Motivation and emotions in SRL
I.
PLANNING
In our first group meeting we drafted the following plan on what to include in our paper and how to
compose the teaching session:
Paper phase:
1. Create three case descriptions as university students that fit one of three contrastable profiles. The
efficient SRL, the efficient SRL only for solo work settings, and the inefficient SRL. Extraordinary
emotional and motivational aspects to contemplate: adversity facing, frustration, unexpected external
circumstances.
2. Theoretical analysis. Each one of the team members focuses on an article.
3. Solution models proposed from educational psychology. Presenting intervention (solution models)
selectively depending on the level of need.
4. Reflection phase.
Class planning phase:
1. Introducing topic
2. Presenting cases to students, requesting solution models. Activating prior knowledge.
3. Case description and analysis. Powerpoint presentation.
4. Stroop test (experts and students).
5. Solution models from multiple perspectives. Making a parallel between them and what students just
underwent.
6. Questions?
We agreed that all of us should read the required three articles on motivation and emotions in SRL, as
we needed to do that for our solo work phases anyway, but we decided that each one of us would
concentrate on one article in particular and master it.
We also agreed that in the beginning of the course we should concentrate on our solo tasks, and about
one week before the teaching session, we would concentrate on working on the group task, putting the
solo work on hold for time being, deciding to complete those after the teaching session had been held.
II. CASE DESCRIPTION
Case 1: Rose – a highly motivated and self-regulated learner
Rose is a very confident student at the University of Oulu. She does well in school – she gets good grades
and is also very popular among other students when they are doing group work. Rose enjoys studying
and she loves to learn new things. She is planning to become a teacher one day, so she is very dedicated
to her studies.
Every week Rose carefully plans all the tasks she has to do that week. When she is studying alone, that
is, doing her reading and writing assignments, she organizes a quiet place to work so that she can
concentrate fully on the task at hand. She knows that when she puts her best effort in studying she will
perform well; it will help her reach her goal of becoming a teacher. Rose also likes to work in groups, as
she feels she gets a lot of new information and inspiration from other group members. She listens
carefully to others in the group, and tries to work constructively within it, paying special attention to all
group members to have an equal chance of participating in the assignment.
After the week of studying, Rose sums up what she has learned. If she feels that there is something left
unclear, she sets goals for the next week to find out more about it, either by looking up for more
information, or by discussing issues with her peers or teachers.
Rose is performing well in humanities and sciences, but she finds sports difficult. Rose feels awkward at
not being able to control her body as well as her mind; she feels very clumsy when doing sports.
However, Rose knows that she’s a good learner, but also that she cannot be perfect in everything
(perceiving teacher education as a holistic process), so she decides to do her best.
Case 2: Sam - an efficient self-regulated learner in solo work
Sam is studying LET program at the University of Oulu. He was taking the Survival Finnish course this
autumn semester. He felt that this course was quite easy and did not spend too much time or attention
on it; he just tried to attend all the lessons and finished his homework on time. There was a final
examination at the end of the term. As part of his learning habits, he decided to spend the two days
before the exam to completely focus on studying Finnish. Sam was confident about his ability and set a
clear goal for undertaking this course: getting a 5 as his final grade. In the end, he succeeded. He felt his
learning outcome was satisfying.
Also, as part of his course examination, he was expected to make a video depicting basic Finnish
interactive situations (greetings, restaurant, and shopping contexts). Being more of a “lone rider”, he
thought it would prove quite the challenge, especially since he was not sure what he was supposed to
do as part of the group. For him, it seemed like discussions with his peers never led to real progress in
regards to goal negotiation. He grew more frustrated as time passed, since he felt that pressure was on
him and not much had been achieved. He had stopped believing that his performance could actually
affect the group outcome positively. Expectedly, his group did not perform well.
Case 3: Polly - an unmotivated, inefficient self-regulated learner
Polly is a student at the University of Oulu. She decided to enroll in the environmental engineering
program mainly due to the fact that there appeared to be nothing more interesting when she scanned
study possibilities. Likewise, her father said he would feel proud if she enrolled in said program. Thus,
she strives to attain the highest possible grades not to let her family down; whenever she gets a good
grade, she magnets the paper to the fridge and celebrates by giving herself a treat (usually chocolate or
beer), and never doubts to say, "I am a very lucky girl!"
