Self-Regulating Students

The Perkins Children By Harcourt





‘Self-knowledge’ is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one's particular mental states, including one's beliefs, desires, and sensations. It is also sometimes used to refer to knowledge about a persisting self -- its ontological nature, identity conditions, or character traits. At least since Descartes, most philosophers have believed that self-knowledge is importantly different from knowledge of the world external to oneself, including others' thoughts. But there is little agreement about what precisely distinguishes self-knowledge from knowledge in other realms.

Self-regulation refers to students' ability to control their learning (8, 9, 10). Learners become self-regulated using both knowledge and strategies we refer to as skills and the motivational desire to use these skills that we refer to as will.

Motivation is a process whereby goal-directed effort is initiated and sustained. Research on the role of motivation has mushroomed over the past decade (10, 11). Researchers once believed that motivation had little impact on how students learned. This view has changed dramatically; now it is believed that motivation not only prepares a student to learn, but also changes the learning process itself. A number of different types of motivational beliefs have been studied recently, including self-efficacy (12), attributions (13), goal orientations (14), intrinsic motivation (15), hope (11), and perceived control (16). We focus on self-efficacy and attribution theories because each has been researched extensively for at least ten years, and teachers at all levels have a significant impact on these beliefs.

Self-efficacy refers to the degree to which individuals possess confidence in their ability to achieve a specific goal. For example, a student might be confident about her ability to make appropriate computations and then prepare dilute solutions from concentrated stock solutions, or to conduct a systematic library search for synthetic methods for preparing gamma-lactones. High efficacy in one setting does not guarantee high efficacy in another. Within a specific domain, however, high self-efficacy positively affects engagement, persistence, goal setting and various aspects of performance such as the type and amount of strategies used and the degree to which students monitor their learning (17).

Four factors affect the relative strength of one's self-efficacy judgments (18):

* current skill level (i.e., the availability of knowledge and strategies)
* intentional and unintentional modeling from skilled peers or teachers
* verbal persuasion, and
* one's current psychological state.

Modeling with explicit feedback from slightly more competent peers appears to be the most important of these factors with respect to improving efficacy (17, 19).

As self-efficacy increases, so do the student's willingness to engage and persist in challenging tasks (18), and the quality and quantity of information processing (17). Teacher efficacy also plays an important role in the classroom (20). Teachers with higher levels of teaching efficacy set broader curricular goals, provide greater student challenge, and invest more time helping students (21, 22). Highly efficacious teachers plan better by using their knowledge about course content, pedagogy and student development.

Of course, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. During interviews with college science students near the end of a semester, Horn (23) found that many students continued to expect final grades of C even though, for this to occur, they would need to earn 300 points on a 250 point final. She observed that this problem appeared to be most prevalent among student athletes, and suggested that this might reflect the propensity of these students to never relinquish hope. As far as we know, there is no strategy supported in the literature for chemistry teachers to deal effectively with this problem.

Attributions are causal interpretations students provide themselves to explain their academic success and failure. For example, many college students who struggle in calculus attribute their failure to low ability rather than lack of relevant knowledge, strategies, or practice. Attributional responses vary along three causal dimensions (13), including locus of control (i.e., internal vs. external causes), stability (i.e., short vs. longstanding effects), and controllability (i.e., controllable vs. uncontrollable). Different attributions elicit a variety of distinct emotions in learners. For example, attributing failure to a teacher (i.e., an uncontrollable, external, unstable cause) is less debilitating than attributing failure to low ability (i.e., an uncontrollable, internal, stable cause).

Effective teachers help their students understand that classroom success is attributable to many factors in addition to ability. The most important of these is effort, in the form of deliberate practice, that develops a knowledge base and procedural automaticity. Teacher help, but especially modeled demonstrations, is a second crucial factor. Strategy use and monitoring constitutes a third factor. In general, student motivation and performance improve whenever they shift their success attributions from external, uncontrollable causes to internal, controllable ones.

Skills
Having an appropriate knowledge base is crucial for effective learning. Coppola et al. (4) describe a number of ways to organize the knowledge base to improve instruction. These include the use of concept maps, structured problems and opportunities for group-based learning. Effective teachers also emphasize the role of deliberate practice, including daily reading, completion of in-class projects, homework and expert modeling. One especially difficult problem is helping students to codify fragmented, tacit knowledge into organized, explicit knowledge (24). Research suggests that novices complete this process through practice and modeling from skilled experts.

