Learning Like “Fast Fish”: A Research Review on the Promise of Contextualized Agency

Abstract

In this review, we use the metaphor of a “fast fish” to illustrate the importance of contextualized agency, which assumes that learners must (a) be centrally agentive in their own learning; (b) be able to act on and modify the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional contexts of their learning to support their best performance; and (c) understand learning principles related to human cognitive, social, and emotional architecture. A close analysis of two areas of research—feedback and transfer—illuminates how the relationships between agency and context have been treated in the literature and what features of each are well explored. We consider how contextualized agency manifests in prominent pedagogies and offer suggestions for future research and educational practice.