Agency and Responsibility

My final area of competency focuses on morality, responsibility, and

citizenship, but addresses wider questions. Psychology has wavered
throughout the century between seeing humans as passive and
molded by experience or by other determining factors (currently
evolutionary determinism is making a comeback) and seeing humans
as active agents in relation to their experience. This distinction applies
to models of cognition as much as it does to morality (e.g., Russell,
1996). It is useful to define both agency and responsibility. Agency
implies that one can have active interaction with one's environment,
including active involvement in one's own learning and development.
The implication of having agency is that the individual requires a sense
of efficacy and a sense of being able to take an initiative, whether this
is the initiation of an act or the initiation of an interaction that will
facilitate forms of tool-use leading to novel practices and concepts. It
implies that the individual takes a role in constructing meaning and
interpretations, even if these constructions take place through
negotiation with others and in a cultural context. It does not
necessarily imply autonomy, though models that do valorize autonomy
will give great weight to agency also. In a context that values
"agency," "responsibility" is about being the originator of one's own
perspective, about taking possession of it, and moderating it to one's
own goals. To be an agent means to be empowered. To take
responsibility means to recognize that one is an agent, and that one
can act upon one's inclinations. Competence as defined within the
framework of civic agency and responsibility has been quite
extensively studied." Although this work has been conducted under
several theoretical approaches, some common findings can be
summarized. The "competent" individual is self-sufficient, able to focus
attention and plan, has a future orientation, is adaptable to change,
has a sense of responsibility, has a belief that one can have an effect,
and is capable of commitment. These characteristics are fostered by
families that provide competent role models, give encouragement and
affirmation, set goals, and assign responsibilities that are seen to
contribute to the household, and by cohesive communities that give
the individual responsibilities and the chance to acquire skills that
contribute to the public good. In sum, to feel agentic requires
experience of being able to have an effect on one's environment,
either alone or more usually with others. However, despite the
usefulness of these data, "responsibility" is a complex term that needs
unpacking. I have explored three different meanings of "responsibility,"
based on conflicting ideas of both the processes and goals of moral
and citizenship education. "Responsibility 1" I define as duties and
obligations to the community. This means those expectations, rules,

and mores that are seen to be central to the effective maintenance of

community. In other words, the agenda is set by the community (or the
legal system) and the educational task implied in this model is to make
young " See, for example, Call, Mortimer, & Shanahan, 1995; Colby &
Damon, 1992; Fogelman, 1994; Hamilton & Fenzel, 1988; Hart &
Fegley, 1995; Lenhart & Rabiner, 1995; Morris, 1992; and Paolicchi,
1995. 116 H. Hast( people aware of these obligations and duties, and
foster the values and motivation; that will lead to their voluntarily
assuming these responsibilities. "Responsibility 1' is particularly
associated with public calls for a "restoration of community values." I is
a moot point as to how far the individual in this context is deemed to
havt -agency." One may argue that "Responsibility 1" is just another
way of looking a conformity, in which case the individual is only an
"agent" insofar as he or she de cide whether or not to fit into
expectations. A moral tension implicit in "Responsibility 1" is the classic
question of moralit' as the performance of proactive, pro-social action,
or the avoidance of the antisocia action. Agentic proactive behavior
may, on occasion, require the individual to con travene normative
pressures - whether these are pressures of accepted codes, or the
specific social pressures of the group. Any moral system that valorizes
the perform ance of duty and obligation lends itself to the charge of
inhibiting individual agenc: of, for example, the "whistle-blowing" sort.
"Responsibility 2" I define as the sense of connection to others which
generate; caring and concern. It is the corollary of an emphasis on
relationships and interper sonal ties. In recent psychological discourse
on moral development, it has tended t( be defined mainly in terms of
Carol Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg's theory of mora development,
specifically that the ethical system within which Kohlberg was work ing,
in his twenty-year study of moral reasoning among young males,
privileges rea soning about justice, ignoring the ethic of care and
responsibility (Gilligan, 1982) Kohlberg's ethical system owes much to
Kantian thinking about morality, and ha; much in common with Rawls'
theory of justice. However, it is not only within psy chology that these
positions are questioned; there is now considerable debate abou care
and responsibility as ethical systems that at the very least coexist with,
if no supplant, reasoning based on justice (e.g., Noddings, 1984; and
Hekman, 1995). I would argue that "Responsibility 2" should not be
conceptualized only as a con trast to an ethical system based on
reasoning about justice. Behind Gilligan's (an( others') perspectives on
care and connection is recognition that the individual is em bedded in
a social context. Justice-based reasoning, in contrast, starts from an as
sumption of individual autonomy, and the need therefore to balance
the respective rights, interests, and obligations of all persons involved
in the situation, to arrive a the most "just" solution. So in the justicebased model, individuals are conceived o as separate, not as
connected. The implications of the separate, justice-based, position are

that moral reasoning primarily demands reflection on one's internal

moral di lemmas. Once we consider that people are inevitably
interconnected, we see the manage ment of interaction as basic both
to competence and to the social construction o meaning - though this
latter was not in Gilligan's original agenda. In other words from the
perspective of this present paper, we can see that "Responsibility 2" is
con sistent with both the value position and the ontological position of
communitarian ism, as I discussed earlier in the context of sustaining
community. In such a context the competencies associated with
sustaining community are similar to those require( for "Responsibility
2." Psychological Challenges to New Competence 117 What of agency?
A primary feature of agency in this context must be the effective
negotiation of interaction, dialogue, and the social processes involved
in creating meaning and shared consensus. But there is also moral
agency, action that organizes one's self and its connections with
others, towards ends that serve the mutual needs of the group,
network, or community. If I am mutually responsible with and for
others, I need to be able to identify how my strengths and talents can
be mobilized to meet the needs of others, and I also need to be able to
identify what those needs are, and how they should be met not only by
myself, but by the community as a whole. At the very least, this is
competence in the management of teamwork, group interaction, and
of people generally. "Responsibility 3" I define as a sense of personal
commitment to carry through one's value position into action and
engagement. It carries with it the implication of personal efficacy and
competence, as well as motivation. "Responsibility 3" is often couched
in the individualistic terminology of "autonomy": "I have arrived at my
personal moral position and the logical imperative is that I act upon
this." However, "Responsibility 3" can also be seen as arising from
discursive and linguistic practices, and therefore in one's interactions
with others. In particular, one is positioned as a reflexive actor in a
"moral" drama which requires certain kinds of action. This would differ
from "Responsibility 1" primarily in that for "Responsibility 3," the
expectations are internal; those people who take risks to intervene to
help others, or who compromise their comfort and even their lives, say
"I can do no other," or "Anyone would have done this." The apparent
paradox of an internalized commitment (which one would imagine to
be the product of autonomous decision-making) arising out of
discursive processes (which one would imagine to be social and
therefore not autonomous) reflects the paradoxes of agency. Because
one is active in engagement with others in the social construction of
meaning, and in the interpretation of dialogic activity, the model of
agency is consistent with the concept of a social being. The
competencies involved are not, therefore, the separation, detachment,
and objectifying of the self in resistance to others, but a voluntary
connection to others in which meaning is consensual and arrived

dialogically. "Responsibility 3," therefore, does not have to be seen only

as a "Puzzle Solver" product; it uses cultural stories, and the tools of
metaphor and value-language, to provide the role models and the
action scripts for taking responsibility.