The teacher's role in enhancing higher education students' self-regulation: An interview study in Hungary's higher education

Abstract

Abstract In higher education, students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning with little or no help from their teachers. Even though the teacher is a key element in the learning process, there is limited information on higher education students' way of taking charge of their own learning and the agency of the teacher that could influence this process. This paper intends to investigate this gap in the literature by conducting a semi-structured interview study. The interviews were conducted with ten English major students from a Hungarian university. The research was based on two main objectives: (1) to obtain an overview of higher education students' self-regulation (SR); (2) to explore their views on the teacher's influence on their SR process. The data retrieved from the interviews were analyzed using the Templates of Organizing Style (TOS). The results suggest that higher education students use cognitive, metacognitive, and behavioral strategies in order to self-regulate and that there are some personality and professional aspects (e.g., being likable or providing constant, meaningful feedback) of the teacher that can either enhance or hinder students' SR process. The findings also indicate that between these two aspects, the teacher's personality plays a more influential role in students' SR. This can have important implications in the way higher education students' self-regulation is perceived as well as the way teachers prepare for a lesson and behave in a class.