Self-Regulated Learning
in a Reading Context
Deborah Butler
Faculty of Education
University of British Columbia
Changing Results for Young Readers Symposium
August 26, 2013
Agenda
• What is self-regulated learning in a reading
context?
• How can we support SRL in reading?
• What questions might learning teams take
up in relation to self-regulation in reading?
What is self-regulation in a
reading context?
What is Self-Regulated Learning
in a Reading Context?
Classic Definition of Self-Regulation:
The ability to control thoughts and actions to achieve
personal goals and respond to environmental demands
(Zimmerman, 2008)
Self-regulation is "active," strategic engagement
Learners can take, and feel in control,
over activities by deliberately and
reflectively “self-regulating” learning
Self-Regulating Emotions and Behaviour …
Successful performance involves understanding and
managing one’s emotions and behaviour so as to successfully
engage in activities and with others
Emotions experienced;
Challenges to focus or
motivation
Emotions &
Motivation
Cognition and
Metacognition
Awareness of expectations &
one’s own strengths and
challenges; one’s emotions;
others’ emotions
Strategic
Action
SelfRegulating
Emotions &
Behaviour
Using strategies to participate
effectively (e.g., avoid being
distracted; focus; manage
emotions; work well with
others)
Reflection
Think of a time when you were engaged in a
an activity where you experienced distracting
emotions (stress, worry, excitement) or
struggled with motivation
What did you feel?
What led you to feel that way?
What did you do to stay engaged in the activity (or
did you)?
Promoting Emotional and Behavioural
Regulation
Support learners to understand their own and
others’ emotions and behaviour
Support learners to learn how to strategically
manage their emotions, behaviour, and motivation
in/through activities
– Social relationships
– Sport/recreation
– Learning in school
See http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/ or
http://www.challengingbehavior.org/do/resources/teaching_tools/ttyc_toc.htm
Supporting Emotional and Behavioral
Self-Regulation: Case Study Example
Approach
Daily conferences
Building positive & trusting relationship with the
student
End-of-Year Observation
"He is removing himself from a situation where he
is feeling frustrated or has had enough"
Supporting Emotional and Behavioral
Self-Regulation: Case Study Example
Approach:
Teaching "MindUp" and Breathing.
"The student would stop and take 3 long, deep breaths and
then tell the other student 'no thank you' or later in the year,
'I feel ___, when you ____".
End-of-Year Observation:
"It took the majority of the year to get the student to finally
be able to say this sentence on his own without my support,
but now into May I am starting to hear small "I feel"
sentences... he is using his words more than his hands
now... and saying the sentence correctly!"
Imagine Reading
What Does Self-Regulated Reading Look Like
in Classroom Contexts?
Activity in Context
Emotions &
Motivation
Interpreting Tasks
History,
Strengths,
Challenges,
Adjusting
Metacognition,
Knowledge,
Beliefs,
Agency
Monitoring
Cycles of
SelfRegulated
Activity
Planning
Enacting
Strategies
Butler, 2002; Butler et al., 2011
What Students' Bring to Reading:
Metacognitive Knowledge
Metacognitive
knowledge that
shapes
motivation and
engagement
About what I do
and don't know
About myself as a
reader
About reading and
reading strategies
Task Performance Derailed:
Misconceptions about Tasks
· is about decoding words
Reading · is for learning key terms
· is for learning or understanding (vague terms)
· requires memorizing the text
Studying · is learning definitions
Writing
Math
· is about spelling
· is about constructing grammatical sentences
· has rigid structures
· is about computation
· is about memorizing formulas
(Based on 100 case studies of post-secondary learners; see Butler, 2003)
Task Performance Derailed:
Metacognition and Strategic Action
% of students
Interpreting
Tasks
Strategy Use
76%
Monitoring
49%
(Butler, 2003)
76%
Areas of Difficulty
% of students
• Describing task demands
• Interpreting assignments
• Strategy description
• Aware of problems, but not solutions
• Implementing strategies
59%
27%
71%
39%
8%
• Problems defining monitoring criteria
• Little evidence of monitoring
48%
10%
What Students' Bring to Reading:
Self-Perceptions and Beliefs
Self-efficacy:
perceptions of
confidence & control
Beliefs that support
motivation and
engagement
A growth mindset
Success comes from
effortful use of
strategies
Self-Efficacy and Motivation
Students may have experienced
challenges that lead to:
 a lack of confidence
 little sense of control over
outcomes (i.e., low self-efficacy)
 frustration, boredom, anxiety
They may:
 try but be “actively inefficient”
 give up
 rebel
"Even Geniuses Work Hard"
Fostering a "Growth Mindset"
intelligence is fixed
looking smart is most
important
effort is to be avoided
success should come
easily
challenges reflect low
ability
A Growth Mindset
A Fixed Mindset
(Dweck, 2010)
ability develops
learning is most
important
effort is needed to
learn
success comes
through hard work
challenging work
supports growth
Accounting for Success
Activity in Context
Interpreting Tasks
Adjusting
"Success comes
from applying
and refining
strategies"
Cycles of
SelfRegulated
Activity
Monitoring
Fabricus & Hagen (1984): 90% of Grade 1 & 2
students who attributed recall success to their
use of "sorting strategy" used that strategy the
"next time" they did the task (vs. 32%)
Planning
Enacting
Strategies
Reflection
Consider the kinds of metacognitive
knowledge and motivationally-charged
"beliefs" learners bring to reading
Have you seen these kinds of beliefs "in action"
during reading activities?
