Self-regulated learning (SRL) is one of the domains of self-regulation, and is aligned most closely with educational aims. Broadly speaking, it refers to learning that is guided by metacognition (thinking about one's thinking), strategic action (planning, monitoring, and evaluating personal progress against a standard), and motivation to learn. A self-regulated learner "monitors, directs, and regulates actions toward goals of information acquisition, expanding expertise, and self-improvement". In particular, self-regulated learners are cognizant of their academic strengths and weaknesses, and they have a repertoire of strategies they appropriately apply to tackle the day-to-day challenges of academic tasks. These learners hold incremental beliefs about intelligence (as opposed to entity, or fixed views of intelligence) and attribute their successes or failures to factors (e.g., effort expended on a task, effective use of strategies) within their control.
Finally, self-regulated learners take on challenging tasks, practice their learning, develop a deep understanding of subject matter, and exert effort towards academic success. In part, these characteristics may help to explain why self-regulated learners usually exhibit a high sense of self-efficacy. In the educational psychology literature, researchers have linked these characteristics to success in and beyond school.
Self-regulated learners are successful because they control their learning environment. They exert this control by directing and regulating their own actions toward their learning goals. Self-regulated learning should be used in three different phases of learning. The first phase is during the initial learning, the second phase is when troubleshooting a problem encountered during learning and the third phase is when they are trying to teach others.
Self-regulated learning in online and higher education
Self-regulation is an important construct in student success within an environment that allows learner choice, such as online courses. Within the remained time of explanation, there will be different types of self-regulations such as the focus is the differences between first- and second-generation college students' ability to self-regulate their online learning. A comfort level of using the computer as a control provided evidence that first-generation students report significantly lower levels of self-regulation for online learning than their second-generation counterparts. As to relating to Self-regulation, there are different strategies such as private writing techniques, which is a way as a form of text. It is a way of freewriting and journaling which are underexploited in academic writing instructions. However, it is only seen as a form of prewriting and is criticized for being under-theorized in the significance of writing a social practice that approaches drawing towards the conceptual framework of the conception of learning development. It is estimated that students who are first-year students are discovering new strategies, This can be argued that the transition from secondary to tertiary education can be challenging for students, they must adapt to the independent nature of learning at universities. Learning strategies are rarely taught at universities, making it difficult for students to learn new strategies. The significance is evaluating small-group peer discussion boards as an avenue for sharing learning strategies between students in a first-year anatomy and physiology course. It is believed that students perceive the outlining process, and students in business communication courses were surveyed about their perceptions of outlining. It is said that students were asked about how they outline, whether they outline, and why they outline. The significance was students were able to include organization within the outlining process and include content exploration which made it useful for students whose process included only organization or only content exploration. Leading to the supposition that there is critical analysis in student writing such as functional linguistics being presented. In a way where there were trainee teachers who were asked to write a form of descriptive writing to students attempting critical analysis. Although descriptive writing has an important role in learning for students. It is said that the discussion of critical analysis is realized in student writing. Resulting in the importance of self-regulation in online learning, particularly with first-year and second-year college-generation students. First-generation students tend to report lower levels of self-regulation, in a way as a comfort level with using computers. Strategies such as private writing techniques and peer discussion boards can help students develop effective learning strategies, especially in the transition from secondary to tertiary education. Additionally, the outlining process and critical analysis in student writing are vital components of academic success. Overall, fostering self-regulation and providing support for diverse learning strategies are essential for students' success in online courses.
Phases of self-regulation According to Winne and Hadwin, self-regulation unfolds over "four flexibly sequenced phases of recursive cognition."Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (2008). The weave of motivation and self-regulated learning. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Motivation and self-regulated learning: Theory, research, and applications (p. 297–314). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. These phases are task perception, goal setting and planning, enacting, and adaptation.
During the task perception phase, students gather information about the task at hand and personalize their perception of it. This stage involves determining motivational states, self-efficacy, and information about the environment around them.
Next, students set goals and plan how to accomplish the task. Several goals may be set concerning explicit behaviors, cognitive engagement, and motivation changes. The goals that are set depend on how the students perceive the task at hand.
