The role of sibling position in the development of agency in students

Abstract

The article considers the agency in students in line with the eco-psychological model (V.I. Panov) that describes the ontological continuum of transitions from the subject of spontaneous activity (the ‘subject of motivation’ stage) to the subject of arbitrary action (the ‘creator’ stage). The specific features of the stages of agency development are determined by external and internal predictors. The article investigates the positions of students in the family in the role of a brother / a sister (the sibling position) as an element of the external environment. We hypothesized that the presence and number of siblings in the family are predictors of differences in the stages of agency development. We did not study the psychological features of sibling role positions. The elements of the analysis were gender, age, number of children in the family, and the seniority of siblings. The influence of the sibling position in our study was affected by the specific features of the time period of the respondents’ life (the 1 st semester of the 1 st year of study, when the educational environment of the university is just beginning to influence a student) and the pandemic (2020 was a period of forced distance learning, when students were mostly at home with the almost continuous presence of family members). The stages of agency development were studied using the ’s self-designed Agency Stages Questionnaire with the calculation of the coefficients of conditionality and coherence of the stages. The differences were identified using the Mann–Whitney criterion. The study involved 510 respondents (240 male). The hypothesis of the study was confirmed. Males who are only children have more highly developed stages ‘student’ and ‘master’ compared to males who have two or more siblings. Females who are only children have a more highly developed stage ‘the subject of motivation’ compared to females who have two or more siblings. Females with one sibling have a more coherent ‘critic’ stage compared to females who have two or more siblings. Males who are only children have a less coherent ‘master’ stage and a lower coefficient of commitment compared to males who have two or more siblings. We also identified other differences showing that the formal parameters of the sibling position in the family are associated not only with the specific features of the stages of agency development, but also with the structure of the stages.