SRL
(self-regulated learning)
What is SRL?
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1. Planning
This task is related to getting familiar with the procedure of the individual assignments of this course and with the two first reading materials. This first task covers the theme of Self-Regulated Learning from the general and theoretical perspectives, including a definition and the processes involved, but it also includes, from the scope of the developmental approach, the idea that the regulation of one’s self is a continuous and adaptive process, thus its importance for learning.
My solo task will be structured in three main parts; (1) reading of the materials and note-taking. (2) Reflection based on the notes and the lectures and (3) writing of the blog post.
In regards to the theme of this task, relevant related-concepts are;
(Areas for regulation): cognition, affect/motivation, behavior and context.
(Phases for regulation): forethought and planning, monitoring, control and reflection.
Learning strategies, adaptation and maladaptation, self regulation, self-efficacy, agency, goal orientation, mastery orientation, performance orientation and ego orientation, approach focus, avoidance focus, positive effort-ability covariation and positive effort-outcome covariation.
My goal for this task is to get a clear and personal idea of what SRL means and how to start becoming a better learner by identifying myself with the key elements of the readings, and after, reflecting about it for an implementation in future situations.
I believe I will find the way to understand the readings; in terms of covering the material I will devote enough time for the mandatory readings, but I am not sure if I will have time for the extra reading. I always tend to take with me the materials when I am doing some other things (like going to work or while waiting in the FabLab), just in case I have time in between my duties. Then, about the second part of my goal, I think I cannot achieve it in its totality now because becoming a better self-regulated learner applies to my life from now on. However, I can track and monitor my progress. To me, SRL makes you more adaptive, and as long as you are aware that learning always happens, even in repeated situations, you can benefit from it. Even if this it is not a short-term goal, I will take what I learn from this task to future situations, and for becoming a better self-regulator. For that purpose I am persistent.
2. ICE notes
I will describe two main ideas in regards to the readings and the lecture. The first one is related to the motivational control in terms of self-efficacy and its implications, and the second idea refers to the process of regulation as an active and intentional mechanism.
Firstly, I found specially interesting the reasons or attempts to control one’s self efficacy in terms of motivation. Things like positive self talk, extrinsic rewards or making the activity personally meaningful, are positive perspectives for controlling one’s self efficacy but also it seems that defensive pessimism is beneficial too. Self efficacy is defined as the personal evaluation of one’s capability to reach a desired task goal (Usher and Schunk, 2017) and defensive pessimism consists on having or setting low expectations about your performance in order to harness negative affect or anxiety as a way of increasing motivation (Garcia and Pintrich, 1994; Norem and Cantor, 1986 in Pintrich, 2000).
Nevertheless, for me it is shocking that defensive pessimism can be a positive attempt to regulate your motivation. By setting low expectations about your performance or the achievement of a goal in a specific task, you are definitely, avoiding the fact that making mistakes will lead you to perform better in a near future. According Kaplan and Midgley (1997) and Middleton and Midgley (1997) in Pintrich (2000) the avoidance of performance goals seems to be detrimental for the performance per se, and for the level of intrinsic motivation of the student. In addition, Higgins (1997 in Pintrich, 2000) suggests that according to the general goal theory, the avoidance mastery goal approach will have negative implications for the student because of setting the focus of the task on not being wrong. Moreover, interest will be lower and self efficacy too.
The intrinsic value of your efficacy, that apart of strengthening one’s self esteem also leads you to perform better, will be always doomed by the false sense of security created by your low expectations. I wonder if by using scaffolding, someone who normally set low expectations would recognize the need of extra help (explained in the articles as help seeking; related to better self-regulators) to perform better. This idea is of help seeking is related to Vygotski's ZPD, thus, to me it is even more convincing that setting low expectations is never an efficient way of regulating. For instance, if someone always sets his or her expectations low in order to avoid failure, is it not riskier to allow to set low expectations than to be mistaken? Is it not even worse to use a maladaptive strategy to self-handicap yourself because it will give you a false sense of reality that you will interpret as positive?
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For instance, I believe I have used this strategy before when I was a junior basketball player, and it may did work for at believing efficacious with my level of performance, but my level of motivation was continuously decreasing. My commitment to the team was the same but my own goals differed from the ones my coach and my peers set. Sometimes I was not taking the responsibilities on the court that I should have taken as a player. I was a afraid of my insecurities and always stayed in my comfort zone, lowering the expectations of my performance and achieving my lower goals. However, I did not see that any improvement of my skills compared to my team mates and affected my emotional and motivational levels. Thus, I had to decide to stop handicapping myself and to accept my own weaknesses as objectives and increasing my motivation by focusing on my strengths because it provides me positive responses (interest enhancement). For example, I know am not very skilled and ball-handling but I have a good shooting technique, then I will focus on practicing to shoot after a specific handling (crossover, in between legs, behind the back...).
