Agency in the making: Analyzing students’ transformative agency in a school-based makerspace
Open accessAbstract
Despite the potential of digitally enhanced learning environments for supporting twenty-first-century learning and educational change, there is a dearth of research knowledge on students’ transformative agency in their use of digital technologies and media within these contexts. Transformative agency accounts for young people’s initiative and commitment to transform their activity and its context(s) for personal and/or academic ends. This paper reports an investigation of students’ transformative agency in a novel, student-centered design and learning environment, referred to as a makerspace. We present our empirical findings as a narrative, illustrating how transformative agency emerged and developed via three intertwined discursive and action-level manifestations of such agency, namely “deviating”, “switching”, and “transfiguring”, in the social activity of a group of four 5th grade students participating in the makerspace environment over one school semester. Our study makes an original contribution to the research on students’ transformative agency and its temporal unfolding in a novel digitally enhanced learning environment.
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CHAT can help to guide the transformative agency of health care professionals, in a collective manner, to bring about change within an entire organizational system, assisting in the harmonization of 'work as imagined' and 'work as done' in real authentic clinical environments.
“Moreover, it can help to guide the transformative agency of health care professionals, in a collective manner, to bring about change within an entire organizational system [26], in so doing, assisting in the harmonization of ‘work as imagined’ and ‘work as done’ in real authentic clinical environments [27].”
From Making the invisible visible: a place for utilizing activity theory within in situ simulation to drive healthcare organizational development? (2020) · cites this paper as [26]
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- Authors
- Kajamaa, A., & Kumpulainen, K.
- Affiliations
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- Corresponding author
- Kajamaa, Anu
- Venue
- Mind, Culture, and Activity
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-07-03
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 266-281
- ISSN
- 1074-9039 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7884
- OpenAlex
- W2965707535
- Cited by
- 104
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 12
- FWCI
- 25.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Mind Culture and Activity (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Kulttuurin ja Yhteiskunnan Tutkimuksen Toimikunta
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Innovative Education and Learning Practices
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Digital Education and Society
- Keywords
- transformative agency, student agency, makerspaces, student-centered learning, digital technologies in education, fifth grade students, 21st century learning
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