SRL Enhancing Narratives: Testas' (Mis)adventures

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 (Rosario, 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 (Rosario, 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 (Rosario, 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 Testas' (Mis)adventures (Rosario, 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). …