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Secondly, in line with the previous idea, from the first lecture where SRL was introduced, the term regulation caught my attention. I remember I wrote down that it is a strategic adaptation; a trigger in a metacognitive level. It appears as a cyclical and intentional phenomena. This idea implies the need of proactivity in the processes of self observation, evaluation and reaction but also in the level of application of the metacognitive mechanisms. Bandura argues that humans have developed a capacity for reflective self-conciousness (Usher and Schunk, 2017) before, during and after a task, thus the need of this agency for regulation. The term agency is defined as the ability to intentionally direct the course of events and circumstances in one's life, and to choose one's reaction to them (Bandura, 2016 in User and Schunk, 2017. p.20). Bandura also points out that the ability to examine our actions, thoughts and feelings enables people to influence their future actions, thoughts and performances (p.20) and the most powerful and influential of the self-reflective judgments is self-efficacy, which has a strong link with better self-regulation process and higher perseverance when dealing with difficulties (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2014 in Usher and Schunk, 2017). In summary, by firstly, being able to identify and choose the best strategies according to your individual capacities, necessities and affections and the requirements of the task or environment, that the individual as a reflective and active self is aware of, by secondly, monitor the processes involved, the own participation, emotions and result, by finally reflecting about the planning and monitoring and by making general assumptions and attempts for future tasks, the active participation of the self in his or her own regulation, is conformed.
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3. Reflection
My solo phase took longer than expected. I thought the reading of the articles will take me less time, and I made the mistake of not taking notes from the very beginning of the process. I had my notes on the computer but, then I decided to reread from the beginning my annotations and take notes then. However, I did succeed in my determination. I read when I had free time and when I was in my way to work. For future tasks, I will split the readings into more days to have more time for reflections.
In terms of my self-efficacy, I wanted to identify how my own self-regulation is, and I noticed that sometimes I am extremely hard to myself when I see the outcome of my task, because I always try to set high expectations for my performances. To me, is self-fulfilling when the outcome meets my expectations, but when it does not, I like to know where I failed. I consider this is a positive way of perceiving mistakes by thinking about improving, but sometimes I feel that where I failed in a task, it is only for that specific task, and that it is not always transferable to a more general situation.
However, I did face challenges. On Saturday, I could not devote the time I wanted and even the time I was working on this task I could not concentrate, or my strategies were not the appropriate for the context where I was working. Then, I decided to stop doing this task and move it to today, and the time I lost then, had to be taken from my sleeping time. Also, I would mention that for 30 minutes I felt lost and stressed because I did not make a decision whether I should stop working or try to work even if I was not being productive. Sometimes working and not being productive makes me be less comfortable with my performance. For that reason, during that time I was feeling anxious, until I decided not to work then.
For the future, when planning, I will remember to be less hard to myself for the outcome, but without self-handicapping or using defensive pessimism as an attempt to control my motivation. Also, I would spend more time for planning, monitoring that I follow the plan and for writing the posts. This last part also takes time for me. However, in terms of the procedure, I am satisfied with the strategies I used for reading the materials and I am sure that I will use my notes throughout this course. Also, I would like to go through the additional material before the writing of the next posts.
Course Material:
Usher, E.L. & Schunk D.H. (2018) Social cognitive theoretical perspective of self-regulation. In Schunk D.H & Greene J.A. (Eds.), Handbook of Self-regulation of Learning and Performance 2 nd Ed.
Pintrich, P. R. (2000). The Role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 451–502). Academic Press. http://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012109890-2/50043-3
HUOM! One personal experience has been added to this post as an example.
Models of SRL
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1. Planning:
My solo tasks encompasses the reading of the two compulsory articles: Attaining Self-Regulation: A Social Cognitive Perspective and Studying as self-regulated learning; and the additional article A Review of Self-regulated Learning: Six Models and Four Directions for Research. These articles depict the different models of SRL described by the most acknowledged researchers in the field.
Before the reading of the study material I planned on Monday 14th the following aspects:
- Read articles before Sunday.
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- Revise my notes from the lesson and connect with the my prior knowledge
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- On Sunday evening a draft of the blog post has to be completed
At that time I was convinced that I would succeed in following my plan. I also had a positive experience from the previous post, which has conditioned my expectations and made me set a similar or even higher goal. Moreover, I found the articles from the previous post very meaningful and interesting. Specially because it made me aware of how, me as a learner, deals with goal orientation and how it affects to my posterior beliefs about the task, but also served as a starting point for setting my goals for each task and for the course itself. At the beginning of this task, a recompilation of factors, learning strategies, monitoring processes and other relevant issues that made me perform according to my personal goals, have been summarised.
For this current task, the main topics found in the readings are: metacognition, metacognitive monitoring, metacognitive control, self-instructions, self-control, bottom-up, up-down.
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The main theories and models:
Social cognitive perspective: Triadic view and cyclical phases of self regulation.
(MASRL) Metacognitive and Affective Model of Self-Regulated Learning: Person level and Task x person level. COPES, SMART operations.
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2. ICE notes:
The first remarkable idea I had, came into my mind when reading Zimmerman’s article. In his cyclical phases of self-regulation model, in the part of performance/ volitional control, I found very interesting the part of self-control, specially self-instruction, as a strategy for learning. Self-instruction encompasses the techniques to take advantage of the fact that language is often used to self-regulate behaviour. Self-instruction interventions involve the use of induced self-statements to direct or self-regulate behaviour (Graham et al., 1992 in Reid & Lienemann, 2006. p. 78). Not only these instructions can determine future choices but can determine and influence cognition.
