Self-Regulation of Learning By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano Sunday, October 25, 2015 Twitter: @jonacuso Post 201
“Self-Regulation is the ability to monitor and control our own behavior, emotions, or thoughts, altering them in accordance with the demands of the situation” (Cook & Cook, 2014). Self-regulation of one’s learning is an important step all students must take to take control of their own development of their knowledge. As Cook & Cook (2014) state, our pupils must be able to control their “behavior, emotions, and thoughts” to profit from instruction, research, homework, assignments, presentations, projects, and the like. As it can be seen, self-regulation plays an important part in one’s learning letting us take control of it mindfully. How can I have my learners profit from self-regulation when being in a competency-based setting? Well, self-regulation “includes the abilities to inhibit first responses, to resist interference from irrelevant stimulation, and to persist on relevant tasks even when we don’t enjoy them” (Cook & Cook, 2014). When learning are being transitioned to a competency-based course, they will be challenged by the instructor to
take control of their learning, and this will imply that they need to “inhibit first responses” such as “I don’t like this,” “This is not what I want from a course,” or “What’s the point in doing things in this way?” If students were taught with more traditional ways of learning where a grade was more important than learning, resistance to change will be faced. When moving to work independently online or with electronic materials, learners must cope with the “interference from irrelevant stimulation” such as the one coming from their social media. And needless to mention that importance of persisting on “relevant tasks” though they may not like them much or at all. Learning is fun, but there are students who do not find any taste in sampling the milk of being competent.
Being a bit mindful concerning my own learning experiences, especially when dealing with a master’s program on education (which I recently finished), the role of selfregulation was transcendental to achieve success. Comprehending that self-regulation “is the method or procedure that learners use to manage and organize their thoughts and convert them into skills used for learning” (Self-Regulation, n.d.), as a learner I saw myself managing and organizing my thoughts to deal with all the information I was being provided and the amount of projects that needed to be submitted. Mindfully, I tried to convert all those pieces of information into skills I wanted to use to learn the novelties in education and language learning. Was I successful? Sure! But self-regulation of learning has also made me think whether my partners were into regulating their learning processes.
Having been there, where my university students are right now, craving for knowledge and, most importantly, to develop competencies they can use at work, what am I to do to help them? Somehow I want to follow Zimmerman’s ideas (1990) regarding self-regulation in learning: use of self-regulated learning strategies, responsiveness to self-oriented feedback about learning effectiveness, and interdepent motivational processes. “Self-regulated students select and use self-regulated learning strategies to achieve desired academic outcomes on the basis of feedback about learning effectiveness and skill” (Zimmerman, 1990). If my students can become self-regulated, they can selfdiscover and use learning strategies that can help them achieve their academic goals for a course or a whole major. If my students can turn into self-regulated learners, they can then provide themselves –mindfully speaking- self-oriented feedback about how effective they are with their own learning, making them really take control of their construction of of their own knowledge. And if my pupils can really become self-regulated learners, they can guide or lead their interdepent motivational processes to get to really develop competencies that can really help them develop their academic life and eventually their competent professional life. “Because theories of self-regulated learning seek to explain students’ personal initiative in acquiring knowledge and skill, they all treat students’ motivational processes as interdependent with learning processes” (Zimmerman, 1990). Educators, faculty members, teachers in general must look for ways to incentivate the use of these student strategies to become mindful deep learners who can really achieve their academic goals and who can become really competent professionals. Before an instructor decides to start using a competency-based course program, it is a good idea that s/he thinks of the following: “Self-regulation is a social enterprise that involves a learner and a knowledgeable individual who can guide the learner through the process of acquiring selfregulatory skills” (Bembenutty, White, & Vélez, 2015). If an instructor is not ready yet to venture into Comptency-Based Learning, which requires self-regulation from the learner and the instructor, it is a good idea to become more confident before the launching of a
class setting where students will be in control of their learning and development of competences.
References Bembenutty, H., White, M., & VĂŠlez, M. (2015). Developing Self-Regulation of Learning and Teaching Skills Among Teacher Candidates. New York: Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg. Cook, J., & Cook, G. (2014, April 30). Self-Regulation. Retrieved from Education.Com: http://www.education.com/reference/article/self-regulation-development-skill/
Self-Regulation. (n.d.). Retrieved from University of Nebraska at Lincoln: http://cehs.unl.edu/secd/self-regulation/ Zimmerman, B. (1990). Self-Regulated Learning and Academic Achievement: An Overview. Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 3-17.