Nonetheless, Polly wonders about how accurate university exams are, since she does not feel "more of
an engineer" after presenting her tests. There have not been many high grades in her studies, and she
does not perceive her efforts as meaningful, considering that they are very similar to those she used in
high school (where she was a low achiever academically). She wonders what is wrong with herself since
she does not perform well in individual assignments normally, or when the teacher assigns group tasks.
To make things worse, her boyfriend has dumped her a couple of months ago, and up until today it has
led her to think that she does not want to go to school anymore. She normally opts for skipping class.
III.
ANALYSIS
1 Theoretical framework
Emotions, motivation and collaboration. According to Wolters (2000), emotion regulation is the
learner's ability to monitor, evaluate and change the occurrence, intensity and duration of an emotional
experience. In his view, emotion regulation is an effective strategy to regulate motivation which in turn
is needed for the learner to complete a task.
Thompson and Fine (1999) (cited in Järvenoja & Järvelä, 2009) state that motivation and emotions have
been found to be central in collaborative learning. Many researchers agree upon that learners´ emotions
are formed at the junction where personal, contextual and social aspects of learning meet. In
collaborative work, socio-emotional challenges are typically higher than in conventional learning
situations. Examples of challenges are conflicting goals, different level of interest, working or
communication styles, and interpersonal features. These socio-emotional challenges may become
obstacles that affect the learner's motivation and thus affect the learner's action. Overall, regulation of
emotions is crucial both in individual level as well as on group level for successful collaboration.
Socio-emotional challenges that students encounter. Järvenoja and Järvelä (2009) studied a group of
students who worked collaboratively, and found that they encounter different types of socio-emotional
challenges which were triggered by personal priorities, work and communication, teamwork,
collaboration, and external constraints. During collaborative learning, students must overcome different
emotional and motivational challenges to maintain their engagement in the learning and also to
maintain good interaction with other group members. Both the pedagogical structure and the group
members' improving experience of one another may affect the nature of the challenges encountered.
The study revealed that during the tasks personal priorities and work and communication became less
challenging, but surprisingly, challenges in teamwork and collaboration increased.
Regulation used to overcome socio-emotional challenges. Järvenoja and Järvelä's (2009) study showed
that students use different forms of regulation to maintain collaborative group work. The results from
the study suggest that group members share some of the regulation processes within the group (SSRL)
while also using self-regulation (SRL). On the contrary, the study reveals that students don’t benefit from
co-regulation (CoRL).
The group profiles showed that it is possible to reach personal goals and work successfully together
even if the situation is interpreted from each individual's own perspective. That is, the challenges were
interpreted differently, and also the regulation processes used by the group members varied, but all the
students felt they achieved their collaborative goal.
Järvenoja and Järvelä conclude that making students aware of how different group members'
interpretations differ from their own, may help the group to avoid emotional conflicts and to solve
challenges they might face. Interventions, such as scaffolding for both cognitive and socio-emotional
challenges, may improve the quality of collaboration and academic achievement.
Role of motivation in SRL
Going into a more specific contrast, we ask the question, what role does motivation play on SRL? Before
undertaking an extensive analysis of the sources of enhanced motivation in SRL practices, it is of utmost
importance to determine the roles of motivation in SRL from a general perspective. Motivation in SRL is
associated to both advantages and disadvantages students have that may support or hinder learning;
thus, pointing out which are the ways to shape the roles toward positive practices becomes a major task
in educational planning.
At first glance, motivation can increase a student's awareness of her learning process by tracking
feedback closely, which leads to more effective learning. Similarly, motivation can enhance a student's
task choice in contexts other than the academic. Motivation can also support the student´s effort to
work on a difficult task, by seeking to earn higher marks in a specific assignment. Not only this,
motivation can strengthen a student's persistence toward completing a task. When there are positive
ratings of awareness, task choice, effort, and persistence, it is likely that a student will be placed on the
high-achieving (and high-learning) end of the scale, being able to successfully self-regulate her learning
process while maximizing both internal and contextual learning resources.
The following table shows some motivational sources and their implications according to Zimmermann
(2011), crucial to consider when meaning to link motivation and SRL efforts.