Firstly, Piaget coined this term to the speech carried alone by a child, and he did not give any cognitive neither developmental function to it. To him, this process remains in the “unsocialized” stage of the young child (Harris, 1990). On the other hand from Vygotsky’s perspective there is a link with cognition. In the development of self-intellect and thought, plays a central role the development and internalisation of private/self-speech. He observed that the self-regulatory speech fostered cognitive functions such as orienting, organising and structuring behaviour. Moreover, he sees the private speech as critical as language is to the development of self-regulation. To Vygostky, children make use of their private speech to consciously understand or focus on a problem or situation and to overcome difficulties (Harris, 1990. p.37). He also includes a social perspective in this mater when argues that the child-adult dyad is the base for metacognition. This dyad is an integrated social system where the adult acts as an enhancer of the child’s ZPD (zone of proximal development) and he is first responsible for several aspects of the regulation of the child in order to accomplish the goal. Luria, who was Vygotsky’s student, continued his research in self-instructions in the field of self-regulated learning and conceived this speech as intraindividual. His studies have shown the three stages in children’s development of verbal self-regulation strategies: First, the speech of others controls and directs the child’s behaviour. Secondly, the child’s speech begins to regulate his/her behaviour and third, the meaning of the speech effectively regulates the behaviour (Harris, 1990. p.38). This suggests that self-instructions have to be modelled in order to be efficient and trustable.
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Regardless of the nature of this strategy, I see a direct link also with metacognition monitor and control. By enacting what is being done at the moment and what has to be done by the active learner; a comparison in a level-object information with a meta-standard is constituted. To what extent this can be executed, is an issue regarding the capabilities of the learner and his/her willingness to do it. However, this consideration does suggest and need a conscience or metacognitive awareness in the activity. This is an inborn capacity, but aspects of our cognition have a direct influence on them, for instance attention and perception of a stimuli (in this case in the performance during the task).
For this reason, since my background as an educator is related to in special needs in education, I have put in question the role of metacognition for students with learning disabilities and more in detail for self-instruction techniques. These techniques have demonstrated effectiveness when being applied in a learning context, whether academic and non academic. Self instructions can be taught through modeling to the learner having as the a final goal that the student is able to make his or her own statements (Graham et al., 1992 in Reid & Lienemann, 2006). I have seen this method in a real-life context in two different situations. In one case, the student (A) had a learning disability that affected A’s most basic cognitive processes. A was taught the basic arithmetic operations following this strategies and later was able to solve some basic operations by repeating the instructions. The speech looked like this:
Teacher: What is the result 3 + 6?
What do you have to show me?
A:
- First, I show 3 fingers on this hand and 6 fingers on the other
- Now I count: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
- there are 9 fingers
- 9
This is an easy example of that what A started with, but as soon as A did not continue using self instructions, the efficacy when solving operations and the ability to use proper self-instructions decreased considerably. Not only A was taught self-instructions for academic purposes but also for daily issues like washing hands, dressing up, use of school facilities and so. Students like A, or with other learning disabilities, might have problems with the understanding of the task itself but also in recalling the information needed for that task, where metacognitnion plays an important role. For teaching A something new, the teachers always showed the meta-standard (a real performance of the task); and then broke down into smaller steps the goal. After, for a better acquisition of the information, the teachers used a system of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). This systems are a visual representation and an aid for those students with lack of verbal understanding. In this case, this AAC was created by me to show the different steps for acquiring a behavioural goal.
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Once the model is presented and the AAC supports the learning of the steps, the student needs to storage the steps so that they can be enacted. Then, A could use certain metacognitive skills when intentionally tries to recall the steps. However, A’s metacognitive skills were immensely determined by the learning disability and rarely was able to control his/her behaviour. One of the drawbacks of self-instructions when learning, is that the actions normally drive the person to the acquisition of that goal but not towards the active monitoring and conscious control of the speech during the process of performing the task.
On the other hand, student (B) showed a medium grade of severity of autism. Some of the main features of autistics are: the need of a structured environment; a dysfunction in their executive process of their cognition; stereotyped and repetitive speeches with lack of social or intentional function of language and a malfunction in the theory of mind, also known as mindblindness or mentalizing. This provokes that they are not able to see or understand other’s cognition unless a they are trained in developing their mentalizing skills (Baron-Cohen, 2008). For this reason, I believe self-instructions can help the learner to: set the point where he/she is in a task, understand the task and find how far is from finalising. Nevertheless, because of the stereotypes, self instructions can be a source of risk.
To conclude with this idea, I belief that self instruction can make a big difference for learning, specially among students with learning disabilities or special conditions. My intention was to discuss the role of these strategies in relation to metacognition, and the cases detailed definitely depicted situations where the was a lack of this activity. For that reason, I consider that the use of self-instruction brings the opportunity to make an act more conscious, that otherwise could be unrecognised, and therefore train metacognitive skills. We are not born with these skills already developed, but we have the capacity to do improve them. In the case of students with special needs, I also believe that metacognition can be trained to a certain level and self-instructions can be a way to start doing it.
