Educational psychologists propose that people often become increasingly self-regulating over time

Question

a. Explain what they mean by the term self-regulation.
b. Identify a response you would like to see your students make in an increasingly self-regulated fashion. Then describe two specific strategies you might use to promote their self-regulation. Your strategies should be based on concepts and/or principles from educational psychology.

Answer 1

a. Self-regulation is a process of taking control of and evaluating one's own learning and behavior. (Any description that reflects this general idea is acceptable.)
b. A behavior that is appropriately self-regulated (study skills, independent seatwork, interpersonal conflict resolution, etc.) should be identified. Then, two concrete strategies should be described that reflect two or more of these recommendations:
• Provide opportunities for students to set their own goals (ideally, these goals should be challenging yet achievable).
• Have students observe and record their own behavior.
• Have students talk themselves through a task.
• Have students evaluate their own performance; possibly compare students' self-evaluations to their teacher's evaluations.
• Teach students to reinforce themselves for successful performance.
• Give students opportunities to learn without teacher assistance (through assignments that students accomplish either individually or in small groups).
• Occasionally assign activities in which students have considerable leeway regarding goals, use of time, and so on.
• Provide any scaffolding that students might initially need to help them use self-regulating strategies.
• Model self-regulating cognitive processes by "thinking aloud" about these processes.