The ancient origins (in India for example) of the tripartite division of the human psyche into cognition, affect and enaction also suggest that they are not separate in the sense of cleavage of a physical object into distinct parts. Rather, each can be thought of as themselves having cognitive, affective and enactive aspects.

When a natural language construct (like agency) is psychologised (taken to describe some aspects of the human psyche) there is no reason to assume that it will belong in one or other aspect.

I suggest investigating your own experience: when do you 'feel' agentic and when you are 'aware' of being agentive (note that 'feel' is indicative of affective aspects; 'aware' is indicative of cognitive aspects, but neither is exclusive). When do you feel non-agentive (for example at work when you are required to do things you would rather not do perhaps, or in ways that you would rather not do them)? How do you think about your room for making choices in different circumstances?

I conjecture that you will begin to recognise that like most psychological constructs (made by researchers) there are cognitive, affective and enactive aspects. Furthermore, the tripartite division can be augmented to include a fourth, 'attention', ... ask yourself both 'what you re attending to' and 'how are you attending to it' when you are sharply aware of being agentic, and when you are aware of being unagentic, and then ask what is going on when you feel or are aware of neither.

Thank you

Gideon, I don't know the answer, but I love the the questions. Lots of literature/sites on Metacognition and Emotional Intelligence (as well as Social Emotional Learning and Self-Efficacy), but I don't know of any sources that have brought that literature together.

There is a discussion on Linkedin under the Metacognition group that raised that question. I'll check for the link and add it later.

At any rate, I'll be interested in following the answers you get.

Here is the link to the Linkedin disucussion on Metacognition and Emotional Intelligence:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Metacognition-is-linked-emotional-intelligencethere-1790369.S.185327557?qid=0fd3f099-11ea-4dd1-ab38-eb37f6aa6d04&trk=group_most_popular-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmp_1790369

Thank you for such an interesting question Gideon. Hi Fran, nice to see you again. I too agree with you John, can we separate a tripartite attitude such that we can attribute a greater proportional role over agency to one aspect versus another? My understanding so far, is that the cognitive dimension serves our descriptive needs to "relocate" some concept or some aggregation of concepts; but the affective dimension seems to serve as the valential magnitude for the located concept relative to us. So the two are bound together just as the third (subsequent behavior) is apt to be inclination's unavoidable "tipping" along some favored direction already tipped within.

Perhaps we can consider a cognition or percept as a filled variable, and the affective value as some scaling coefficient that makes the variable somehow relevant motivationally to us? I think we might approach it Gideon, where self-regulated learning is the exposure of potential learning to awareness, elevated into cognition for elaboration, accentuated by the drive contained in estimates of affective urgency, and with agency both the origin and the destination for this self-fulfilling learning. Just as affectation allows us to valuate cognitions, so too agency allows us to place value on our efficacy by locating the self nearest the origin of elicited drives.

I much appreciate your phrasing, John, for this pairing, as "awareness" (cognitively proportional as some degree of presence, somewhere) and "feeling" (affectively proportional as some degree of inner dissonant/consonant reaction to that presence, here inside within anticipative belief). Whether we think prior to our behavioral response (because the conception interval was so broad in awareness), or reflect on what we feel we had little part in doing (because it came so instinctively and quickly beneath awareness), this meta-cognition alone suggests to us we do not know for sure whether agency is some tripartite boundary crossing, or that the whole tripartite self is a continuum we bridge all the time. Would you agree that we can be agentic in thought without it leading to communicated behavior of some kind? That we contemplate “where” agency resides, is suggestive it resides everywhere to some degree, stimulating the question between it being purely cognitive, or purely affective.

Feelings become the means of thinking. Feelings are the past memories of experiences. In the process of learning we make new memories that have new feelings. All memories have emotional component associated with them. Consequently, all thoughts are emotionally based. When we recall them, we do associate the emotions stored with them. Therefore we can separate cognition from emotion. Learning happens thrugh feelings and emotion.

Interesting question. According to my experience and research, I think that we have a set of epistemological beliefs (personal, agency, culture). This personal framework influences on our cognitive and motivational learning processes. Moreover, cognitive processes are more relevants than motivational processes into explanation of learning outcomes. In sum. from a SRL perspective we have a epistemic personal that influence our cognition, and this last our motivation or learning orientation.