Motivational
source
Implications
1. Goal
orientation
Related to the purposes for learners´ achievement in terms of performance (gain positive judgments of level
of current personal competence and avoid negative judgments - based on a fixed conception of intelligence:
it cannot be worked on if there is prior insecurity) and learning (gain positive judgments by increasing
competence - based on a malleable conception of intelligence: it can motivate confident and insecure
learners). Performance orientation aims at avoiding unfavorable comparisons; learning orientation leads to
self-improvement.
2. Interest
Related to the disposition to engage and re-engage in activities and ideas. Situational interest depends on
activity and does not transfer beyond current context; individual interest does not depend on activity, but is
rather enduring inter contexts and activities and ideas. Ideally, SR learners shift from a situational to an
individual interest as preference develops intrinsically without external motivators. Both play determinant
roles in stimulating SRL.
3. Intrinsic
motivation
Involving the perceived role of various rewards on valuing an activity by a student, it differentiates
conception of reward as either controlling, or informing. Whereas intrinsic motivation focuses on the
inherent value of the task and is therefore independent of external motivators, extrinsic motivation refers to
the instrumental value of a task toward attaining other outcomes.
4. Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy constitutes the set of beliefs a person has over the perceived results of her own actions, if they
contribute to goal achievement and if they affect the environment in a positive way, according to self-set
standards and previous experiences.
5. Causal
attribution
Causal attribution shows how a person attributes her success or failure to causes that lie inside or outside
her sphere of influence in both static and variable ways, and can also attribute her outcome to either
controllable or uncontrollable factors. It can have heavy motivational consequences, such as emerging fears
toward a particular task, varying expectations and efforts, and diverse intentions.
6. Task values
Task values refer to how much a learner perceives an assignment as valuable. It is divided into importance
(how learners envision themselves doing the task), intrinsic value (enjoyment for performing at the task),
utility (functional value of the task), and cost (perceived consequences of pursuing the task).
7. Future time
perspective
Future time perspective places attainable outcomes and current situation in contrast of levels of persistence.
Putting-off pleasures in favor of working is included. Learners with long FTP remain motivated for longer
time than those with a short FTP.
8. Volition
Volition refers to how learners focus and sustain their efforts toward dealing with both internal and external
distractions. Motivation determines task to begin, while volition determines perseverance in the task.
SRL constitutes a cycle, according to Zimmermann (2011). The three-phased cycle that contemplates
motivation in SRL emerges as a need to integrate the several variables and their interplay in the actual
learning process. The first phase, forethought, includes two main sources of self-regulation: task
analysis (including goal setting, related to proximal paths as a start toward more distal paths, and
strategic planning, related to guiding cognition, controlling affect), and self-motivation beliefs (selfefficacy, outcome expectancies, task interest and value, and goal orientation). The second phase,
performance, is divided into two classes: self-control strategies (including task and volition strategies,
self-instruction, imagery, time management, environmental structuring, help-seeking, interest
enhancement, and self-consequences), and self-observation (including metacognitive monitoring and
self-recording). Finally, the third phase, self-reflection, comprises two groups: self-judgment (including
self-evaluation and causal attribution), and self-reaction (including self-satisfaction/affect and degree of
being adaptive/defensive).
Motivation regulation strategies according to Wolters (2003)
Strategy for
regulation of
motivation
Description
1. Selfconsequating
Refers to self-administered rewards or punishment on the basis of having successfully reached a set goal.
Highly behaviorist. Associated with yielding increased effort, performance, and well-being (e.g.
Watching a film if having completed reading a full article, or self-praising after completing a task).
2. Goal-oriented
self-talk
Refers to the self-elicitation of reasons why one persists to complete a task as a way to increase drive.
Associated with yielding increased effort and achievement (e.g. striving to satisfy curiosity, learn more
profoundly about a topic, augmenting sense of agency).
3. Interest
enhancement
Refers to strategies employed to increase intrinsic motivation through perceptions of immediate
enjoyment or situational interest when completing a task. Associated with yielding increased
persistence, task value, metacognitive strategy employment, (e.g. gamification, task-enhancement to suit
individual preferences).
4. Environmental
Refers to decreasing the probability of emergent off-task behavior by decreasing probability of
structuring
encountering distractions or reducing their intensity when they actually occur. Associated with yielding
increased persistence, readiness, attentiveness, although not independently from other regulatory
strategies (e.g. moving to quiet places for reading, logging off Facebook, keeping calendar with
deadlines).