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The second idea that caught my attention, has to do also with metacognition. In this case I found interesting the study carried out by Wong & LeMare (1982) where their research was focused on testing the forming of meta-level standards based on a given input or not in a reading comprehension activity. The result found that the students with extra input not only recalled better but also demonstrated to be better in setting their meta-level standard than those who did not receive the input. Thus, the activating of prior knowledge or receiving an input before a certain task could enhance the metacognitive engagement of students. However, as the authors point out those questions cannot be generalised because of the lack of evidence in the link between familiarity of the task and metacognition, but there is evidence that the students can form certain positive perceptions about it (Winne & Hadwin, 1998) that, to me might lead them to a better performance.
Also, I believe that the students who got the input, where lead to a top-down process rather than to bottom-up. The reason is found on the formation of a perception about the task. According to Efklides, in “the person level” (top-down) the student decide the amount of effort she/he is willing to spend based on the perception of the tasks and its demands (Efklides, 2011, in Panadero, 2017), therefore, with a given input the chances to a better metacognitive engagement increases. On the other hand, in “the task x person level” (bottom-up) the focus is on the task and the metacognitive skills are directed to addressing in a more concrete objective the task’s demands.
From my perspective, I see the metacognitive processes in both cases, but I am skeptical with the understanding of metacognition as the task fulfilment. Nowadays we are more and more using learning methods that give abundant freedom to the students when learning. Examples, are open-ended, problem-based and inquiry-based projects, collaboration among groups, communities of practice, online learning and also other perspectives as constructivism and constructionism theories. My doubts concern the role of metacognition in a more hands-on work activity than in a memory-based one. I place metacognition in between the division of knowledge instruction and knowledge construction. I feel that both approaches are necessary for learning but I might need to do more research for answering my questions.
3. Reflection:
Firstly, I would start saying that I did follow my plan but I did not achieve the goals I set for it for several reasons. Firstly, because of time. I set my goal expecting that during the weekend I would work on it, but in the end I spent more time in other tasks and duties. The deadline was only for me, and I knew I could still work on it later, so there was not pressure from that perspective. Secondly, was frustrated by the amount of tasks piling up on my desk. I have not procrastinated them that much, but in this following weeks everything has to be finished, (and will be finished). These are my intrinsic and extrinsic motivational beliefs. Thirdly, I have reduced my expectations to obtain clear answers to my questions from the articles, in order to promote my critical thinking and therefore understanding. My goal is not to simply paraphrase or repeat what I read, but to question the concepts that I find interesting and do research about them.
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The fact that I monitored and restructured my plan was possible because there was no “deadline” and that it is me who defines the study path and the timing. When I modified my plan, I did not do any planning for the timing since it might be the case like the previous plan. However, I set mastery goals in terms of understanding the articles, and to do so I set a standard: to be able to extract my own conclusions about metacognition. In the same line, I also found that this three following weeks are going to be a little bit hard because of the academic load and because of my work. For that reason I have counted and reorganised the hours that I have for my academic duties by setting my preferences. Also, I have devoted one hour extra in the mornings to read and write, since I have noticed that I am more focused for reading and that my writing quality can be examined in the afternoon. In normal conditions I would not need to do that, but the fact that I am committed to it and that I follow my plan, reinforces me positively and makes me be engaged in the activity.
For this task there was a big need of perseverance. It has cost me time and effort to come to an end with it because of the material. I did not understand well the topics at first and I had had to read the papers several times. However, I did not give up. Getting up early in the morning before my other lectures has reinforced my commitment to the mastery goal I set for myself. Before starting this course I still cared just a little about the grades I will get during my studies. However, after discussing about goal orientation and after having contact with some other aspects of the regulation of learning, I set my goal for this course and for the master. I rather prefer to know what I am learning that to show what I learn for a simple external evaluation. I do expect that what I learn is not going to be totally shown in a grade. It sounds simplistic and vague to say I do not mind the grade I will obtain. Indeed it is not like that, and neither it is a defensive pessimism strategy nor self-handicapping. My aim is to achieve my own feeling of self efficacy in SRL context (metastandard) by the creation and seek of deep understanding and the use of superior cognitive strategies through the individual and group tasks, (products in the object-level). Nevertheless, this is my only and personal belief that might work only for me.
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Course material:
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Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Attaining Self-Regulation: A Social Cognitive Perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation (pp. 1–35). Academic Press.
Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 277– 304). Routledge.
Panadero, E. (2017. A Review of Self-regulated Learning: Six Models and Four Directions for Research. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.)
List of references:
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Reid, R., Lienemann, T. O., & Hagaman, J. L. (2006). Strategy instruction for students with learning disabilities. Guilford Press.
Harris, K. R. (1990). Developing self-regulated learners: The role of private speech and self-instructions. Educational psychologist, 25(1), 35-49.
Baron-Cohen, S. (2008). Autism and Asperger syndrome. Oxford University Press.
Motivation and Emotions in SRL
1. Planning:
For this task I will read the two compulsory articles thoughtfully and If there is time, the extra reading too. I presume that for this task I will count with less time because of other projects, however I have made a schedule for the finalising of it.
