Writing regulation processes in higher education: a review of two decades of empirical research

Abstract

In Higher Education (HE), writers need to regulate their writing processes in order to achieve their communicative goals. Although critical for academic success and knowledge construction, writing regulation processes have been mainly researched in compulsory education rather than in HE, with no systematic review focused on this context. The purpose of this article was to build a comprehensive picture of the state of writing regulation research in HE by conducting a systematic analysis of the studies on this topic in the last two decades. Studies’ characteristics were analysed in light of both their theoretical perspective and objectives. Results indicated the three theoretical perspectives and diversity of objectives were equally represented. Some methodological characteristics, such as context of study, were significantly related to theoretical perspectives, while the selection of instruments depended on their objectives. A qualitative analysis of the studies showed that cognitive studies methods’ varied in relation to their objectives, while sociocognitive studies used heterogeneous methods, and sociocultural studies used similar methods regardless their objective. Writing regulation in HE is a growing field with great variety of topics and objectives, yet there are still some underdeveloped issues and research challenges such as integrating emotions in the analysis, looking for more comprehensive methods that account for regulation in situated HE writing contexts, and clarifying the conceptual underpinnings of the perspective of writing regulation adopted in each study.