Self-Regulated Learning in the Physical Sciences and Life Sciences

• In Event: College Readiness: Connections Between High School Lessons and Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

Chemistry and Physics

Education must not only teach students what science is, but how to understand and engage in scientific reasoning and argumentation. The purpose of this session is to present lessons demonstrating how to engage students in active, collaborative learning, which is likely to lead to deep conceptual understanding. Such lessons require students to engage in self-regulated science inquiry. They also serve as mediums for teachers to teach, support, and model self-regulated learning knowledge and skills that are essential for college readiness.

Biology
Scientific thinking involves critically evaluating and reflecting on recorded data and examining peer review or feedback that might establish other credible conclusions, skills needed in the college climate. The purpose of this session is to present a descriptive analysis illustrating how classroom-based learning activities in science can integrate content-area concepts and material with highly structured and socially-supported opportunities to help students become more self-aware, strategic, and motivated – all components of SRL functioning.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Both analyses use Zimmerman and Schunk’s three-phase cyclical feedback model as the framework from which to analyze the instructional activities and approaches used within the two science disciplines.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Using case study methodology to assess the lessons and narratives from both science disciplines, qualitative characteristics of instruction and learning that paralleled SRL concepts and principles were identified. Teachers were from private (Ohio) and public (Virginia) schools.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Both analyses used a qualitative approach describing exemplary and unique features of each lesson and the use of SRL by teachers and students. Evidence was found from instructional plans, motivational approaches, evaluations and assessments, and overall classroom discourse. We analyzed physical sciences lessons addressing Density and Proportional Reasoning, and Introduction to Constant Velocity, as well as life sciences lessons addressing natural selection, and processes of cellular respiration and photosynthesis. All four science lessons were laboratory in nature.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Within these lesson cases, we found evidence of instruction of, and support for, all three phases of SRL processing.

Physical Sciences
These lessons illustrated empirically-supported tenets of SRL including planning, monitoring, and controlling what happens before, during, and after learning; providing just-in-time teacher support and modeling; and structuring lessons to promote positive reflection, self-efficacy, and growth mindsets. Further, these lessons illustrated how to move students from co-regulation to socially shared regulation of learning, which provides students with tools needed to engage in scientific argumentation, inquiry, and discourse.

Life Sciences:
Each lesson plan emphasizes the use of innovative motivational- and SRL-enhancing instructional activities embedded within science activities. Specifically, the lesson plans included several socialization supports (e.g., feedback, modeling) and SRL-infused instructional activities to stimulate students’ engagement in continuous cycles of regulatory thinking and action, and to nurture their motivation beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy, task interest, and task value). Several SRL processes, such as goal-setting, strategy use, monitoring and self-reflection, were naturally embedded in existing classroom-based science activities, emphasizing the synergy that often exists between content learning and regulatory functioning.

Authors

• Timothy J. Cleary, Rutgers University

• Jeff A. Greene, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Erin E. Peters Burton, George Mason University

• Janice L. Anderson, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Caroline Gergel, Annandale High School

• Christina E. O’Malley, Carroll High School

• Katherine Willet, Annandale High School

• Nikki G. Lobczowski, McGill University