Chapter 2 The role of motivation in promoting and sustaining self-regulated learning

A general framework is presented to help understand the relationship between motivation and self-regulated learning. According to the framework, self-regulated learning can be facilitated by the adoption of mastery and relative ability goals and hindered by the adoption of extrinsic goals. In addition, positive self-e$cacy and task value beliefs can promote selfregulated behavior. Self-regulated learning is de"ned as the strategies that students use to regulate their cognition (i.e., use of various cognitive and metacognitive strategies) as well as the use of resource management strategies that students use to control their learning. ( 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Recent models of self-regulated learning stress the importance of integrating both motivational and cognitive components of learning (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994; Pintrich, 1994; Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992). The purpose of this chapter is to describe how di!erent motivational beliefs may help to promote and sustain di!erent aspects of self-regulated learning. In order to accomplish this purpose, a model of self-regulated learning is brie#y sketched and three general motivational beliefs related to a model of self-regulated learning in our research program at the University of Michigan are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are o!ered. 1. A model of self-regulated learning Self-regulated learning o!ers an important perspective on academic learning in current research in educational psychology (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994). Although there are a number of di!erent models derived from a variety of di!erent theoretical perspectives (see Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994; Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989), most models assume that an important aspect of self-regulated learning is the 0883-0355/99/$ see front matter ( 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 8 8 3 0 3 5 5 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 1 5 4 students' use of various cognitive and metacognitive strategies to control and regulate their learning. The model of self-regulated learning described here includes three general categories of strategies: (1) cognitive learning strategies, (2) self-regulatory strategies to control cognition, and (3) resource management strategies (see Garcia & Pintrich, 1994; Pintrich, 1988a,b; Pintrich, 1989; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; Pintrich & Garcia, 1991; Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, & McKeachie, 1993). 1.1. Cognitive learning strategies In terms of cognitive learning strategies, following the work of Weinstein and Mayer (1986), rehearsal, elaboration, and organizational strategies were identi"ed as important cognitive strategies related to academic performance in the classroom (McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin & Smith, 1986; Pintrich, 1989; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). These strategies can be applied to simple memory tasks (e.g., recall of information, words, or lists) or to more complex tasks that require comprehension of the information (e.g., understanding a piece of text or a lecture) (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). Rehearsal strategies involve the recitation of items to be learned or the saying of words aloud as one reads a piece of text. Highlighting or underlining text in a rather passive and unre#ective manner also can be more like a rehearsal strategy than an elaborative strategy. These rehearsal strategies are assumed to help the student attend to and select important information from lists or texts and keep this information active in working memory, albeit they may not re#ect a very deep level of processing. Elaboration strategies include paraphrasing or summarizing the material to be learned, creating analogies, generative note-taking (where the student actually reorganizes and connects ideas in their notes in contrast to passive, linear note-taking), explaining the ideas in the material to be learned to someone else, and question asking and answering (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). The other general type of deeper processing strategy, organizational, includes behaviors such as selecting the main idea from text, outlining the text or material to be learned, and using a variety of speci"c techniques for selecting and organizing the ideas in the material (e.g., sketching a network or map of the important ideas, identifying the prose or expository structures of texts). (See Weinstein & Mayer, 1986.) All of these organizational strategies have been shown to result in a deeper understanding of the material to be learned in contrast to rehearsal strategies (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986). 1.2. Metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies Besides cognitive strategies, students' metacognitive knowledge and use of metacognitive strategies can have an important in#uence upon their achievement. There are two general aspects of metacognition, knowledge about cognition and selfregulation of cognition (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara & Campione, 1983; Flavell, 1979). Some of the theoretical and empirical confusion over the status of metacognition as a psychological construct has been fostered by the confounding of issues of metacognitive knowledge and awareness with metacognitive control and self-regulation 460 P.R. Pintrich / Int. J. Educ. Res. 31 (1999) 459}470