Theory and Principles
Why Self-Regulation?
Self-regulation refers to the students’ capacity to monitor, evaluate and self-direct their own learning. Research shows that students with better self-regulatory skills are more successful academically, they are more motivated and engaged in learning and are better prepared for employment and lifelong learning.
To develop self-regulation students must have formal opportunities to self-assess and make judgements about their own work, and to make judgements about others’ work (e.g. peers). They also need to develop their own internal feedback skills. Research shows that the benefits of feedback from teachers depend on students’ internal processes, on how they interpret and compare the information they receive with their own work. It also shows that students also generate internal feedback when they engage in academic tasks and compare their work against other information sources (e.g. rubric, criteria, exemplars, textbook explanations, the work of peers etc). By making some of these informal comparisons formal and explicit the power of inner feedback can be enriched.
In sum, the capacity to self-regulate depends on students being able to assess and generate internal feedback about their own work and performance.
Principles of good assessment and feedback
Assessment and feedback to develop learner self-regulation should give students practice in:
- Formulating goals for learning and in identifying standards
- Making evaluative decisions about their own and others' work (its processes and outcomes)
- Generating feedback for themselves and others
- Responding to and acting on feedback, self-generated and received
- Discussing work, its processes of production and its evaluation with others