Academic Exchange Quarterly
Winter 2005 ISSN 1096-1453
Volume 9, Issue 4
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print source rather than this on-line version which may not
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Main
author: Pedro
Rosário – E-mail: prosario@iep.uminho.pt
Keyword: SELF
Pedro Rosário, Universidade do Minho,
Portugal
Rosa Mourão, Universidade do Minho,
Portugal
João Trigo, Colégio de Nª Senhora do Rosário,
Portugal
José Carlos Núñez
Pérez, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain
Julio
González-Pienda, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain
Pedro Rosário, Ph.D. Professor at
Universidade do Minho’s College of Educational Psychology, researches
self-regulated learning and approaches to learning; Rosa Mourão is a doctoral
student at Universidade do Minho; João Trigo is the headmaster of Nª Senhora do
Rosário School; José Carlos Núñez Pérez and Julio González-Pienda are
Ph.D.Professors at Universidad de Oviedo.
Abstract
Designed to promote students’ learning self-regulation, “Testas’ (Mis)adventures” is an intervention project consisting of five
narrative books and one manual with the theoretical framework and working
guidelines for teachers and parents. Testas’ narratives introduce an embedded
self-regulated learning model, which provides an opportunity to discuss a
learning strategies repertoire. The ability of students to relate to Testas’
study problems, enables them to understand
the leading role of learning strategies in the achievement of academic goals. Some
educational advantages of this tool are highlighted and discussed.
Introduction
There is now fresh evidence in support of the
correlation between academic competence and self-regulation. Self-regulation can be defined as
“self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions for attaining academic goals”
(Zimmerman, 1998, p. 73). This complex and multidimensional process, subsuming
cognitive and motivational variables, is no longer seen as a trait, but rather
as a sample of contextual-specific processes strictly chosen to improve academic
success. Self-regulated learning refers to the extent to which students metacognitively, motivationally and behaviorally engage with
their own learning process (Rosário, 2004a). Students can self-regulate
different dimensions of learning, for example, their motives for learning, the
learning methods and strategies they use, and the social and environmental
resources available (Weinstein et al., 2000). They develop an agent role by
modifying or adjusting their learning strategies and behaviors to attain their
goals. Agency is the core of self-regulation in as much as choice and control
are the foundations of the process (Zimmerman, 2000). That is why promoting
self-regulatory competences is not just being able to manage a couple of
isolated learning
strategies, taken out of context, but rather to discuss a framework
that prepares and guides studying by
strengthening its quality (Rosário, 2004a).
Self-regulated learning is an intentional
process where students need to have three kinds of knowledge about strategies:
declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge. In short, knowing a set of
strategies and its nature (e.g., what is self-questioning?); knowing how to use
these strategies (e.g., how to question while reading and studying?), and
knowing when to use them. It is important to teach learning strategies, but it
is even more important to promote opportunities for hands-on practice with
these strategies, in order to learn how to use them in different learning
situations and academic tasks (Canabach et al., 2002; Valle et al., 2005).
Students cannot
self-regulate their learning unless they are provided with the right
opportunities to do so, as only that will enable them to control certain
essential dimensions of their learning. Promoting teaching efforts and
designing intervention programs will help students learn study skills. Research
shows that students require explicit instruction of learning strategies
otherwise they tend to randomly choose unintentional tactics,
rather than real learning strategies, in order to attain the established goals
and achieve higher levels (Rosário, 2004a; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998). Although
research has clearly stressed how important self-regulatory processes can be to
achieve success at school, few teachers currently prepare students to learn on
their own (Zimmerman, Bonner & Kovach, 1996). Testas’ (Mis)adventures, the
innovative project presented in this paper, is an essay in addressing this challenge.
Testas’ (Mis)adventures project
Description
Testas’ (Mis)adventures (Rosário, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c,
2003, 2004b), is an intervention program designed to promote strategic learning
through stories where the self-regulation processes and learning strategies are
made explicit.
Research has extensively
confirmed the important role of learning strategies in academic success, and
the need to promote self-regulation processes throughout the curriculum
(Zimmerman, 2000). This project was
carried out by a research group of Portuguese teachers and educational
psychologists at Nossa Senhora do Rosário
School (
Testas, the main character’s
nickname literally meaning forehead, tells his schoolmates about his successes,
failures, adventures and misadventures in his learning and studying process. Testas,
a student like many others, describes the way he handles learning contents and
school challenges; helps his schoolmates with the learning tasks; and makes
them think about and use an
appropriate repertoire of learning strategies, essential enablers of their
academic performance.
Learning strategies are routes to
understanding, and “include any thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, or emotions that
facilitate the acquisition, understanding, or later transfer of new knowledge
and skills” (Weinstein, Husman & Dierking, 2000, p. 727). Students who
understand the instrumentality of a learning strategy to achieve their academic
goals are more likely to use it. Research illustrates the teachable nature of
self-regulatory processes and also their contribution to high motivation levels
and achievement success (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998).
This tool is based on
the conviction that self-regulated learning can be promoted through modeling.
Schunk and Zimmerman (1998) state that at first, academic competence develops
from social sources (e.g., parents, peers), and hopefully shifts to internal
control. Research highlights the importance of practicing with students the why
and how of learning strategies, preferably through vicarious learning,
rather than just presenting them.
