Self-regulated learning in science

Abstract

Children learn in different ways and so it is important that different teaching and learning styles are used in education. Professor Ichiro Wada, Professional School for Teacher Education in Education, Yokohama National University, Japan, wants to leverage self-regulated learning for science education. A key goal for his work is to clarify the relationship between the establishment of self-regulated learning and the construction of scientific concepts. He believes that self-regulated learning in science is important for improving educational issues in Japan. A key challenge for Wada is seeing how children think and self-regulate in order that teachers can design improved lessons. To overcome this, he used technology to encourage students to express and record their thoughts which provided an insight into how the children were thinking and learning. The researchers have been successful in visualising the learning process and plan to use their findings to help science teachers to design lessons that relate the process of self-regulated learning to the process of constructing scientific concepts. Wada plans to continue to promote self-regulated learning and will also tackle the social context of self-regulated learning and design lessons that consider these social aspects.