Self-Regulation in Education

Jeffrey A. Greene

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134983315
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Psicología educativa

Self-regulation in education is a familiar and important topic for all educators: professors, administrators, teachers, researchers, journalists, and scholars. As educational standards require that students take control of what and how they learn, self-regulation skills are essential to student success. Written by a leading expert on self-regulation and self-regulated learning, this book situates the topic within the broader context of educational psychology research and theory, bringing it to a wider audience. With chapters on the fundamentals of self-regulation, explanations of its uses, and advice for best application, this concise volume is designed for any education course that includes self-regulation in the curriculum. It will be indispensable for education researchers and both pre- and in-service teachers alike.

Jeffrey A. Greene is Associate Professor in the Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies program in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.

Two
What Is Self-Regulation in Education?

Having traced the broad outlines of research on self-regulation in educational settings, it is time to explore the phenomenon in depth. This chapter begins with models of SRL. The SRL literature boasts a strong conceptual core.⁵² Since the introduction of the term of SRL,^37,53 many researchers have posited their own model, each of which varies less in terms of the phases (e.g., before, during, and after learning) or processes included (e.g., task definition, cognitive evaluations), but rather more in the prominence of the various aspects of functioning that can be regulated (e.g., cognition, motivation, emotion). In this chapter, rather than review every model of SRL that has been advanced, the focus will be upon how the various models can be cohered into a common conceptual framework for SRL. However, that is not to say that conceptual work on SRL has ended, or should do so. There is still much to be gained from exploring new ideas about SRL and testing whether they help to describe and intervene upon the processes of self-regulation in education.

Self-regulation research, like SRL research, boasts a strong conceptual core, but one that is also plagued by models with differing terminologies and groupings of functions.¹⁴ Most researchers agree self-regulation ability derives from core, fundamental cognitive processes, often called executive functions.¹³ People enact executive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility, when they pursue goals, particularly when they need to pay attention to what they are doing to achieve those goals. Likewise, executive functions are used when people realize that the typical way they achieve a particular goal will not work, and they must effortfully enact a different strategy or plan. The term “executive” is used to indicate that people use these functions when they consciously and intentionally pursue a goal.

With maturation and experience, these executive functions come to work together to support higher-order cognitive and metacognitive processing, including self-regulation. Debates about which aspects of executive functioning develop first, and what to call them, distract from the more important message: individual differences in executive functioning are predictors of self-regulation, school readiness, and academic achievement. Thankfully, students can improve their self-regulatory functioning with effort and guidance.¹⁵ Understanding self-regulation in education requires familiarity with models of both SRL and self-regulation, including the role of executive functions.

This chapter ends with a review of literature on how self-regulation in education, including both SRL and self-regulation, develops over time and experience. Developmental models of self-regulation in education span both the typical progression of self-regulatory functioning over the course of maturation and how that process is affected by external forces such as education and feedback. These models form the conceptual foundations of effective methods of intervening on the development of self-regulation in education, the subject of Chapter 4.

Models of Self-Regulated Learning

Implicit Aspects of Models of Self-Regulated Learning

Connecting SRL to self-regulation research requires highlighting things that are often implicit, but not explicit, in models of SRL. For example, many models of SRL focus upon what happens or should happen when students need to self-regulate their learning, such as when first attempting a new learning task (e.g., writing a persuasive essay). Such actions include defining the task, setting goals, enacting plans and strategies, and then monitoring and adapting those plans and strategies when necessary. However, once a learning task has been mastered, or what some call “automated,” there is often little need for many of these actions (e.g., planning) when that task must be performed again. This is the first, often implicit, aspect of SRL models: they are better at describing how students approach novel or effortful tasks rather than automated ones.

Indeed, performance can be degraded when students are asked to consciously enact learning processes for tasks that have been automated.^54,55 Imagine asking someone to plan, enact, monitor, control, and reflect upon every step of making a grilled cheese sandwich; it can be done (e.g., “Okay, I guess the first thing I need to do is find the bread, which is most likely on the counter, so I will start my search there …”), but it will take much longer than simply letting that person make the sandwich as he or she has in the past. Therefore, any discussion of SRL must come with the caveat that, for many automated learning tasks, students have little need for many aspects of SRL.