By the end of this reading and reflection, I expect to gain insights in the field of motivation regulation and its application to enact or enhance cognitive process and strategies. I believe I will use strategies that have worked in the past; for structuring ideas: note-taking and paraphrasing; for reading: the tablet and the pdf document reader, earplugs and abundant light; for the planning: check my calendar and week planner for choosing the days for reading and writing, divide the articles in two parts, set working times of 90 minutes; for the writing of the blog post: reading my personal notes, from the lecture and the articles, and share them with my colleagues and relatives and finally, for monitoring: check that I am following the main structure of my plan, assess my comprehension by taking mental pictures of my notes and by creating questions about the topics (Why is defensive pessimism a maladaptive strategy for goal setting?) and to try to answer them when discussing with colleagues and relatives. Finally, I have set a deadline for this post because of the lack of time.
For this blog post, the meaningful terms and concepts extracted from the lecture and the articles are: Self efficacy, well-being and growth pathways, causal attribution, coping strategies, Dual Processing self-regulation model, appraisals.
Individual interest, situational interest, motivational regulation strategies: goal-oriented self-talk, self-consequating, interest enhancement, environmental structuring, self-handicapping.
Efficacy management: goal setting, defensive pessimism and efficacy-self talk.
Goal setting: I aim to write this post including practical and real examples of how motivation affects in when doing an activity. Also, I want to read in detail about the different strategies for regulating motivation, for applying the ones that suit better in a near last post. Finally I want to to have this blog post finished by the 9th of December.
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2. ICE notes:
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The role of self efficacy as a motivational indicator or motivational regulator when joining a task and the regulation strategies embedded.
The first idea I would like to comment is the judgement of self efficacy in terms of motivational affairs. Self efficacy beliefs depict an insight of the self and play an important role in the learner’s identification level of awareness and also in the regulation of motivation. However, they do not include any deliberate thoughts or actions by the learner (Bandura, 1997 in Wolters 2003). For this reason it can be possible that students may avoid doing something because they feel not enough efficacious. This judgement, show an emotional response to the issue, but to the extent where this is deliberatively understood by the learner, depends on the willingness to intentionally manage the conditions that will make him/her efficacious.
If the student has the opportunity to choose what activity, task or action can take, then there is room for motivation regulation. However, my question is to which extent and how does the motivation regulation happen in an imposed task. Boekaerts define protecting one’s commitment as a purpose of self-regulation of motivation, but if there is not intrinsic motivation, how is this possible? For example, if a young learner is obliged to do sports because, his/her coordination and motor skills are deficient, and their parents think a sport may be helpful for such thing. In here I see several options that could happen. I will reflect this idea under the Boekaerts’ pathways for self-regulation of motivation and from the adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies stated by Lazarus and Folkman (1984).
Firstly, it can be the case that the student enjoys the activity and his emotional regulation leads him to master his skills to a better level. The appraisals the student will make during this process are referred to his own performance in comparison to his internal and external demands. His internal demands will be managed by his own regulation and interest will be raised if he/she feels this process as something positive. On the other hand, the environment will bring external factors to the equation that may not be imperatively affecting the student’s commitment but that can act as reinforcements, and in some cases as driving forces. For example, to please his/her parents, coach and peers and have a feeling of belonging and usefulness, but also can be as a source of metacognitive knowledge from a co-regulator, like a parent, teacher or and advanced peer (Winnie, 1995 in Boekaerts, 2011). The role of the trainer and peers is highly valuable for the emotional regulation of the learner when the actual learning takes place. Modeling strategies and guided discovery learning are the two main instruction methods used in the teaching sports skills where the facilitator/instructor (coach or pair) not only shares knowledge but influences the motivation and emotional levels. In addition, the parents have an important role as well in the emotional regulation of the kids, and have to pay special attention to avoid possible discrepancies with the trainer’s opinions. In sum, coaches have an arduous task for maintaining in the right path the emotional regulation of the players, and all the players as a team, have the need to co-regulate the team’s emotional state in order to maintain cohesion. For example, before a match, the coach and the players can have a meeting in the locker room to discuss their game and what they want to focus on. One of the strategies they can use is the structuring of the environment. It includes the external factors that influence the motivation and emotional levels of the players. In that line, every player can listen to a song that inspire and motivate him/her and the captain can give a speech for co-regulating the groups’ motivation. Finally, during the activity, players can use goal-oriented self talk to increase their motivation. For example: If I get the ball I will make a basket or I know I can defend that player, I am capable of it.
Secondly, if the student feels the activity as threatening or does not feel engaged but still have to do it, he/she can create a negative or maladaptive response to this issue by a bottom up approach. The task or activity is not the main focus anymore, but the prevention of any kind of damage is going to be the essential part, thus according to Boekaerts he/she is taking the well-being pathway. In addition, according to Lazarus and Folkman's dichotomy, the student can cope with this situation from two main approaches that are not independent: problem-focused and emotion-focused. At some point there can be overlapping in between them, and the learner can switch from one to the other. However, I think that this dichotomy is best explained as a sequence of one coping strategy after the other. On the one hand, he/she can delivery and actively monitor and control the source of stress and try to change it. In this case the student has to analyse where is the stress coming from: pressure from parents, coach or peers, lack of skills… and on the other hand, the learner can use his/her emotional state to evaluate the situation and come with responses like, worrying, avoiding, regulating. The resolutions he/she can come with have to be directed to the stress factors in any case, but should be temporary. I believe that doing something where you feel threatened or not comfortable, is not beneficial in the long run, however the coping strategies can help you overcoming the issue.
