The anatomy of agency: Improving academic performance in first‐year university students

Abstract

The transition from secondary to tertiary education can be challenging, as students must adapt to independent learning. For students in the allied health and nursing disciplines, this transition may coincide with compulsory first‐year courses in anatomy, which are traditionally difficult to master. Students' agency—their capacity to make intentional choices to alter the path of their learning—may play a role in their successful completion of first‐year anatomy courses. This study aimed to develop a measure for agency and to determine whether agency is associated with academic achievement. First‐year students (n = 131) completed open‐ended questions measuring each aspect of agency. Student responses were quantified using rubrics and then combined to create an overall agency score. Three factors of agency were determined: action, metacognition, and self‐efficacy. Students with higher agency scores were significantly more likely to have higher academic achievement in anatomy compared to students with lower agency scores. The relationship between agency and academic achievement was strongest for action. These results suggest that encouraging students to be active participants in their learning may help them to achieve at university.

Enhancing students’ agency in learning anatomy vocabulary with a formative intervention design

“…The ndings of this study con rmed that double stimulation enhanced the participants' memory and concept formation (Martin, 2015;Sannino, 2015b). Researchers highlighted the importance of encouraging students to be active agents in their learning (Rutenberg et al, 2022). This study demonstrated that formative intervention underpinned by double stimulation can effectively empower students' agency in being active participants and creative in their learning.…”

“…Regardless of this abundance, it is necessary to provide students with constant application as well as diversity of study techniques (Sturges & Mauner, 2013). More importantly, research revealed that agentive students were likely to have higher achievement in anatomy learning (Rutenberg et al, 2022).…”

Enhancing students' agency in learning anatomy vocabulary with a formative intervention design

“…More importantly, research revealed that agentive students, that is, ones who take responsibility for improving their knowledge, were likely to have higher achievement in anatomy learning (Rutenberg et al, 2022). This shows the need to increase students' confidence and agency in anatomy learning.…”

Constructive alignment: Teaching introductory gross anatomy to sport science students

“…There is a large and expanding body of literature regarding the content of gross anatomy units, the decline in teaching time, the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of teaching and learning, new technological innovations in the field of gross anatomy education, and resource pressures on all of these things, when applied in the training of medical doctors (Regan de Bere & Mattick, 2010; Azer et al, 2013; Drake et al, 2014; Fillmore et al, 2015; Leveritt et al, 2016; McBride & Drake, 2018; McMenamin et al, 2018; Viana et al, 2019; Peeler, 2022). There is a smaller, but still growing literature, about these issues when dealing with the undergraduate training of other health‐based professionals, such as physiotherapists, nurses, dentists, and allied health professionals (Zimanyi et al, 2019; Carroll et al, 2022; Giuriato et al, 2022; Rutenberg et al, 2022; Veazey & Robertson, 2023). In contrast, there is little literature on dealing with decisions about content, teaching practices, and the use of technologies when teaching gross anatomy to undergraduate sport scientists and physical education teachers (Catena & Carbonneau, 2019; Viana et al, 2019; Rabattu et al, 2022) although some research (Chakraborty & Cooperstein, 2018; Green et al, 2018; Zimanyi et al, 2019; McDonald et al, 2021) deals with sport or exercise scientists doing a combined gross anatomy unit with other allied health professionals.…”