Self-Regulated Learning

Self-Regulated Learning
Ashleigh Rhodes
March 13, 2007

Paris, Scott G. and Peter Winograd. “The Role of Self-Regulated Learning in Contextual Teaching: Principles and Practice for Teacher Preparation.” Preparing Teachers to Use Contextual Teaching and Learning Strategies To Improve Student Success In and Beyond School. U.S. Department of Education Project.

Self-regulated learning is a theory that incorporates on one of my basic beliefs about teaching: that the real goal is not to teach concepts, but to teach students how to be learners. The principle of “teach a man to fish…” except with learning. I don’t necessarily limit this to learning math. I in fact don’t expect or even hope that my students learn to love math. That’s unrealistic and silly. What I do hope is that my students all develop the skills to be able to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve. I want my students to be able to realistically look at their lives and their goals and take appropriate action, whether it’s going to college or focusing on their art or music or learning to repair cars.
How does that have anything to do with self-regulated learning? According to the authors of this chapter, self-regulated learning is made up of three parts: awareness of thinking, use of strategies, and sustained motivation. This is a more comprehensive theory than I saw in other sources, where more of the emphasis was just on the first part, the awareness of thinking.
The foundation for self-regulated learning is the awareness of thinking. This has been divided up into self-observation, self-evaluation, and self-reaction. The idea is to engage in metacognition, which is the first step for self-regulated learning. Students have to first be able to observe their current behavior, determine the outcomes of that behavior, and decide if that outcome is acceptable.
Self-awareness can be put into action by learning and, even more importantly, using strategies for learning, studying, controlling emotions and developing and pursuing goals. One important distinction is between just knowing a strategy and being able to use that strategy in the appropriate situation.
Lastly, the authors’ model of self-regulated learning includes an aim towards sustained motivation, meaning an ongoing effort to achieve higher and better goals. The distinction made is between pursuing success as opposed to avoiding failure. The goal is to develop students who are consistently applying positive awareness, strategies and effort to constantly improve themselves and their lives, as opposed to just following the path of least resistance. Doing just enough to pass can be considered a form of self-regulated learning, but not the ideal one.