For instance, in several situations, players are frustrated and the environment do not contribute to decrease their anxiety. It can be that parents report to their children that they do not seem to enjoy the activity. Very often players explain that they do not agree with the decisions made by the coach and that should play more minutes in the match, because they consider they do not skip practices and/or practice harder than their teammates, or they think they deserve it simply because they have better skills than them. Parents tend to please their children and sometimes co-regulate their emotions in a non-effective way. It is my belief that disagreeing with the trainer’s opinion is not negative if it is approached in a constructive way. Parents can suggest the practitioner to discuss with the coach the issues that concern him/her and by doing this the players can regulate better their emotions and motivation.
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Situational interest vs individual interest. Can we create interest?
In the lecture held by professor Hanna Järvenoja the topic of interest and how it affects to motivation was discussed. She explained the two types of interests as situational and individual, having the first one an intrinsic social nature. In this line, she argued that situational interest tend to be shorter in duration and that includes contextual aspects, whereas individual interests affects to one’s values and knowledge.
To begin with this discussion, it is worth mentioning the definition of interest. Krapp (2002) described interest as a relational construct that consists of a more or less enduring relationship between a person and an object (in Schiefele, 2009 p.197). This author also points out that interest represents an antecedent for motivation but related to a specific object, topic or field of study.
There are two forms of situational interest, that differ in their duration. Firslty, they described triggered situational interest as related to the induction of attention for a short period of time. For example using catch facets such as individual exploring, mind teasers, starters… On the other hand, maintained situational interest as lasting for a longer period. These authors argue that the reason of their duration is found in the meaningfulness of these facets. There has to be a meaningful reason to keep engaged in the activity (Hidi & Baird (1986) & Mitchell (1993) in Schiefele, 2009). On the other hand, individual interest is described as a stable set of valence beliefs, in other words, a self-affective and evaluative orientation towards a certain domain (Schiefele, 2009).
Gottfredson (2002, in Schiefele, 2009) describes four phases in the development of individual interest in a specific context. Firstly, interest is situational and triggered, which causes a high emotional response. Secondly, it develops to maintained situational interest. For this task is important to remark the meaningfulness of the topic or activity, and thus Gottfredson describes project based learning, peer to peer and group work as meaningful approaches for maintained interest. Therefore, the focus switches to a more active and participative role of the students. Thirdly, situational interest is transformed into emerging individual interest when the student forms positive feels and values in the topic or task, enduring his/her valence beliefs. Finally, individual interest develops with stronger valence beliefs and with the storage of knowledge. Individuals who show more intense and varied valence beliefs, sustain long-term and constructive endeavours and also persist when difficulties arise (Schiefele, 2009).
I may say that I totally feel identified with this explanation of interest and its link to motivation. Last year I was collaborating in a school and once I was talking with a technology teacher about the ICTs the school had. I have always being interested in how technologies work and what we can do with them. He told me they had purchased a 3D printer last summer but he had struggled to mount it since he had not the required knowledge. However, he said there were some tutorials on the internet about this exact model. I suggested him that I could help him to build it, if he wanted. My personal interest was just situated and triggered. Lately, I maintained that interest while watching the videos, taking notes, making diagrams and exploring some other materials. My valence beliefs were being reinforced. During the time we were building the printer I had to study and revise content, some I knew and some other that I did not, about electronics, circuits and 3D printer components. As a result, my knowledge was expanded. In certain moments we were blocked and our motivation decreased, but we did not give up, we simply reappraised the problems from multiple perspectives, and asked for professional help. Finally, we were printing and that was such a satisfactory feeling. We both are still individually interested thanks to the positive, constructive and valuable experience we had.
3. Reflection:
I have enjoyed the reading and reflections on this topics. However, During the time I was writing I have had to regulate my motivation and emotions due to the load of academic work. I have had the feeling that my organising strategies did improve and helped me succeeding and achieving my objectives according to a more realistic plan. Nevertheless, I think I have spent too much time in reading for one ICE note and therefore my motivation decreased. This issue had affected my efficacy and I had used strategies like, proximal goal-setting, self-talk and environmental structuring. I also think that I tried to enhance my interest in the activity seeing the topic as useful for my future as an educator. The regulation of emotions in the class is essential for a better self-regulation of learning and for building a positive and healthy self-esteem.
For the next blog post, I believe I will monitor more in detail my motivation throughout the whole process and try to finish the post the earlier. I will use the strategies mentioned at the beginning of this post for the reading of the materials and also the ones suggested by Boekaerts and Wolters for the emotional and motivational aspects of my learning.
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Course Material:
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Boekaerts, M. (2011). Emotions, emotion regulation, and self-regulation of learning. In Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance. (pp. 408–425).
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Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of SelfRegulated Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38 (4), pp. 189-205.
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List of references:
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Schiefele, U. (2009). Situational and Individual interest. (pp.197-223) In Wentzel, K. R., & Miele, D. B. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of motivation at school. Routledge.
Cognition and Metacognition in SRL
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1. Planning:
For this task I aim to write a blog post in two days after reading the materials. I already count with some advantages like having read one of the articles in a previous lesson and having prepared the teaching session about this topic. For those reasons, I feel confident and motivated to pursuit my objective.
