Learner Agency Across Scales: An Integrative Perspective on Self-Regulated Learning in Algorithmically Mediated Environments

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Synthesis: Learner agency across scales — a theoretical/integrative paper proposing an account of learner agency that extends SRL beyond task-focused AI Regulation in Education by connecting it with complex systems science and Freirean critical pedagogy. It foregrounds three dimensions of learner agency — regulation, integration, and positioning — and a cross-scale scaffold supporting learners to move between them in algorithmically mediated environments.

Key Findings

Three dimensions of learner agency. Regulation (the self as an active managing process, drawing on social-cognitive SRL); Integration (the self as an organizing center across time and contexts, drawing on complex systems science); Positioning (the self as a critical interpreter, drawing on Freirean critical Pedagogies and Teaching Strategies). Agency lies in the coordination/movement between these, not any one alone.
Two limitations of SRL. SRL has progressively narrowed to task-focused regulation (leaving broader life conditions and structural positions under-theorised), and its operationalization in educational technology has narrowed the construct to optimisable behavioral proxies (e.g., time management, strategy use, effort allocation).
Cross-scale scaffold. A design orientation with four functions — surfacing patterns across scales, opening conditions to critique, returning interpretation to action, and centering the learner as the agent of connection. It extends SRL from "agency within conditions" to "agency over conditions" (questioning what metrics measure and whose purposes they encode).
Critical stance on Learning Analytics and Generative AI. Algorithmically mediated environments encode assumptions about what counts as engagement and who succeeds; supporting agency requires learners to interpret their data, question what it does not capture, and act on that interpretation — a critique that has been largely disconnected from SRL theory.

Implications

Reconnect SRL with critical pedagogy and learning analytics. The integrative perspective offers a theoretical foundation for educational technology that places human agency at the center — learners as agents who understand and shape the conditions of their development, not merely responsive to systems.
Design for cross-scale movement. Rather than optimizing behavior at a single scale, educational AI should support learners moving between immediate-task regulation, trajectory-wide integration, and critical positioning.

Connected Concepts

Connected Articles

Assuring quality learning in a gen AI-integrated future: The role of adaptive capabilities. TEQSA, June 2026 — Adaptive capabilities with GenAI
Thoughtless Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence and College Students' Self-Directed Learning: A Multi-Group SEM Analysis of Gender Differences — Thoughtless GenAI use and self-direction

Citation

de Barba, P. G. (2026). Learner agency across scales: An integrative perspective on self-regulated learning in algorithmically mediated environments. Learning Letters, 7, Article 75. https://doi.org/10.20851/ll.v7.75

Metadata

Study design	Theoretical Analysis
Intended audience	Researchers, Learning Analytics Designers, Instructional Designers
Learning and instruction	Critical Pedagogy, Self-Regulated Learning
Technologies and techniques	Generative AI, Learning Analytics
Foundations of AI in education	Learner Agency, Theory Development in AI in Education
Page kind	Framework

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