Agency is a heavily used and often poorly-understood concept in education and understandably so: it is a complex quality that has developed over time, across many disciplines and is constantly shaped and reshaped by educational, societal and technological forces. Learner Agency sits at the heart of progressive and international education, while protecting human agency is core to evolving policy guidance on AI in education. Concurrently, the rise of agentic AI influences human and learner agency through increasingly powerful decision-making and autonomy.

This annotated bibliography provides a curation of definitions and conceptualisations of agency, tracing historical roots across disciplines, including modern definitions of agency in the era of AI. There is far more to agency than meets the eye, and there are far more sources than this. It covers philosophical, sociological, sociocultural, ecological, psychological and neuroscientific views, as well as guidance on agency from policy, educational frameworks and practical models.

From these sources, it’s possible to synthesise many definitions or visualisations of agency in the age of AI. 

Here’s my attempt, maybe you can do better: 

Agency is the culturally and ecologically situated, relationally constituted, and developmentally progressive capacity of individuals and groups to set goals, exercise judgment, regulate their own learning, think critically and creatively and act with purpose. They shape their own educational experiences and life trajectories in ways that are responsive to context and emerging technologies, sustained by hope, collectively oriented and grounded in both cognitive competence and affective engagement.

The annotated bibliography is below:

This work is also connected to my upcoming book: (If You) USEME-AI: Learning for Hope & Agency in an AI World.