Ericsson and colleagues (25, 26) have conducted a number of studies on the role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expertise. These studies reveal a number of findings. The most important of these is that skill development and expertise are strongly related to the time and efficiency of deliberate practice. The more one practices, the better one gets, regardless of initial talent and ability. A second finding is that initial differences due to talent and ability decrease over time as a function of practice. This means that highly talented individuals lose their edge over time if they do not practice compared to less talented individuals.

Strategies refer to learning tactics used intentionally to accomplish a specific goal (27). They are essential to effective learning because they enable learners to use their limited cognitive resources more efficiently, approach problems more systematically, and increase positive motivational beliefs such as self-efficacy!

Two recent reviews (28, 29) support the following claims about strategy instruction:

1. Strategy instruction typically is moderately to highly successful, regardless of the strategy or instructional method. (See Pressley & Wharton-McDonald (30) for an excellent review.)

2. Strategy instruction appears to be most beneficial for younger students and low-achieving students of all ages. One reason may be that younger and lower-achieving students presently know fewer strategies and therefore have more room for improvement.

3. Programs that combine several interrelated strategies are more effective than single-strategy programs (28). Effective strategies, in order of importance, include self-checking, creating a productive physical environment, goal setting and planning, reviewing and organizing information after learning, summarizing during learning, seeking teacher assistance, and seeking peer assistance.

4. Strategy instruction programs that emphasize when and where to use the newly acquired strategy are especially effective (i.e., promote conditional knowledge).

5. Teachers who incorporate strategy instruction into their classrooms should teach specifically for transfer by using the strategy in a variety of settings and unfamiliar domains (31). Research also indicates that the more automatic, well rehearsed a strategy is, the more likely it is to transfer (32).

Knowledge and strategies in isolation are not sufficient for self-regulation. Students must understand the strengths and limitations of their knowledge and strategies in order to be able to use them efficiently. This capability is called metacognition, or explicit knowledge of one's own cognition (see Figure 2). Metacognition includes two main components referred to as knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition (33, 34). Knowledge of cognition consists of explicit knowledge of one's memory, knowledge base, and strategy repertoire, as well as what often is known as conditional knowledge, or knowledge about why, when and where to use strategies. Regulation of cognition consists of knowledge about planning, monitoring, and evaluation.

Students need to understand the role of metacognition in self-regulation. To facilitate this understanding, teachers can discuss the importance of metacognitive knowledge and regulation. Ideally, such a discussion helps students construct an explicit mental model of the self-regulation process (33). Another way is for teachers to model their own metacognition for students. When thinking out loud, teachers too often discuss and model their cognition (i.e., how to perform a task) without modeling metacognition (i.e., how they think about and monitor their performance). A third way is to provide time for group discussion and reflection. Peer modeling of both strategies and metacognition not only improves performance, but increases self-efficacy as well (35).

Still another way to promote understanding is to help students develop a systematic approach to monitoring their learning. The use of monitoring checklists in which students check off component steps in monitoring this learning helps to systematize monitoring (36). The checklist shown below provides an example:

* What is the purpose for learning this information?
* Do I know anything about this topic?
* Do I know strategies that will help me learn?
* Am I understanding as I proceed?
* How should I correct errors?
* Have I accomplished the goals I set myself?

Studies evaluating checklists report favorable findings, especially when students are learning difficult material (37, 38). It is completely within bounds to print up and distribute checklists to students. When it comes to strategy instruction, it is hard to be too explicit.

Synergies Between Will and Skill
Students need both the will and the skill to succeed in chemistry courses. Many chemistry students struggle initially because they lack:

* a broad knowledge base
* procedural competencies that can be used in a highly automated fashion to solve domain-specific problems, and
* the training needed to think like a chemist (39).

The will and the skill contribute to academic learning in several ways. One way is through a synergy between will (i.e., self-efficacy) and skill (i.e., strategy instruction) components. As self-efficacy increases, students are more apt to use strategies. As strategy usage increases, students gain a better organized knowledge base and become more self-efficacious. A second way is through a synergy between will components. For example, higher self-fficacy is related to adaptive attributional responses such as increased effort and strategy use. A third way is through a synergy between skill components. For example, acquisition of new knowledge typically increases the efficiency of strategy use; effective strategy use leads to increased knowledge base.



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