In terms of time management and structuring of my work, I will read thoroughly the article Metacognition and learning: conceptual and methodological considerations and revise my notes from the article Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring. A new Area of Cognitive-Developmental Inquiry. In the same fashion, the strategies that I will use are the same that I have been using until now for reading the material. I will structure the environment for a better concentration when reading and also I will avoid distractions.
Long ago I was using instrumental music for reading but I stopped using it because I got to know the songs and then they were distractors for me. However, after one lecture where we discussed about concentration, a classmate suggested a webpage where you can listen to natural sounds from the forest, from water running, raining… My goal is to use this tool and monitor if It helps me when reading and writing. In addition to this, I will also use the time in the bus for reading and thinking about the ideas from the articles. Reading from my tablet and highlighting the important information is easy when I am not at home or at the university. I can better read than from the printed material. Later I make my own resumes and mind maps by hand on paper. However in regards to my efficaciousness, I have the feeling that I had spent a big amount of time in writing previous posts because my notes lack of linkers and connectors. As I am using arrows but not many word-connectors ideas can induce me to doubt. For this reason, I will use a different strategy for note-taking.
Finally, I want to monitor my motivation during the completing of this blog post. For that purpose I will take into consideration the different factors and conditions that affect every phase of my learning and the posterior emotional response. For the regulation of my motivation, I will make use any of the already-known regulatory strategies. For every working session I will follow the following table:
Regarding the main concepts of the articles and lesson I find meaningful the following concepts:
Metacognition, metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive skills, metacognitive experiences, control, monitoring, meta-level, object-level.
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2. ICE notes:
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Processes involved in metacognition: monitoring and controlling by FOKs, JOLs and EOLs.
Metacognition is well known as thinking about thinking, not referring to the phenomena of thought in general but reflecting on one’s thinking processes. It is the abstraction of thinking in its most objective way, having on the one side the meta-level (standard) and the object-level (product). The flow of information is conveyed in between these two levels by the processes of monitoring and controlling (see image 1) (Nelson 1996 in Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006). The information about the object-level is sent to the meta-level for the process of monitoring. For example when examining how much time I had needed to actually understand the content that I have been reading for one and a half-hours. This same idea is argued from the perspective of metamemory by the use of different judgements. Feeling of knowing judgements (FOK), judgements of learning (JOLs) and ease-of-learning (EOL) (Bjork & Dunlosky, 2008). On the other hand, controlling process occurs when the flowing of information goes from the meta-level to the object-level. Examples are when deciding whether to: use or not a specific strategy for learning, study or not certain content and to continue or not studying because of mastering the content.
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I have one question in regards to monitoring and controlling. Which one should happen first? Is there any difference in the order? Are they ongoing processes? There are three main answers to these questions. Firslty, Dunlosky, Hertzog, Kennedy and Thiede, (2005, in Van Overschelde, 2008) assume that controlling happens after the monitoring of the activity, whereas Koriat, Ma’ayan, and Nussinson, (2006 in Van Overschelde, 2008) claim that both are simultaneous informative processes and they are ongoing with the activity. Finally, Dunlosky and Hertzog, 1998 and Joslyn, 2001 in Van Overschelde, 2008) differ from the previous ideas stating that controlling should be first if being in a negative feedback loop.
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It is my belief that the order of the metacognitive processes will happen depending on the demands of the task. If it feels simple to the students and they trigger their ease-of-learning judgements, it can be that monitoring do not happen and the simply go to the controlling. This can be a source of risk if they misread the tasks conditions or their own self-efficacy. In this same line, if they students move on directly to the use of the strategies without actually thinking which one could suit best, controlling is happening before monitoring. Nevertheless, they can still monitor the use of that strategy at the object-level. For example, this has happen to me when I was learning to solve equations of a line in high school. We had a cheatsheet with the types of equations and their resolutions and whenever I saw an equation I was reproducing the equation according to the model I had memorised before. In many situations I was mistaken because of not monitoring my process and adapt my strategies. However, I believe that monitoring and controlling can happen in a continuous loop when the learner’s awareness permits him/her to switch in between the process. This level of abstraction requires certain mastery of metacognitive strategies like the WWW&H rule (what to do, when, why and how) (Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006) hence you can not monitor your learning upon what you did not know before.
As a result, what I understand as the processes of metacognition, monitoring and controlling, is that they compose our medium for adaptation. Thanks to these two process and to the cyclicality aspect of self-regulated learning we can keep an online evolution meanwhile, we as interactive beings, still act in the medium and environment. The present actions will have a repercussion in the future ones, as well as the past actions have conditioned the present actions, thus its cyclicality. For example, let’s imagine a scientist doing research in the laboratory. She/he has a clear method for conducting the experiment and while she/he is doing it, he has to check that the conditions and procedures are occurring as the method implies (monitoring). If by any chance, the experiment is not going as it should, the scientist has to intervene, for example by repeating the experiment (controlling). In this case, she/he will need to reconsider why the previous experiment did not work and avoid the same mistake (cyclicality).
