A Perspective on State-of-the-art Research on Self-regulated Learning

Abstract

Theory and research on self-regulated learning (SRL) are growingrapidly but the field is still within grasp. A search of PsycINFO (2005June 25 08:30) using the phrase ‘‘self-regulated learning’’ yielded 463hits when the search examined all text. There were 207 hits when thesearch focused just on titles. Using the Google Scholar search engine,the exact phrase ‘‘self-regulated learning’’ yielded about 471 hits (2005June 25 08:31; Google does not report an exact number of hits). Thepapers in this special issue focus on a particular sector of this field,scaffolding self-regulated learning and metacognition in either face-to-face tutoring sessions or computer-based learning environments. Wasthis a wise choice?In 1976, when there was a single article (Mlott et al. 1976) in theliterature that used the phrase ‘‘self-regulated learning’’ (PsycINFO,2005 June 25 08:32 searched using dates 1900 to 1976), Wood et al.(1976) introduced the term scaffolding. By this, they meant ‘‘a formof assistance that enables the child or novice to solve a problem, car-ry out a task, or achieve a goal that would be beyond his or herunassisted efforts’’(p. 90). A nascent question was born: Do learnersneed scaffolding to self-regulate learning? The answer is: Yes and no.When there were 103 publications on self-regulated learning in1995 (PsycINFO, 2005 June 25 08:36 searched using dates 1900 to1995), I argued self-regulating learning is ubiquitous (Winne, 1995a,1995b). This is logically entailed on adopting any of several currentand widespread stances, two among them being particularly promi-nent: Learners are agents. Learners construct knowledge. Whetherscaffolding is available or not, these paradigmatic stances necessitatethat learners can and do self-regulate learning. Empirically, it isimpossible to prove every learner is constantly engaged in SRL be-cause data to validate this claim can not be collected for each learnerat every instant whenever they learn. Studies show, however, thatSRL is common across learners and tasks (e.g., see Boekaerts