Page 230 - Secondary school students’ university readiness and their transition to university Els van Rooij

them related to self-regulated study behaviour. Approximately 40% indicated that they paid attention to the development of study skills and independence. Common teacher practices described in this sense comprised 1) having students plan their own study activities over a longer time instead of giving homework assignments for each lesson; 2) giving students more autonomy, e.g., in deciding whether or not to attend class but work independently; and 3) checking on homework assignments less frequently or not at all as students grow older. e question is, however, whether these practices contribute to the development of students’ self-regulated study behaviour. ere are two main issues. First, some students, arguably the ones who are most in need of a self-regulation boost, may take advantage of their newly received freedom in the upper grades of secondary school and procrastinate their (home)work or not do it at all, as it will not be checked by the teacher, and skip class when attendance is based on self-judgment by the student as to whether or not he or she needs the teacher’s instruction. Second, almost all interviewed teachers who talked about what they did to give the students more independence confessed that they were experiencing great di culties with ‘letting go’. Many teachers described instances in which they took back control out of fear that students would fail a test, e.g., they would push students to start studying if they noticed that they had hardly been working for it. Interestingly though, a small number of teachers refrained from doing this; they felt some students needed to feel that they had made their own beds and now had to lie in them in order to learn how to do it better next time. We may de nitely conclude that improving secondary school students’ self- regulation skills is no small thing and a challenging job.
Instructional strategies that can contribute to self-regulation development
What does the literature tell us about teaching strategies that improve students’ 8 self-regulation? Schraw, Crippen, and Hartley (2006) conducted a review of 10
years of research into instructional strategies that contribute to self-regulation
in science learning and identi ed six themes within instructional interventions
that were e ective: 1) inquiry-based learning; 2) collaborative support; 3) strategy instruction to improve problem solving and critical thinking; 4) strategies for helping students to construct mental models and to experience conceptual change; 5) the use of technology; and 6) the impact of student and teacher beliefs. Here, we will focus on inquiry-based learning; strategy instruction to improve problem solving and critical thinking; and the impact of student beliefs, since these three themes relate most closely to other topics in this thesis.
Conclusion and discussion
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