How can they support or derail engagement?
What can we do to support students'
construction of constructive knowledge and
beliefs?
How Can We Support SelfRegulation in Reading?
Create Environments that Support SRL
(see Perry & Drummond, 2002)
Create activities/tasks that
provide opportunities for
self-regulation
Promote autonomy
Scaffold support
– Choice
– Control over challenge
– Student self-assessment
– Teacher Support
– Peer Support
Support SRL through non-threatening
assessment practices & feedback
Design Tasks that Afford Opportunities
for Self-Regulation & Autonomy
Imagine a grade 2/3 classroom in which students
are asked to complete a research project on an
animal of their choice. They are asked to do
research on their animal by selecting and reading
resources, and to write, edit, and “publish”
expository text (using the computer; working
together) (Perry & Drummond, 2002)
Imagine a Kindergarten/Grade 1 classroom in
which across a series of lessons students read
The Three Little Pigs (twice), sequence events in
the story, write sentences to describe each event,
consider the social and moral dimensions of the
story, and then choose and write an alternative
ending (Perry, Nordby, & VandeKamp, 2003)
Support That Empowers Learners:
Three Themes
• Strategic Questioning
– supporting self-regulation in activity
– making learning processes explicit
• Bridging to independence
– from teaching strategies to strategic learning
• Supporting cycles of learning
– feedback and self-assessment
Strategic Questioning to Foster SRL
• Interpreting Tasks
– What is your job?
– What is this assignment asking you to do?
– How will you know if you’ve done a good job?
• Choosing and Using Strategies
–
–
–
–
–
How will you approach this task (given what you are trying to do)?
What strategies have worked for you before?
Why don’t you show me what you can try?
I noticed you did this. Is that a strategy you are using?
What are you doing here that you can do again and again and again?
• Monitoring/Adjusting
•
•
•
How are you doing? How do you know?
What criteria are you using here to judge your work?
What can you do differently to solve that problem?
What Is Self-Regulation In “Kid Friendly”
Terms?
From Learning Strategies to Strategic Learning
Case Study Example: Jennifer
Perceptions of writing ability
“unorganized, choppy would be the best way to describe it”
Ineffective strategies
“I write down my point and in the end I have a mess”.
Frustration/giving up
“I had to write a researched 500 word ... essay [for a
scholarship application]. I couldn’t organize it at all. I couldn’t get
any organization flow going. I kept jumping from point to point. So
I got frustrated with it and didn’t apply.”
(Butler, 1995)
Jennifer’s Challenges?
Example of Jen’s problem taking ownership of
a strategy she had been taught for writing
papers
Outline
I.
Introduction
A. point 1
B. point 2
II. First topic
A. supporting details
B. supporting details
III. Second topic
A. supporting details
B. supporting details
IV. Conclusion
(Butler, 1995)
Had be taught
“outlining” but didn’t
like or understand it
Developed a strategy of
making “plans”
Benefits of Supporting Jennifer’s SelfRegulated Writing?
Writing improved (B’s and A’s on assignments)
Developed personalized strategies (her “plans”)
Transfer of strategic action
“I’m so concentrating on flow, I can pick up on other people’s
flow now. So like, you know, the teacher’s going on, I no longer write
down like, scribbling madly about every single point he makes, but I can
almost summarize ... my note-taking is better now.”
Self-perceptions of writing ability
“And then just the marks are a lot different. That, I feel like, you know,
like, when you’re walking around the class and we’re getting our essays
back, my marks are average or above average. So I feel better about it.
Like, I don’t feel like I’m such a dunce.”
