Agency as collectivity: Community-based research for educational equity

In this article, we highlight the affordances of agency that is not merely individual, but rather emerges in and through collectivities. We take up these issues within the context of our own work in the field of sociocultural perspectives on literacy and through the methodological vantage point of community-based and participatory research. First, we define our key terms-agency and collectivity-in relationship to the theoretical orientations that have grounded our work. We then discuss research examples that speak to the ways student agency is enacted in the literacy curriculum, before turning our attention to collaborative and participatory projects that we believe hold promise for understanding how agency is realized in collectivities geared toward educational change and transformation. We conclude by returning to an example from our own project to spotlight what we believe is the value of a collective orientation to agency for learning in and out of schools.