Agentic engagement in a South African academic literacies classroom: A case study of student and facilitator experiences

Abstract

Agency is central to the success of academic literacies classrooms. Agency manifests through agentic engagement where students take responsibility for their studies, and educators explicitly foster this quality. However, despite the importance of this construct, agentic engagement has not yet been investigated within a Southern African context. This study aimed to fill this gap by exploring agentic engagement in a South African academic literacies programme through the experiences of students and facilitators. A case study was conducted using document analysis, a facilitator focus group discussion, and semi-structured student interviews. Findings from the document analysis indicate that the academic literacies classroom within this programme is conducive to agentic engagement. However, student and facilitator responses indicate that agentic engagement is limited in the studied academic literacies classroom context, despite a favourable classroom environment. The results suggest that agentic engagement manifests in an alternative way in this context, where students prefer to demonstrate peer reciprocity with each other instead of with the facilitator in front of the whole class. Finally, based on the findings, the article offers implications for fostering agentic engagement within the literacies development classroom.