SELF-REGULATED LEARNING

Corno, Lyn; Mandinach, Ellen B. The role of cognitive engagement in classroom learning and motivation.Educational Psychologist. Vol 18(2), Sum 1983, 88-108.

Describes fundamental cognitive processes in classroom learning and motivation and links these processes with particular instructional activities. Three contemporary models of academic motivation found in the literature are based on self-efficacy theory, attribution theory, and self-evaluation maintenance. The inadequacy of these motivation models for education leads the authors to their advocation of self-regulated learning (SRL). SRL comprises 5 components—alertness, selectivity, connecting, planning, and monitoring—as well as 2 classes of information processing, acquisition and transformation. SRL can be viewed as a process of ever increasing, deepening, and manipulating specific content networks or associative memory networks. By emphasizing some SRL processes and deemphasizing others, a student may engage in variations of SRL that include resource management, task focus, and recipience. The relationships of these variations of SRL with student characteristics and instruction are reviewed. The implications of an SRL model for research on cognitive engagement affect measurement issues and research strategies. Classroom instructors interested in teaching for cognitive engagement may have to (1) teach SRL to students who do not already use it, (2) encourage students who use only one component of SRL to consider alternatives, and (3) encourage those who use all forms of SRL to become adroit at strategy shifts across and within tasks. (87 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)