Unfortunately, many students fail to recognize when their automated actions are not working, or will not work, for a particular learning task.⁵ This is a second, often implicit, aspect of SRL models that must be highlighted: sometimes students do not realize that SRL is needed. SRL models do an excellent job of describing how to thoughtfully engage in tasks, but many students struggle to determine when such thought is and is not necessary. Students often encounter such difficulties when transitioning between schooling contexts. Often, the motivations, cognition, and behaviors associated with success in elementary school are less effective in middle school. Many students struggle with the increased autonomy of middle school, such as the expectations that students make their own way from class to class, and that they track homework themselves with few reminders from teachers.⁵⁶ Often, newly minted middle school students have to experience a few setbacks before realizing that the automated strategies that worked so well in elementary school (e.g., depending upon reminders from teachers) must be amended in middle school.

The third often implicit aspect of SRL models is that students often have to actively manage the simultaneous pursuit of multiple goals, some of which are academic, and others which are more personal or social (i.e., self-regulation). Given the limited resources available for self-regulation,³⁵ sometimes students choose to regulate in ways that take them further from their academic goals but closer to their personal or well-being goals. For example, when a first-year college student gets a poor grade on a persuasive essay assignment, there are many potential explanations for this outcome. It could be due to internal factors (e.g., a failure to understand the task, the implementation of inappropriate strategies), external factors (e.g., a lack of prior education in effective writing, a professor who dislikes the student), or a combination of both. Reflecting upon the process of completing a learning task, and diagnosing the reasons why it was or was not successful, are themselves often challenging, non-intuitive processes that unfortunately few students have automated. The emotions and threats to self-concept that often arise from such reflection can lead to students abandoning their academic goals (e.g., getting a good grade on the essay assignment) in lieu of what they perceive to be more important personal, non-academic goals (e.g., maintaining their self-concept of themselves as a “smart person”). Some models of SRL explicitly acknowledge these non-academic goals and the balancing students must enact between them and academic goals (e.g., Boaekerts),³⁶) whereas others do so only implicitly (e.g., Zimmerman).¹⁷

Finally, there is a fourth, often implicit, aspect of SRL models. For a model of SRL to be complete, it must describe both successful and unsuccessful self-regulation and generate reasonable hypotheses of why some students enact SRL well whereas others do not, and why SRL is more likely in certain contexts compared to others. One of the major goals of SRL research has been to understand why students fail to self-regulate effectively at times, so educators can help students learn to do so. Much of the early research on SRL focused upon comparing expert and novice students’ processing and behaviors before, during, and after learning, to determine what differentiated the successful students from those who struggled.³⁷ This research led to valuable prescriptive models of SRL: in essence, they described what students should do when they need to self-regulate their learning. However, numerous researchers have pointed out that there is also value in a descriptive approach to modeling SRL, which involves observing and describing all of the things students actually do when they should be self-regulating while learning, whether what they do is effective or not.^24,36 Indeed, there are instances when students (a) do not notice discrepancies between their performance and their desired goal (e.g., failure to focus sufficient attention on the learning task), (b) fail to self-regulate when they know they should (e.g., procrastination), (c) self-regulate toward suboptimal or even damaging goals (e.g., making excuses to protect their ego rather than admitting and correcting an error), or (d) enact maladaptive or less-efficient processes because they have faulty beliefs about cognition, strategies, or other aspects of learning (e.g., believing smart people do not have to work hard to learn).⁵ Models of SRL are most helpful for researchers, educators, and students when they describe ways students self-regulate both successfully and unsuccessfully, and how they can increase the likelihood of the former and decrease the likelihood of the latter. In sum, combining models of SRL requires attending to both their explicit and their implicit aspects.

