Self-Relevancy 

 A student's beliefs about the importance and / or interest of a learning task. 

Self-relevancy is a term we are using to reference a student's self-reported levels of curiosity, interest and value with respect an academic learning task. The notion of self-relevancy is a compound term because it describes a student who is not only growing in their understanding of what they are interested in, but also what is important to them. Davis (2018) has described a students interest level and perception of important as value. In her paper, "Motivationally anchored instruction" she explained that there are three types of value: utility value; attainment value and intrinsic value .

Utility value or 'perceived usefulness' is a student's sense of how useful a piece of learning will be in the future. The more useful, the more valuable and consequently the higher student engagement. Secondly, attainment value refers to a student's sense of achievement experienced when they have successfully completed a task. This positive experience influences a students mindset towards future work. Finally, intrinsic value relates to a student's personal enjoyment of the task.  As mentioned about, the more interested a student is in a topic, the more they focus on the task. 

The inherent mechanism which serves to underlie all three types of self-relevancy is the observation that increased perceptions of value are related to increased levels of motivation (Schunk et al., 2014) which in turn is related to dopamine levels. 

In summary, students who find their learning interesting are more motivated to learn (Farrington et al., 2012). This in turn increases a students' sense of ownership and control over their learning and ultimately, their sense of agency.