Bearing in mind that agentic engagement has a recent history in comparison to the other types of engagement (behavioural, emotional and cognitive), this paper will present a theoretical review of this concept, including the reasons it has been denominated as the fourth type of student engagement. Agentic engagement is understood as the observable classroom event in which the learner constructively contributes to his/her learning and the instruction he/she receives (Reeve, 2012). The revision of research and theory on agentic engagement included in this paper supports the idea that it provides a consistent researchable field. Future research contributions may focus on (1) the disaffected face of agentic engagement, its conceptualization and its effects (Reeve & Tseng, 2011; Reeve, 2013) and (2) the understanding (description, typology and analysis) of students’ self-initiated contributions (proactive actions) in the classroom (Waring, 2011) in order to identify which strategies may facilitate students’ learning processes, teacher’s agentic engagement interventions, and student-teacher interaction.

This article is part of a broader research project on student engagement, achievement goals, and autonomy support in higher education. This observational study presents a categorization of students’ self-initiated contributions for learning. For this purpose, an observation form was developed and implemented in both a large and a small course delivered by the same professor. The research question was “Which students’ verbal contributions in lecture-based courses are aligned with the concept of agentic engagement?” This question also aimed to explore the premise that agentic behavior is performed differently by male and female students in small and large courses. Each self-initiated contribution was classified, counted, and described, and then compared between courses. The findings revealed that (1) expected self-initiated contributions were the most observed ones in both courses, and (2) the number and type of contributions were different regarding student’s gender and class size. The paper concludes with recommendations to advance the state of research on agentic engagement.

What makes first-semester students stay engaged in non-mandatory lecture-based courses? This study aims to answer this question by analyzing the relationship between student engagement with autonomy support and achievement goals. Data gathered through self-reports from 340 students attending four introductory lecture-based courses at four German universities were used to test the following hypotheses: (1) students who pursue goals for self-improvement display emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement, (2) emotional engagement is predicted by students’ perceptions of autonomy support, and (3) students who aim to outperform their peers display higher emotional engagement compared to cognitive engagement. After confirming the hypotheses with multiple regression analyses, additional results indicated a statistically significant relationship between both emotional engagement and achievement goals with autonomy. Further, results indicate a moderate positive association between emotional engagement and both behavioral and cognitive engagements. These findings confirm the presence of both mastery and performance goals in courses with a lecture-based teaching. This study highlights some limitations for statistical analyses with agentic engagement as well as the need to analyze study participants’ school culture for further research on student engagement.

A positive relationship between emotional engagement and teaching support was reported in a previous quantitative study on students’ perceptions of student engagement in four introductory lecture-based courses at four different German universities. The present qualitative research was designed to collect data from the four German male lecturers who participated in the previous study to explore their perceptions of student engagement and their role in supporting it. The lecturers of varying degrees of experience were observed while lecturing and subsequently interviewed to analyze their motivating teaching behavior. The analysis highlighted that lecturers (1) positioned themselves as committed professionals with a sense of ownership, (2) attributed positioning to students as social scientists, and (3) communicated messages characterized by supporting autonomous motivation. The lecturers implemented motivation strategies to engage their students who exhibited a preference for intentional silence. Certain characteristics of the students attending introductory level courses in Germany, such as having gained self-regulation skills at upper secondary school, highlight the importance of establishing specific goals before attending higher education courses. Article visualizations:

A preliminary analysis about the way a group of university students behaved in group activities that promoted interaction and negotiationrevealed that some students were positioned negatively while learning English. This qualitative study analyzed the learners’ positionings asgroup members and the participation structures under a specific pedagogical intervention focused on peer collaboration. The data collectioninstruments were audio recordings, field notes and individual conferences. The conclusions show that the rights and responsibilities duringgroup work were given according to the way the learners mutually acknowledged their skills. The school and social skills recognized by thepeers were related to checking each others’ work, building consensus, and guiding the development of the task.

Research on the complex dimensions of engagement in large, lecture-based courses remains scarce. Lecture-based courses are often characterized by passive learning environments, raising concerns about their capacity to foster motivation. This study investigates how motivational factors shape multiple dimensions of engagement—cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and agentic—in introductory sociology courses. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey was conducted with 434 first-year students enrolled at seven public universities in North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. All participants had completed the Abitur at the Gymnasium and experienced hybrid learning during their final years of secondary education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study formulated three hypotheses: (1) mastery (self-improvement) goals positively predict emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement (validated); (2) perceived autonomy support increases emotional engagement (validated); and (3) performance goals (motivation to outperform peers) have a stronger effect on emotional than cognitive engagement (rejected). Results indicate that performance goals neither enhance emotional engagement nor exert a stronger influence on emotional than on cognitive engagement, challenging common assumptions about the role of competitive motivation in large lecture settings. Additionally, despite low levels of agentic engagement—attributed to the structural constraints of large lecture-based learning environments—students’ internal engagement was in line with other studies. These findings highlight the critical role of educational culture, particularly the emphasis on autonomy within the German school system, and the influence of learning spaces in shaping student engagement. We suggest that engagement is shaped by familiarity with hybrid formats that support autonomy, as well as by an academic culture in which active silent engagement is often the norm. In such contexts, mastery goals and autonomy-supportive backgrounds help foster more reactive dimensions of student engagement.