5. Selfhandicapping
Refers to manufacturing obstructions to make the task more challenging. Is it conscious? Associated with
yielding external causal attribution to failure (for self-esteem purposes), decrease in sense of worry for
performance evaluation, increased intrinsic motivation. Both potentially adaptive and maladaptive. (e.g.
putting off work, staying up late prior to an exam,
6. Attribution
control
Refers to causal attributions that students purposefully select to maintain or increase their motivation for
a task or for future tasks that are similar. Students, for instance, instead of avoid blaming their academic
setbacks on internal, stable, and uncontrollable causes, will use attributions that reflect internal and
controllable factors because they lead to more adaptive motivational outcomes. Attributions can be
manipulated through external means and can help students impact their motivation and performance.
7. Efficacy
management
Refers to students’ ability to monitor, evaluate, and purposefully control their self-efficacy for tasks.
Three strategies are mentioned: proximal goal setting (breaking complex tasks into simpler more easily
and quickly completed segments), defensive pessimism (students highlight their level of unpreparedness,
lack of ability, or other factors to convince themselves that they are unlikely to complete a particular task
successfully), and efficacy self-task (engage in thoughts or sub vocal statements to influence students’
efficacy for an ongoing academic task.)
8. Emotion
regulation
Refers to students’ ability to regulate their emotional experience to ensure that they provide effort and
complete academic tasks. This might help in reducing negative affective response and deleterious effects
associated with performance evaluations.
2. Case analyses
Case 1:
Rose can be labeled as a highly motivated, self-regulating student. We can observe Rose’s sources of
motivation based on how Zimmermann (2011) has defined them: Rose’s motivation stems from her high
self-efficacy feeling; she has clear learning goals, has individual interest in her studies, obviously values
learning, has a long FTP (future time perspective), and the view that she can control her own learning
(internal causal attribution). Rose has emotional stability, and the ability to take others into account. She
also seems to have good learning strategies as she does well in school.
Motivation and motivation regulation have an interdependent and curvilinear relation. Students with
high motivation rarely need to regulate their motivation, and students with low motivation rarely even
begin regulating their motivation. Thus, students who have some initial motivation, but face difficulties
during studies, resort to motivation regulation strategies more often than students with very high or
very low motivation.
Rose, being a highly motivated student, might rarely need to resort to regulating motivation when it
comes to her studies in humanities and sciences. Though, according to Wolters (2003), environmental
regulation can be seen as a form of motivation regulation strategy in which the student decreases
probability of encountering distractions or reduces their intensity when they actually occur. Rose also
organizes a quiet place for herself to be able to concentrate on studying, but in Rose’s case this might be
seen more of a habit and a form of good studying practices rather than intentionally aiming at improving
motivation to study.
Rose is performing well in humanities and sciences, but she finds sports difficult. However, Rose knows
that she’s a good learner, but also that she cannot be perfect in everything, so she decides to do her
best. It would seem obvious that Rose needs to regulate her motivation in sports. From the case
description it is not obvious what the motivation regulation strategies actually are that she uses, but as
“she decides to do her best” it can be inferred that goal setting, attribution control and self-efficacy play
a role here. Rose understands that she cannot be perfect in everything, so she might set herself such
goals in sports that she thinks she is able to reach by actively pursuing them.
Case 2:
Sam is a typical example of an efficient self-regulated learner exclusively in solo work, presented by
actions taken during his studying process. Several aspects related to his motivation and emotion in SRL
can be analyzed as following:
1. Sam had good goal orientation in his Finnish course. He set a clear goal to get grade 5.
Therefore he attended all the lessons, finished homework and studied hard for the final exam.
2. Sam felt confident in his ability, having set a clear performance goal in his Finnish course.
Clearly, it presents one of the important strategies of the regulation of motivation: self-efficacy.
Sam had made his own belief about his capability to acquire good result in his studying and
confidently set his goals high. This helped him confirm his ability and encouraged him to
perform well. However, self-efficacy brought a negative effect when Sam dealt with the groupwork task. He was confused about his role in the group and felt that his performance couldn´t
affect the group outcome positively. Likewise, discussions with peers never led to real progress.
