice of participation
modes. Although choosing a participation mode may seem trivial on the surface, for these
participants it is a serious matter because they both have life circumstances that require them to
make their choices thoughtfully and on a regular basis. For other participants, choosing a mode
of attendance was not as critical, but they still exercised agency in different ways and for
different reasons. Kate was doctoral student graduating the semester our interviews took place.
Kate and her cohort had already defended their dissertations and were taking the last units they
needed to meet graduation requirements. As a cohort, some of them decided and persuaded
everyone to attend only online even though her university at the time was requiring all graduate
courses to be taught as HyFlex. Kate said:
Everyone decided to be online only. And here’s an interesting perspective to share with
you in that in conversation with some of my classmates most of us decided to only be
online, because our faculty member had to drive from Flagstaff, which is about 3 hours
away down to the Phoenix area in order to attend class and we didn’t want to burden her
with that, so we all kind of communicated together, hey guys if we all say we want to just
do it online and not do the HyFlex then our instructor doesn’t have to leave her house . . .
so that’s what we did that summer. And then. So that was last summer, and then we had
the fall. Fall semester we had the same choice.
Kate and cohort exercised their agency to advocate for their instructor. After coming to an
agreement among the cohort, they contacted the administration and requested the HyFlex
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requirement for their course be lifted so their instructor would not have to drive 3 hours to
campus and brave the pandemic and the Arizona heat.
Lyle had multiple points when he acted agentively. In a previous section, I discussed how
Lyle shared a car with his aunt, who worked at a hospital, and how he had devised a system to
get the most out of his day without sacrificing the pursuit of his educational goals. Lyle worked
and studied. He had managed to fit his work schedule and his HyFlex courses in a manner that
allowed him to go pick up his aunt from work and attend classes from the hospital’s parking lot
using his phone. Lyle’s future goals to graduate with a degree in administration of justice to
pursue a career in law enforcement served as his motivation.
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