Toward the Measurement of Human Agency and the Disposition to Express It

Authors: Ana Marie Cauce and Edmund W. Gordon

Consulting Editors: James Greeno and Michael Martinez

We define human agency as the capacity and disposition to recognize and act in one’s own best interest and that of chosen others, without exploitation. Agency appears to be a developed ability to choose between alternatives and, intentionally, to make things happen. This is a fundamental but developed human characteristic to which other abilities are attached and through which human capacities are expressed. As such, there may be merit in the development of assessment technologies by which the presence of this characteristic can be measured and the quality of the capacity can be assessed. It is entirely possible that agency is not expressed and cannot be measured independent of its expression in association with some other human characteristic. In this paper the authors will synthesize the extant knowledge and interpret possible implications for the development of assessment instruments and practices. VIEW DRAFT