What are agency and identity?

Agency can be roughly defined as being able to achieve a goal. In Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory, human agency includes the interplay between an individual’s or group’s social context and four aspects of agentic function that are based in self-efficacy, or the confidence that one can perform an action. The four parts are intentionality (intentional setting of a goal), forethought (planning and considering outcomes), self-regulation (self-motivation and regulation of activities to meet the goal), and self-reflexivity (metacognition and self-reflection one’s self-efficacy and goal achievement).

Identity refers to the “kind” of person you see yourself as. The example that interests us is identifying oneself as a scientist or a researcher; in other words, seeing oneself as a science or research person.