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The purpose of the literature review and empirical studies reported here was to add to self-regulated learning (SRL) research by addressing two questions. First, what is the role of the self in self-regulated learning? There is a curious paradox in SRL research, where self-regulation is considered to be of paramount importance, yet the role of the self in this regulation has largely been ignored. Second, what do self-regulated learners regulate? The regulation in SRL theory generally refers to students' regulation of cognition by use of various learning strategies; although schooling also has affective outcomes, how students regulate affect has not been examined. An open-ended measure of college students' (n = 127) present and possible academic self-schemas was administered and its relations to motivational beliefs and cognitive engagement were examined. Correlational analyses showed that students' evaluations of the importance, likelihood, and sense of instrumentality regarding different self-schemas were positively related to self-reports of motivational beliefs and cognitive engagement, suggesting that the self merits greater consideration in our models of SRL. Responses to a self-report questionnaire (n = 127) and a stimulated recall interview (n = 12) showed that two motivational strategies, defensive pessimism and self-handicapping, were indeed related to students' motivational beliefs and cognitive engagement. While self-regulated learners are generally portrayed as intrinsically motivated, low-anxious, cognitively engaged individuals, the strategy of defensive pessimism demonstrates how performance concerns and anxiety can actually promote cognitive engagement. The strategy of self-handicapping suggests that low motivation and low cognitive engagement may not necessarily be evidence of failure to self-regulate one's learning. Indeed, self-handicapping students' regulation instead involves engaging in low effort, effectively creating an attributional ambiguity which maximizes ability evaluations. The research presented here indicates that the role of the self and the role of motivational strategies are important factors in SRL. Incorporating self-schemas and motivational strategies in our models of SRL seems to be a promising way of factoring in the self and affect-related concerns to the learning process. |
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