Components of metacognition: cognitive knowledge and cognitive regulation. (Information-process perspective)
Metacognition, in regards to the information-process perspective, encompasses cognitive knowledge, which pertains the awareness of the different types of cognitions, and cognitive regulation, which is the set of activities or strategies to control and enhance learning. There are three types of cognitive knowledge: declarative, procedural and conditional. Declarative knowledge refers to the what is needed to be known for achieving a goal, for example facts, concepts and principles. Procedural knowledge consists on the how to perform and includes abilities, strategies and methods of inquiry. Finally conditional knowledge involves when and why to use cognitive actions or strategies (Garner, 1987, Lorch and Klusewitz, 1993, in Satyadev, 2015). On the other hand, cognitive regulation refers to the activities that help to control the thinking processes and includes the three main skills: planning, monitoring and evaluation (Jacobs & Paris, 1987; Kluwe, 1987, in Satyadev, 2015).
However, one question have come to my mind while reading the complex relation in between cognition and metacognition. Obviously these two terms are related and interconnected, but I wonder if metacognition could be a separate, or even higher part, of cognition but acting independently. Comte`s paradox is an example of this question, where he criticised the idea that the mind or consciousness could both function and observe itself function at the same. To him this was contradictory (Metcalfe, 2008 & Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006). He argued that consciousness is an unitary form of reality, thus it cannot be fragmented, neither the perception of it. Nelson and Narens (1990 in Metcalfe, 2008) later postulated to explain this paradox, that consciousness have to work on two levels, a meta-level and an object-level.
For instance, Escher’s drawing hand with a reflecting sphere (see image 2) can explain this two perspectives. Firstly, according to Comte, at the moment of looking at this sphere, Escher is seeing his own reflection. Moreover, this vision of him, should be a whole perception of reality to him, and when thinking that he is seeing himself, he should exchange roles with the drawing and see himself holding the actual ball, thus, this would imply that the thinker is seeing the thought and the thinker at the same time when thinking.
On the other hand, Nelson’s and Naren’s perspective would depict Escher holding the sphere, being it a representation (meta-level) of Escher’s thoughts and actions. The thinker’s actions (object-level) will be shown in the ball, and he will be monitoring and controlling his actions thanks to being conscious of seeing himself.
As a conclusion, I would like to mention that to me, metacognition processes reflects, affects and draws on cognition. In the sphere (metacognition) is reflected everything around Escher and also himself, but his thoughts and ideas are not accessible. He is the only one that can draw on his cognition in the moment when he is seeing. Thus metacognition requires conscious and deliberate process for being able to see yourself as a thinker.
3. Reflection:
I consider that I have met my personal expectations with this blog post. It has been written in two days, approximately eight hours in the writing part, but the reading and planning took another four hours. Regarding the challenges, I have only felt as complicated in the task, the fact of describing in both cases metacognition from two points of view. Firstly from the processes involved and secondly, from the aspects that compound metacognition. Nevertheless, the stress at this time of the semester have caused the need of finishing this blog post. Having the date of the exam close and some other assignments to get done, were stressors that has conditioned my emotion and motivation levels and regulation.
Also, in terms of the strategies used for the reading of the materials I have used for the first article the method provided to us in the lecture. Nevertheless, for the second article I have used the same methods that I am used to apply for highlighting the information and making notes. In this case, I believe these methods fitted perfectly because the article was easy to follow and the material was presented in a logical way.
For future times, I will skim the articles before to check if I can get a previous idea and decide which method to use better. Moreover, the environmental structuring through the use of background sound has been a real surprise. For the task of planning and reading I have used it and reported that I was not being distracted, and indeed even more focused than when wearing the earplugs. In the phase of writing, I have monitored in both cases, being tired and feeling rested. When being tired, background sound has not helped me concentrating. I have felt the sound as an stressor and wearing the ear pods and headphones as disturbing. However, when being rested it had positively helped me in the writing parts, but I for finishing the article I have decided to set the background sound aside.
On the whole, I believe that in this task is the first time I meet my expectations with regards to finishing it on a specific time. For assessing the understanding of my ICE notes I will ask my girlfriend to read them, since she also has some insights in the topic.
Course material:
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Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: a new area of cognitive developmental inquiry. The American Psychologist, 34, 906–911. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.906.
Veenman, M. V., Van Hout-Wolters, B. H., & Afflerbach, P. (2006). Metacognition and learning: Conceptual and methodological considerations. Metacognition and learning, 1(1), 3-14.
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List of references:
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Bjork, R., & Dunlosky, J. (2008). The Integrated Nature of Metamemory and Memory. In R. Bjork, & J. Dunlosky, Handbook of Metamemory and Memory. New York: Taylor & Francis Group.
Metcalfe, J. (2008). Evolution of Metacognition. In R. Bjork, & J. Dunlosky, Handbook of Metamemory and Memory (pp. 29-47). New York: Taylor & Francis group.
Satyadev, S. (2015). Role of metacognitive awareness and monitoring in scholastic achievement of school students. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from Shodhganga. (Regn. No. 02-GB-310). India: Maharshi Dayanand University.
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Van Overschelde, J. (2008). Metacognition: Knowing About Knowing. In R. Bjork, & J. Dunlosky, Handbook of metamemory and memory (pp. 47-73). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.