Investigating and promoting individual and socially shared regulation of learning in primary school and teacher education contexts (PROSPECTS)
To achieve success in individual and collaborative learning tasks, students need to develop skills and strategies for regulating their own learning, regulating learning with peers, and regulating learning in groups. Today, while research has provided evidence about regulation as a social phenomenon, there is still a lack of consistency in defining and operationalizing shared regulation.
In the PROSPECTS projects we will investigate all four phases of regulation (planning, monitoring, evaluating, controlling) in self-, co-, and socially shared regulation in primary school and teacher education contexts. We will also discuss the provision of targeted support for these challenging episodes in solo and collaborative learning, which are critical in each phase of shared regulation learning (SRL). The research questions are: (1) What constitutes regulation in learning?; (2) How do the four phases of regulation emerge in solo and collaborative learning?; (3) How can regulation in solo and collaborative learning be supported with technology?; and (4) What is the contribution of SRL intervention to students’ learning gains?
The subjects will be primary school students (N=30), followed for one year, and teacher education students (N=250), followed for three years. The students will be divided into two groups with two different intervention conditions, the effects of which will be examined during the course of the study. These interventions aim to increase opportunities for active regulation with the assistance of nStudy and regulation tools in solo and collaborative learning settings. The emphasis of the data collection will be on process data, such as video and trace data, combined with context- and task-specific questionnaires that reveal participants’ thoughts and beliefs as they occur in real time.
The theoretical advancement of socially shared regulation, along with regulation tool development, is at the leading edge of research in the field. These results will advance SRL as a social phenomenon, emphasizing socially shared regulation. Methodological development will generate new principles for investigating regulated learning in challenging learning situations, in real-time and actual actions (trace-data) as each student learns and collaborates. In practice, teachers will benefit from new information on methods for supporting regulated learning.
Last updated: 18.6.2013