This intervention is not a conventional
learning competences program. There is no established structure of the sessions
or any exact amount of time prescribed to work through the activities
suggested. The plastic nature of this tool allows for adaptation to the class
or student’s learning needs. The workbooks from Testas’ (Mis)adventures
collection can be read and discussed at school or even at home with parents, respecting
the nature of the self-regulated learning process: each activity/task/problem
solving/story should be planned, executed and evaluated regarding the
self-regulation model that organizes this tool (Rosário, 2004a). Assimilating
these three steps (planification, execution and evaluation) will assist
students and educators in collaborating in the learning process and will
empower their strategic options regarding each of the different learning tasks.
Promoting self-regulatory competences is crucial for students’ development, for
one, and may be the main goal of learning and instruction is the development of
life-long learning competences. If students know which, how, and when to use
learning strategies in their study, this behavioral repertoire will increase
their learning outcomes and promote their academic self-efficacy and
self-esteem (Valle et al., 2003).
The use of narratives and the fact that Testas
is a student like many others avoids the so severely censured
de-contextualization of concrete learning experiences mentioned in literature. As
Bruner (1990) suggested, narratives do not seek to make better readers, but
rather better “authors”. Testas’ (Mis)adventures compile stories about learning
and school life (e.g., establishing goals, procrastination, text anxiety, time
management, memorizing). Written in a proximal way and using an intimate
discourse, an ordinary student describes and reflects on his learning
experiences. This methodology allows Testas readers to experience vicarious
learning through his narrative and inductively learn a self-regulated model to
approach learning and studying. Along the texts, self-regulated learning
strategies are disseminated according to the self-regulation cyclical model
proposed by Zimmerman (1998, 2000, 2002).
This intervention program suggests working
with students “backwards”, analyzing the texts and the stories and searching
for the learning strategies hidden in the text. Students are encouraged
to construct, based on Testas’ narratives, their own self-regulated
learning itinerary. The story presented, therefore, doesn’t really have a full stop or an end; on the contrary, it
is a starting point for personal self-regulation development.
Teaching learning strategies embedded in
narratives is one of the innovations of Testas’ project. Hands in hands with
Testas, the students are given the
opportunity to discuss personal problems and difficulties concerning their
learning tasks. This familiar environment favors the
contextualization and understanding of the self-regulated learning concepts.
This can be illustrated by the quotation of a student who experienced the
program: “Hi, Testas. I’m J. I’ve been reading your book. Thanks for the study tips.
(...) I read about time management and the need to plan tasks
as well as to anticipate
consequences in one of your stories. That wasn’t new! My mom and teachers are always telling
me that. The “stones” story made me think of my learning goals and my responsibility…,
and that is good and bad, you know…” (J., sixth grade)
Furthermore the developed methodology is
intended for promoting the transfer of knowledge and self-regulation
competences to other educational settings and for encouraging students to view
learning strategies as a set of tools in hand, available to use in
different learning tasks and whenever it helps to achieve the learning goals. The
following statement from a Science teacher who worked with
some chapters of this tool illustrates this same idea: “(...) Testas’ stories helped me as an appetizer, I mean, after
reading the chapter my students started to talk about Testas’ decisions and studying
problems at once, and spontaneously turned to their own school life. (…) Now
I’m more aware of my students’ learning conceptions and able to teach them some
useful learning strategies applied to “Science” as they are more receptive. (F,
Science teacher, seventh grade).
This project has already been tested in the
Portuguese educational system (Rosário, 2004a; Rosário et al., 2004). An
intervention program carried out with 98 Portuguese students from fifth and sixth grades working with Testas
for a year shows that, by the end of the school year, 70% of the students in
the sample had improved their self-regulated study behaviors and 40% had
attained higher grades in Portuguese and English as a Foreign
Language compared with the 94 students who weren’t part
of the experience (Mourão, 2004). Another
study from Rosário and colleagues (2004) found an association between attending
Testas’ intervention project and self-regulated behaviors (F(3,113)=25,80;
p<.000) which suggests self-regulatory gains in learning behaviors. Personal
improvement and eventual future increment in academic achievement can be inferred
from the words of a student in the program: “(...) Testas made me think about what I do in
classes, the way I take my notes, how I can deal with distractors. Now I’m a
bit more conscious of my weaknesses and ready to face them.” (P., eighth
grade).
Five teachers who have
used this tool with seventh and eighth graders highlight embedded
self-regulated learning processes and strategies in the core of a narrative
learning potential. This resource helped their fifty-two students understand
the nature of learning strategies and their instrumentality in context (Costa,
2005). One teacher said: “(...) I didn’t follow Testas script in History with this class but a colleague
of mine did. However, my students, the same as his, without any clues, started
to use some self-regulated learning concepts. They talked about proximal goals,
procrastination, monitorization, self-consequences spontaneously … and applied these
concepts to the historical scenarios we were dealing
with in the classroom.” (D. History teacher, seventh and eighth grade)
Conclusion
We believe the focus of an intervention on
learning strategies should not be addressed at compensating a deficit, but
rather at implementing learning tactics to be used in any and
every situation. Students need to be familiar with self-regulated learning
strategies, they need to have an array of study
strategies at their disposal and to practice their application in different
learning situations and tasks. In spite of these findings, Scanlon, Deshler and
Schumaker (1994) state that some teachers do not allocate time to teach
learning strategies, arguing the need to cover the curriculum content. The
potential effectiveness of this project lays on the development of the
self-regulation processes and on this prevention message to school community:
we are not born self-regulated, we become self-regulated, that
is, we can all be more task centered, by improving and regulating our behaviors
which can lead us to achieve more and in a better way. Using a
student’s words: “(...) What have I learned with Testas? I learned that I can do
it! I still have some difficulties in Portuguese and Maths but my will is stronger.
I believe I can ... See you around Testas.” (C., fifth grade student).
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