Those beliefs limited his performance in group task and therefore he failed in that learning
activity.
3. Instead of studying during the time of Finnish course, Sam decided to spend just 2 days before
the exam preparing for taking it. He focused completely during this time and tried to remove
any possible distractions. This would be a part of self-handicapping strategy. With him, this
strategy is considered effective because at that time, he can forget anything else and just
concentrate on the task itself - he put his effort and energy in the specific time and attempts to
experience an intrinsic motivation toward the task.
Case 3: Polly is a perfect example of an inefficient self-regulated learner, mainly as a result of her poor
emotional and motivational awareness and stability. Several aspects can be highlighted from her
situation regarding her motivation to study the program she does, which are analyzed one by one:
1. Polly tries to achieve high grades to make her family proud. Two important aspects emerge
presently: first, she is a student that presents a clear orientation toward performance, while
not necessarily toward learning. This way, she is aiming at avoiding unfavorable comparisons
while not perceiving her capacity to be malleable (it is hard for her to learn anything new).
Second, by stating that she wants to make her family proud, she is establishing a situational
interest toward her studies. She might only aim at performing well because of the moment, and
it is expected that she might diminish (or even abandon) her efforts once she realizes that her
family does not mind if she does well or not. Likewise, she selected her program due to the fact
that there wasn't anything better to choose, clearly pointing out that it was a forced decision
based on the impossibility to find anything to her liking.
2. Polly sticks the high graded papers to the fridge and gives herself treats. Knowing that it is
unlikely for her to get a high grade, she savors each one and doesn't fail to reward herself with
external motivators. For her, attending university is not about the intrinsic value of learning, but
about the way she can attain positive outcomes to obtain external recognition and rewarding.
3. Polly states that she is a very lucky girl for attaining a high grade. This constitutes a crucial point
in Polly´s SR skills, as she attributes her success to external causes, that are definitely not
controllable by her. In this sense, she presents an external locus of control in her positive
performance. She sees that her performance has been caused by reasons that lie outside her
sphere of influence, and is unlikely to show improved expectations in subsequent work. Also
related to this is the fact that she presumes that the exams she presents are not well designed,
further showing an external causal attribution. Her performance, no matter how high or low it
is, is associated to external variables, and thus her feelings of effect over the situations that lead
to them are almost null.
4. Polly does not perceive her efforts as meaningful, considering her high school performance.
Another critical aspect in SR skills, she does has a low sense of self-efficacy. Her beliefs about
the results of her actions are not high, thus making her think that it is very difficult to have an
effect over her goal achievement. This sense of self-efficacy is based on self-set standards and
previous experiences.
IV.
SOLUTION MODEL
Case 1: Rose does not need help in her motivational regulation strategies or with emotion control.
Actually, imposing intrusive self-regulation strategies might actually decrease the already existing good
practices she has adopted. Rose seems to be setting herself clear learning goals, and is also succeeding
in attaining them. Rose does well in school, and it can be suspected that teachers view her as a very
good student, and might even praise her on the good grades she gets. This could however result in that
Rose starts feeling pressure in getting good grades, and there might be a shift in instead of her setting
learning goals to setting performance goals, which in turn can hamper her learning. Likewise, if Rose’s
teacher(s) would compose the classes so that all tasks and goals are already quite strictly defined for the
students, it could also affect Rose’s efforts negatively, so that instead of concentrating on really learning
by understanding, Rose would instead concentrate on performing all the set tasks.
The case description was mostly concerned with the motivational aspect of Rose’s learning. She seems
to be doing quite well in school, however, there could be some aspects in her cognitive and
metacognitive processes that could be improved to even further enhance her learning, but that’s not in
the scope of this paper.
Case 2:
In Sam’s case, he did perform well in his solo phase task, however, he needs help in dealing with groupwork task. By applying several potential strategies related to regulation of motivation, Sam could
improve his performance in working with peers and achieve good results as he did in solo task. The
suggested solution model for him:
1. Self-efficacy: Sam was successfully using self-efficacy in his solo task. So, he would be even
successful using it during the group task. He can engage in thoughts or sub vocal statements
aimed at influencing his perception of self-efficacy for the ongoing group task. He could say to
himself such things as “I can do it, just keep working”, “I am getting better in my working with
my peers, I am going to be successful if you just keep at it.” This might help Sam improve his
self-belief and motivation to engage with his group and try to overcome the problem.
