Changes in primary school students’ use of self and social forms of regulation of learning across collaborative inquiry activities

Abstract

This study investigated how the occurrence of self and social forms of regulation of learning processes changes over time across the sequence of collaborative inquiry tasks. Two groups of three primary school students (7th grade) were videotaped while working in collaborative inquiry activities in a regular science classroom during a 7-week period, and participated in stimulated-recall and semi-structured interviews. The results show evidence that the groups engaged increasingly in more socially shared regulation along the sequence of collaborative inquiry tasks, whereas no meaningful change was observed in the occurrence of co-regulation processes over time. Moreover, different patterns of temporal change were identified for each group and for each individual group member, and appeared to be associated with the individual and group level characteristics.