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 learners 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 self-regulation 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, developing 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 interdependent 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 self-discover 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 interdependent 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 self-regulatory 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., & Vélez, 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.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
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