The students will then enact the plan they have developed by using study skills and other useful tactics they have in their repertoire of learning strategies.
The last phase is an adaptation, wherein students evaluate their performance and determine how to modify their strategy in order to achieve higher performance in the future. They may change their goals or their plan; they may also choose not to attempt that particular task again. Winne and Hadwin state that all academic tasks encompass these four phases.
Zimmerman suggested that self-regulated learning process has three stages:
Forethought, learners' preparing work before the performance on their studying; Volitional control, which is also called "performance control", occurs in the learning process. It involves learners' attention and willpower; Self-reflection happens in the final stage when learners review their performance toward final goals. Focusing on one's learning strategies during the process also helps towards achieving the learning outcomes.
Baba and Nitta (2015) demonstrated that Zimmerman's cyclical self-regulatory processes can be extended to longer periods of time and self-reflection has a close connection to second language writing development. From a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory perspective, Wind and Harding (2020) found that attractor states might negatively affect the cyclicality of self-regulatory processes.
Sources of self-regulated learning According to Iran-Nejhad and Chissom, there are three sources of self-regulated learning: active/executive, dynamic, and interest-creating discovery model (1992).
Active/executive self-regulation is regulated by the person and is intentional, deliberate, conscious, voluntary, and strategic. The individual is aware and effortful in using self-regulation strategies. Under this source of SRL, learning happens best in a habitual mode of functioning.
Dynamic self-regulation is also known as unintentional learning because it is regulated by internal subsystems other than the "central executive". The learner is not consciously aware they are learning because it occurs "outside the direct influence of deliberate internal control."
The third source of self-regulated learning is the interest-creating discovery module, which is described as "bifunctional" as it is developed from both the active and dynamic models of self-regulation. In this model, learning takes place best in a creative mode of functioning and is neither completely person-driven nor unconscious, but a combination of both.
Social cognitive perspective Self-regulation from the social cognitive perspective looks at the triadic interaction between the person (e.g., beliefs about success), their behavior (e.g., engaging in a task), and the environment (e.g., feedback from a teacher). Zimmerman et al. specified three important characteristics of self-regulated learning: self-observation (monitoring one's activities); seen as the most important of these processes self-judgment (self-evaluation of one's performance) and self-reactions (reactions to performance outcomes).
To the extent that one accurately reflects about one's progress towards a learning goal, and appropriately adjusts the actions to be performed in order to maximize performance and foreseeable outcome; effectively, at this point, one's self has become self-regulated. During a student's school career, the primary goal of teachers is to produce self-regulated learners by using such theories as the Information Processing Model (IPM). By storing the information into long-term memory (or a live document like a Runbook) the learner can retrieve it upon demand and apply meta-learning to tasks, and thereby become a self-regulated learner.
Information processing perspective Winne and Marx posited that motivational thoughts and beliefs are governed by the basic principles of cognitive psychology, which should be conceived in information-processing terms. Motivation plays a major role in self-regulated learning. Motivation is needed to apply effort and continue on when faced with difficulty. Control also plays a role in self-regulated learning as it helps the learner to stay on track in reaching their learning goal and avoid being distracted from things that stand in the way of the learning goal.
Student performance perspective Lovett, Meyer and Thille observed comparable student performance between instructor-led and self-regulated learning environments. In a subsequent study, self-regulated learning was shown to enable accelerated learning while maintaining long-term retention rates."JIME - The Open Learning Initiative: Measuring the Effectiveness of the OLI Statistics Course in Accelerating Student Learning"
Cassandra B. Whyte noted the importance of internal locus of control tendencies on successful academic performance, also compatible with self-regulated learning. Whyte recognized and appreciated external factors, to include the benefit of working with a good teacher, while encouraging self-regulated hard work, skill-building, and a positive attitude to perform better in academic situations.
To increase positive attitudes and academic performance, expert learners should be created. Expert learners develop self-regulated learning strategies. One of these strategies is the ability to develop and ask questions and use these questions to expand on their own prior knowledge. This technique allows the learners to test the true understanding of their knowledge and make correction about content areas that have a misunderstanding. When learners engage in questioning, it forces them to be more actively engaged in their learning. It also allows them to self analyze and determine their level of comprehension.