2. Self-consequating: Sam can promise himself a reward and a punishment after the group-work
result in order to influence his motivation and shape his own behavior. He may also makes
verbal statements to himself while working the group task as a more immediate and perhaps
more subtle method of self-consequating his behavior. For instance, he might say to himself
while working, “I overcame this problem; I did good job; I am making good progress!”.
3. Help-seeking: Sam could find external helps from his peers or teachers by presenting his
difficulty facing in the group-work process, so that he could get advice and solutions from the
others, this could help motivate him to deal with problems.
Case 3: Polly´s situation is an extreme of what it might mean to be an inefficient SRL due to motivation
and emotional issues. Still, it could be worked on by identifying and addressing her specific needs,
naturally taking into account both motivational, emotional, and cognitive aspects of SR. But for the
present effort, we will focus on the motivational and emotional aspects of SRL exclusively. By
identifying issues with motivational sources such as goal orientation toward performance, situational
kind of interest, extrinsic motivation, external causal attribution, and low self-efficacy, it becomes
possible to create an intervention program to regulate motivational and emotional practices and shift
them toward more positive practices. Polly can be assisted toward being driven to achieve set goals by
reinforcing her attitudes and beliefs related to the drive to engage and persist in presented tasks. Some
potential strategies for motivational regulation in Polly are presented here:
1. Self-consequating: Polly can be guided toward administering recognition based on reaching a
particular goal. While related to external motivators, they can be nonetheless modified to be
administered as verbal statements to be given to herself while she is engaged in a task (as a
more minuscule method than just treats). This way, it might be possible for Polly to focus her
efforts on her tasks at hand, and potentially help her develop an awareness for the intrinsic
value of studying.
2. Goal-oriented self-talk: Considering Polly´s lack of drive toward her study program efforts, she
can be assisted by making her self-elicit reasons of why she persists to fulfill a determined task.
This way, focus can be placed on the task per se (while not merely on the outcome), and her
drive might be improved by an emergent strive to satisfy her curiosity about the task. Likewise,
she can realize to a greater extent the value of learning about a topic, and shift her efforts from
merely performance-oriented to learning-oriented. This strategy may also augment Polly´s
sense of agency, giving her an active role in her learning process, not just being a passive
receiver.
3. Interest enhancement: Knowing that Polly isn't that interested in the program by itself, but
rather by parent pressure, focus of her interest could be enhanced by shifting it toward the task
at hand. For example, gamification strategies can be employed to spruce up the learning
activity in a way that results attractive for her. By helping her perceive the enjoyment of each of
the steps of the appointed tasks (subtly exploiting situational interests), she can be led to
enjoying the task and topic themselves, and potentially yield a greater persistence.
4. Self-handicapping: As Polly is already known to be able to achieve some high grades, effort
could be placed in making her place obstructions in her simple tasks to make them more
challenging (perhaps up to such a point that placing them becomes an unconscious process in
her). This might lead to two potential outcomes: on one hand, it might help her to appropriately
associate failure to external causes (and success to internal causes), which might strengthen her
self-esteem, and on the other hand, it might help her to decrease sense of worry for perceived
evaluation, which may lead to an increased intrinsic motivation toward learning (as opposed to
just obtaining good grades). Of course, there has to be close observation by the educational
psychologist, as self-handicapping may also lead to maladaptive practices and actually hinder
her motivation regulatory skills.
5. Control of attribution: Polly´s post-task causal attribution can be guided purposefully toward
increasing motivation in future similar tasks. By helping her associate not only her academic
success to her positive efforts, but also her failures to controllable factors, Polly can avoid
helplessness and actually acquire more adaptive motivational outcomes. Evidently this proves a
challenging task, since manipulation of attributions can be a highly demanding effort, especially
for students whose situation is already as hopeless as Polly´s. Thus, a carefully designed
intervention has to be employed here to achieve intended shifts in attribution and
understanding. Students are normally not able to manipulate their own attributions, so external
support must be present.
