Agentic engagement in the Global South: how Colombian private higher education challenges assumptions about discipline, gender, and power

This study challenges structuralist paradigms in comparative education by investigating agentic engagement (AE), defined as students’ intentional and proactive efforts to influence their instruction, within the underresearched context of Colombian private higher education. A large-scale cross-sectional survey of 1,713 final-year students from diverse disciplines and geographic regions was employed to characterise this construct, test for variations by gender and discipline, and quantify the influence of individual versus contextual factors via multilevel modelling. Contrary to the theoretical predictions, the results revealed no significant stratification of AE by gender or discipline. More than 99% of the variance was attributable to individual-level factors, suggesting that AE is broadly distributed in this sample rather than structurally stratified by gender or discipline. However, its behavioural expression is culturally mediated. Situated in a Global South context, these findings pluralise theory and support pedagogical designs that connect motivational principles with local participatory norms to expand student agency.