Combining Models of Self-Regulated Learning

The model of SRL presented here is an amalgamation of numerous predominant models (i.e., Zimmerman, Winne, Pintrich, Boekaerts, Efklides). A combined model is possible because there is a great deal of overlap in terms of (a) the various aspects of functioning that can be self-regulated (i.e., targets of SRL), (b) the typical order in which people enact SRL (i.e., phases of SRL), and (c) the actual things people do to self-regulate their learning (i.e., processes of SRL). Models of SRL primarily differ in the degree to which certain targets, phases, or processes are emphasized. The goal here is not to provide details of each model and how they do and do not resemble one another; for such a discussion, interested readers can consult a number of primary and secondary sources (e.g., Schunk & Greene,⁵⁷ Winne & Hadwin;⁵⁸ Zimmerman¹⁷). Instead, the goals here are to (1) describe SRL, including all of its targets, phases, and processes, (2) discuss how interactions among the various aspects of SRL occur over the course of completing a learning task, and (3) show how the results of such interactions can influence how students pursue a wide variety of potential goals in formal and informal education settings, including academic but also well-being and social goals.³⁶

Targets of Self-Regulation

Any aspect of learning that can be consciously contemplated and controlled is a potential target for self-regulation. Most models of SRL address six broad categories of self-regulatory targets: cognition, metacognition, motivation, behavior, affect, and the external environment. Each category contains numerous specific aspects of learning, which can and should be targeted when necessary.

Cognition

Cognition generally refers to thinking focused on the learning task itself, including task definitions, goals, plans, learning strategies, and self-judgments. Despite being a somewhat neglected aspect of student thinking and research, task definitions are important aspects of cognition because they inform students’ goals.^59,60 Students are not a tabula rasa.⁶¹ When given an academic assignment or task, students construct their own interpretation of it. Even relatively simple assignments can be open to interpretation. For example, when a teacher says, “Finish the mathematics worksheet,” one student might construct a task definition of “Finish the mathematics work-sheet as fast as possible,” whereas another might construct “Finish the mathematics worksheet with no mistakes.” These differing task definitions can influence the kinds of goals students set, the strategies they use to complete the task, and how they judge whether the task was completed successfully or not.

One reason why students struggle in school is because their task definitions, and the goals they set because of them, do not align with those of their teacher. Differing task definitions can explain a poor grade on a persuasive essay assignment, such as when first-year college students incorrectly assume that their high-school teachers’ focus on historical facts (i.e., what happened, when it happened, who was there) will be shared by their college history professor, who instead wants students to develop historical inquiry and thinking skills.^62,63 In these cases, the professor and the student had very different definitions of the task itself, which in turn led to very different ideas about what a “good” essay was.

Goals are another critical aspect of cognitive processing during SRL. There is a vast literature on the various kinds of academic goals students set, along with empirical research on how different kinds of goals can lead to very different learning behaviors and outcomes.⁶⁴ However, the majority of this literature falls within the domain of motivation theory; therefore, it will be discussed in the section on motivation as a target of self-regulation.

The plans students make to achieve their goals are another target for regulation. Planning quality and level of detail relate to academic outcomes, particularly when learning tasks require more than automatic processing.^59,60 Unfortunately, many students fail to plan at all, or they make relatively crude plans, both of which make it difficult for students to adequately monitor their progress or recognize when a change in strategies is needed. For example, many students make a plan focused upon time spent learning (e.g., “I am going to spend two hours on mathematics, then one hour on literature”), which leads to monitoring their progress based upon inappropriate outcomes (e.g., “Well, it has been two hours so I am done!”). Instead, plans should focus on the efficiency and quality of the work completed (e.g., “I want to write a good paper as quickly as possible”).¹⁷

Given that one of the origins of SRL is research on learning strategies,¹⁷ it is not surprising that much of the conceptual and empirical literature on cognition in SRL focuses on the types of strategies students use, their efficacy, and their efficiency. It is not enough for a student to be aware of a strategy (i.e., declarative knowledge) or how to use it (i.e., procedural knowledge). Students must also possess the conditional knowledge of the circumstances in which particular strategies are, and are not, most helpful.⁶⁵ For example, taking notes on a laptop may be necessary when instructors present a large amount of novel information during a lecture but be mal-adaptive when instructors use lecture time to synthesize and expand upon previously covered material.⁶⁶

There has been a recent uptick in research on effective strategies for learning,⁶⁷ but a definitive list of effective strategies remains elusive for good reasons. Despite evidence that there are some strategies (e.g., rereading) that are low-utility regardless of other factors, the utility of most strategies depends on many internal or external factors such as the amount of prior knowledge the student possesses and the desire...