Conclusion and discussion
As has been seen so far, SRL is a widely regarded area contemporarily that can aim at multiple critical
issues to successful education. With research as it moves currently, it is subject to constant reassessing
and evolving. Also, applications of tools to teach and empower SR students inside school contexts are
on the rise, a situation that might make further investigation highly appealing to the academic
community. With motivation and emotional regulation at its core, SRL aims to become a widely
adopted learning approach, considering its affordances in real-life working situations and potential lifelong learner emergence. Still, there are multiple fields that yet remain to be studied.
Some strategies for regulation of motivation can prove to be more negative than not, and must
therefore be employed with care and close control from teachers or other facilitators. Particularly, selfhandicapping can result in negative outcomes in the learner if not only motivation is observed: while
attempting to free herself from the imminent responsibility of working toward the task, the learner can
simply disregard the importance of academic work in favor of her perception of well being. Likewise, In
line with what Schutz and DeCuir (2002, quoted in Ainley, 2006) point out, research in the field of
motivation and emotions in education must address the fluid and ever-changing nature of emotions and
affective states, and therefore it faces a challenge in terms of modifying its conventionally employed
research methods. A widely encompassing research method might intend to observe a too broad
spectrum of emotional sources and challenges, but might leave aside the fine aspects about them or
simply not capture them at all; thus, education and psychology must work hand in hand to respond to
the variability of emotion and affective states by developing methods that are more suited to capturing
their nature.
Alternative regulation methods could be researched in line to Wolter´s (2003) regulation strategies in
order to obtain a broader view on the possibilities to deal with motivation challenges. For example, a
sense of agency could be facilitated in order to improve awareness on set working objectives. In that
sense, if the goals set by the learner are strong enough, they could serve binding purposes to the task
completion. Still, not all strategies must aim at improving aspects that simply cannot be improved. In
that regard, supporting learners to know what it means to truly compromise with the task, or when to
quit or ask for help in the current task in favor of a broader understanding, could also be useful for
particular scenarios. Self-regulation does not mean abandonment.
In computer-supported learning contexts, the real-time feedback potential could be employed to assist
learners in avoiding frustration due to a lack of understanding on ill-employed strategies, thus working
in favor of motivation. Nevertheless, there has to be a steady evaluation done on the awareness of the
benefits of technology and the interest in employing technology that learners present, since technology
by itself is no guarantee that motivation and learning will be more positive. As a tool, technology can
provide potentially limitless affordances to learning, but it is not the essence of education per se; there
have to be teachers, educational planners, parents, and other facilitators available to support the
application of technology in order to enhance its capabilities in favor of maintaining a positive
motivation and emotions.
V.
REFLECTION
1. Recall your solo phase planning. How well did you succeed? Why?
Throughout our moderately brief planning phase we were able to set our ideas straight and in line with
our expectations. Right from the start, we felt very confident with the group as a whole; we trusted that
each other was going to collaborate toward reaching our goals and expected learning outcomes. We
felt highly motivated about tackling such a broad task, knowing that we would have all the support we
needed from our peers.
2. Describe one challenge that you had during your task performance.
We are going to mention two challenges we had: first, we had an issue at the beginning with
understanding the task, in terms of what was being expected from us. Since we wanted to excel at the
task, we were worried about understanding just what the teachers intended us to. Second, as is
common for this phase of our studies, we underwent heavy time pressure, considering that there were
several other assignments to pay heed to (especially the solo assignments for the same course).
3. What did you manage with the challenge you faced? What would you do differently next time?
We decided initially to approach our teachers to make sure we were on the same page, and this assisted
us in setting the expected path. After this was done, we were able to plan carefully and to follow it
through. For the time and attention challenge, we decided as a group that we were going to postpone
our two last solo tasks for after the teaching session so we could focus entirely on the group assignment.
Likewise, we set a clear timetable so that our group effort would not interfere with our work effort in
other courses.
REFERENCES
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Järvenoja, H., & Järvelä, S. (2009). Emotion control in collaborative learning situations – do students
regulate emotions evoked from social challenges? British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79,
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Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of Motivation: Evaluating an Underemphasized Aspect of SelfRegulated Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38 (4), pp. 189-205.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2011). Motivational sources and outcomes of self-regulated learning and
performance. In B. J. Zimmerman, & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning
and performance (pp. 49–64). New York: Routledge.