(Butler, 1995)
From the Richmond “Learning through
Reading" Project
Based on formative assessments of secondary
students’ “learning through reading”, subject area
teachers worked together to set goals
They collaborated to refine
classroom practices to foster selfregulated LTR
Outcomes showed a positive impact
on students’:
– Understandings about academic work
– Learning in relation to provincial
curricula and performance standards
(Butler, Schnellert, & Cartier, 2008, 2013)
From the Richmond “Learning through
Reading" Project (continued)
Student gains were greatest when practices:
• Sustained attention to goals
• Integrated learning goals into the curriculum
• Attended explicitly to reading, thinking, learning
processes
• Fostered student independence (e.g., in
decision-making; to achieve goals)
(Butler, Schnellert, & Cartier, 2008, 2013)
Reflection
How can you construct practices that:
(a) explicitly support students development
of knowledge, beliefs, and strategic action,
BUT ALSO
(b) enable students to take control over their
own learning?
Self-Assessment and Feedback
"Teacher feedback is input that, together with students' own internal
input, will help the students decide where they are in regard to the
learning goals they need or want to meet and what they will tackle next."
(Brookhart, 2008)
Activity in Context
Interpreting Tasks
Adjusting
Interpreting
assessments &
feedback
Monitoring
Cycles of
SelfRegulated
Activity
Planning
Enacting
Strategies
Generating "internal"
feedback
(Butler & Winne, 1995)
The Power of Feedback
Halbert & Kaser (2013): "The purpose of feedback is to
increase the extent to which learners are the owners of
their own learning" (p. 21)
Timperley (n.d.): "Feedback can be detrimental, "When it
does not give information about how to improve, for
example:
Tentative grades with no comments
Feedback associated with extrinsic rewards
Personal praise / criticism that distracts from the task"
You are so clever
The Power of Feedback
Hattie & Timperley (2007)
Purpose for feedback: To reduce any discrepancy between goals
and where students are now
Where am I
going?
(Goals)
Effective
Feedback
Answers 3
Questions
Where to
next? (what
can I do to
improve?)
How am I
doing?
(progress)
Feedback that had these qualities was related to students’ gains in
writing performance (Parr & Timperley, 2010)
Encouraging Self-Assessment & Strategy Revision
Growth Mindset & Feedback
Dweck (2010)
“Praising students for the process they have engaged
in—the effort they applied, the strategies they used,
the choices they made, the persistence they displayed,
and so on—yields more long-term benefits than telling
them they are “smart” when they succeed.” (p. 18)
Emphasize challenge, not success
Give a sense of progress
Grade for growth
Add "yet"
Reflection
How can progress monitoring tools, formative
assessments, and other forms of feedback
support:
 student's engagement in cycles of learning?
 development of metacognition & positive
motivational beliefs?
 students' taking control over learning?
Summary: Empowering Readers
If students are to take “control” over learning,
they need to be supported to:
• Build and apply productive metacognitive
knowledge and beliefs
• Be clear on what they are supposed to be doing
(anchoring learning in goals)
• Actively and reflectively self-direct learning with
goals, criteria in mind
• Self-monitor progress and self-assess
• Adjust performance (during the activity and "next
time")
• Manage engagement (motivation, emotions,
behaviour)
Common Features of
SRL-Supportive Practices?
They connect and surface learners’ strengths, interests and
experiences
They make discussion about reading, learning, and writing
processes explicit
They integrate discussions about reading, learning, and writing
processes with content instruction
They put responsibility on students to manage their learning
They require students to articulate their
understandings about content & learning
processes
Supporting Self-Regulated Reading:
Case Study Examples
He is much more aware of his learning and he can express
specific details about his learning (metacognition)
This student is more confident in his learning (self-efficacy)
She recalls and uses reading strategies we have been
practicing, has favourites (metacognition & strategic action)
I see this student now corrects himself (in oral language) (selfmonitoring/adjusting)
She doesn't give up, even if something is hard (growth
mindset, persistence)
What questions might learning
teams take up this year, in
relation to self-regulated
learning in a reading context?
Research to Practice in SRL:
Initiatives and Resources
Building Supports for Inquiry-Based
Professional Learning
BEd Program: SRL Cohort (Middle Years)
http://teach.educ.ubc.ca/programs/BEd-program/cohorts/index.html
Supports to On-Going Professional Learning
http:/
SRL Institute: June 2013
CR4YR, Learning Team Facilitation, PD Engagements
SRL Canada Consortium
http://pdce.educ.ubc.ca/connecting-self-regulation-to-learning-in-bc-schools/
http://srlcanada.ca
UBC SRL Masters Concentrations
MEd Cohort: Jan 2014
MA/MEd On-Campus: Sept 2014
http://ecps.educ.ubc.ca/hdlc/concentration-self-regulated-learning-srl
http://pdce.educ.ubc.ca/med-in-human-development-learning-and-culture-srl1/
http://srlcanada.ca
http://srlcanada.ca
http://self-regulationinschool.research.educ.ubc.ca/
http://bctf.ca/publications/NewsmagArticle.aspx?id=29340
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