If you use the broadest definition of "Executive" skils you could include it I assume. However, I use Elizabeth Wiig's definition of executive skills (rather than those in the published literature on behavioral ) and it would probably not be included that way....

Gideon, in reading the many responses and some brief additional research, perhaps the answer is that all the components may fit into the affective frequency of the learning experience (i.e. cognition consists of layers of meta-affectation, and agency is our estimate of direction and magnitude causally inferred). Zimmerman (2002) suggests a nice model for Srl (forethought, performance, and self-reflection phases – much as we view time and inherent opportunity/value itself) together with some very nice thoughts:

“Self-regulation is not a mental ability or an academic performance skill; rather it is the self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills. Learning is . . . [something] . . . that students do for themselves . . . rather than as a covert event that happens to them in reaction to teaching” (p. 65). He suggests that motivation does not come from the task itself, but the sense of efficacy perceived in pursuing the task (p. 66-67).

The object of Srl (p. 70) is to teach learners to “adopt” this kind of learning style (affectively), not “adapt to it” (cognitively, rationally); yet I would suggest that it should not be perseverance against intrinsic desire (as Zimmerman’s phase 2 describes), but rather perseverance in favor of it. We want learners to hold back their urgency to learn even more, not refrain from other urgencies because it seems practical to do so. When what we hope for, pursue, and find in our grasp match our inner urgency and not some external one, that is when learning becomes self-motivating, intrinsic, and meaningful. It may seem cognitive, even quantitative, but it is affective frequency reasoned as to count and to cause. Few things seem as rewarding as seeing a student cross that “learning threshold”, and go from constant reminders to study - to advisories that he or she should reign in their desire, pace themselves, and not study too much beyond what each moment affords.

Life is all about learning; consciousness is like some affective frequency of highs and lows, desires and deferrals of those desires, where deferral makes things ever more desirable. Whether we pursue learning quantitatively as some articulated specificity of meaning (wherein we are sort of counting the separators that define that meaning, rather than the meaning), or as some vague appreciation of goal potentials as yet undiscovered – both are an affective frequency, whose components appear to be cognition and agency when we attempt to explain them to ourselves.

Self-regulated learning may be less about learning than about perception and motivation, so that it might really be "self-motivated learning" we are trying to induce through a new perception of the value inherent in the self acquiring new knowledge. When the perception of education is one of near-infinite opportunity for growth and not practical requisite, motive force will naturally elicit from within as any system that sees potential positive influence external to it; and learners will need to be held back from their desire to learn, rather than urged to see their own hidden value.

References

Weimer, M. (2010). What it means to be a self-regulated learner. Available at http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/what-it-means-to-be-a-self-regulated-learner/

Zimmerman, B. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70. doi:10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2.

Thank you for your insightful analysis. My initial thoughts are also towards agency being affective simply for the reason: it doesn't matter how much cognitive or metacognitive strategies and abilities are at a learner's disposal; there must be the requisite favourable affective drive towards a task in oder for the cognitive elements to be deployed. Personal Agency therefore is more to do with the affective elements rather than cognition.

Gideon and Lonny, Thanks for continuing this important discussion. I agree that the affective dimension of learning is critical. As always, I want to believe that teachers (and schools) can have an impact on that affective dimension. Any research out there on how the cognitive and affective dimensions of Personal Agency can be recognized, supported, stimulated? Lonny, could you give us the full Zimmerman citation?

Here's the link to Zimmerman's work that Lonny mentioned:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Zimmerman-Becoming-a-self-regulated-learner.pdf

Thanks, Lonny. Zimmerman's short article was well worth reading.

I also posted it on 2 of my Scoopit boards: Metacogniton and Empower Learning

http://www.scoop.it/t/metacognition-1

http://www.scoop.it/t/learning-challenges

Thank you very much Fran. I apologize I included only the doi for the Zimmerman article, but was hoping to find a less suggestive URL I could be more comfortable with. It is a good article, thank you so much for your help with this and your kind words.

Lonny, I have used Zimmerman's work in the past, but somehow I forgot about his important work. Great to have colleagues who can fill in the gaps or lapses.