The Self Regulated Learning

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Self-Regulated Learning

"Self-regulation is a self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills. Learning is viewed as an activity that students do for themselves in a proactive way rather" (Zimmerman, 2002).Theory and research on self-regulated academic learning emerged in the mid-1980s, aiming to give an answer to the question how students become masters of their own learning processes. Self-regulation is the ability to control and regulate your impulses, regardless of emotion. It is the ability to take yourself out of lazy behavior and into doing the task at hand, even if you do not "feel" like doing it. Students at almost any age are capable of self-regulated learning but this does not mean that all students take effective charge of their own learning. Self-regulated learning is time-consuming and very difficult for some students but remember, self-regulation can be taught, learned and controlled. Success for a self-regulated learner is setting goals, believing in your ability to succeed, and taking responsibility. Self-regulated learning could also be defined as an active, constructive process during which learners set goals for their learning and then try to control their own learning and reach their goals. Also the ability to self-regulate may have advantages in the course of an individual's mental life, especially within the sporting context. Many researchers have agreed with the importance of self-regulated learning for students at all academic levels. In fact, Zimmerman, an expert in this area, has found evidence of many different types of self-regulation. In Zimmerman's studies, successful students report that the use of self-regulated learning strategies accounted for most of their success in school. There are three important components of self-regulated learning that will help learners be more successful in their academic endeavors and those components are motivation, learning style and behavior.

The first component of self-regulated learning that will help students to reach academic successes is motivation. Motivation is necessary for positive academic outcomes. Student motivation deals with a student’s desire to actively participate in the learning process. It is important that students are motivated to be self-regulating. The motivation includes the various strategies that students can use to try to control and regulate their own motivation and emotions. These students are able to generate thoughts, feelings and actions on their own in order to achieve the goals that they have set in the learning process. There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsically motivation is when person motivates himself /herself. On the other hand extrinsically motivation is when the person gets motivated by friends, teachers or family. According to Zimmerman, In order for students to be self-regulated they need to be aware of their own thought process, and be motivated to actively participate in their own learning process. Self-regulated students often use motivational strategies when they are discouraged or face difficulties. Self-regulated person can motivate himself or herself to reach long term goals. For example, a person saving money for a new car can use self-regulation to stop spending money in order to save money for a new car. Research of Paul R. Pintrich in 1999 on the role of motivation in self-regulated learning has suggested three important generalizations about the relations between motivation and self-regulated learning. First is that students must feel self-efficacious that they can do the tasks. Second, students must be interested in and value the classroom tasks. Finally, students who are focused on goals of learning, understanding, and self-improvement are much more likely to be self-regulating than students who are pursuing other goals such as trying to look smarter than others. So students can use motivation to become self-regulated learners which will help them to success in academic achievements.

The second component of self-regulated learning that will help students to be academic successful is learning style. Learning is the process by which students acquire new knowledge. One of the most important things in learning style is that individuals actually have the opportunity to try to take control of their own learning and are given the chance to try tasks on their own using their learning style. Learning styles also refer to the concept that student’s process and perceive information in different ways. There are many different factors that can lead to the differences that come up within learning styles. Those factors include, personality, ability to process information, self-efficacy, sensory intake processes or some complex combination of these and other differences. Each student is different, so every student approaches the learning environment in a different way, and they usually have one learning style that is preferred over others and also that can be motivated by learning material. Learners can adopt a different learning style depending on the subject matter and current learning environment. The student's learning style usually comes from early ages and it usually gets motivated by their parents, teachers or learning material. According to Schunk and Zimmerman, students that have their own learning style will be able to set better learning goals, to implement more successful learning strategies. So if the student has already found his or her learning style it will be much easier for him /her to achieve academic successes.

Finally the third component of self-regulated learning that will help students to achieve academic successes is behavior. Dale Schunk and Barry Zimmerman define self-regulation as controlling one's own behavior. Some students are having difficulties with their behavior because all people are different and everyone has his/her own behavior. Behavior difficulties include different factors but more often they are related to the inability to maintain self-control. However, according to the theory of self-regulation, some monitoring, control and regulation is possible. So the students should motivate themselves to find the right self-regulated behavior for them. Also self-regulated behavior can be motivated by other people. It is very important for student to get the right behavior from an early age because the behavior is something that is really hard to change but it is not impossible. One of the important behaviors in self-regulatory behavior is help-seeking behavior. It is hard for some students to ask for a help and there are plenty of reasons for that, but the good motivated student with good self-regulated learning would adjust his/her level to the task and his/her goals and knows when to persist, when to ask for help, and when to stop doing the task. As soon as student gets the right behavior it will be easier for him or her to become a self-regulated learner. Most importantly students with the right behavior can be reach very high academic successes.

In conclusion, students who have mastered the process of self-regulation are much more likely to be successful in school, to learn more and to achieve at higher levels. There has been a significant increase in the number of information sources and the creation of more ways of learning. This means that improvements in the ability of knowing how to self-regulate the learning process will become an even more important goal for all educational systems.