Create a self-regulation plan that will keep a student motivated for the remainder of a college program.
There is a prevalent concern that many teenagers have a maladaptive motivational profile (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). According to developmental motivation researchers, as students transition into middle school, they usually suffer from a drop in self esteem, a decrease in task values, including a reduced interest academic tasks (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). There is an even greater concern that with time, students stop believing in their ability to learn certain academic task. This state is referred to as lack of self-efficacy. Lack of self-efficiency often results in low students’ motivation and it eventually makes students devalue their tasks (Bandura, 1997). According to Zimmerman, lack of self-efficiency also results in poor attentiveness, failure to attend classes, and poor performance in examinations (Zimmerman, 2002).Studies suggest that motivational degenerations among students are usually attributed to a mismatch between the psychological needs of the students and their educational environments (Eccles et al. 1993). While students have the need to feel autonomous and they are in a position to have higher levels of control and independence, they often do not get the opportunity to exercise their autonomy within the learning institutions (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002).Consequently, when students have limited choices concerning curriculum activities and have fewer opportunities to exercise personal responsibility, they tend to foster self-defeating motivational cycles (Eccles et al., 1993). Surprisingly, students are expected to exhibit greater self-independence outside the classroom as opposed to inside the classroom (Zimmerman, 2000). Generally, they are expected to conduct more independent study, complete their assignments, and live a healthy all rounded lifestyle. To meet all these expectations, students must employ a number of effective study and self-regulation strategies. Unfortunately, most students, especially the academically struggling ones have poor knowledge on how to select, appraise and modify faulty strategies (Zimmerman, 2000).
Self-regulation abilities and skills are acquired and thus they can be learned, taught, and regulated. For students to self-regulate, they must understand how to compare their own performance and learn how to be proactive students. Some students who are gifted manage to perform well in school for a long period without proper self-regulation skills due to their high ability or easy curriculum. Other students who may have suitable self-regulation skills may choose not to use them because of their personal or social problems. High achievers on the other hand set themselves precise, realistic, and methodical goals for learning and self- monitoring themselves on regular basis.
There several self-regulation strategies that student can apply. Good self-regulating students employ multiple self-tailored strategies. Every strategy can be as successful as any other; there is no single best strategy, which works for all students that will work for all students. Strategies’ effectiveness is greatly dependent on behavioral, environmental, and personal factors. Consequently, effective self-regulation strategy must incorporate regulatory behavior, thinking strategies, and motivational views for learning. Self-regulation takes three different phases, planning, performance regulation, and self-reflection. Teachers may assist students in learning self-regulation by placing the learning responsibility to the students, showing them self-regulatory techniques, and adjusting a Learning Academy Model. Goal setting, study and learning strategies, organization, time management and test-taking strategies are among some of the principal self-regulation skills that students must cultivate.
The purpose of this paper is to create a self-regulation plan that will keep a student motivated for the remainder of a college program. The paper will also discuss the plan and how it demonstrates the methods recommended in the motivation and self-regulation theories.
THE PROPOSED PLAN
The proposed plan is founded on the theoretical assumption that motivational beliefs are among the factors that promote and support the various facets of self-regulated learning. The model involves two principal components one being the use of self-regulation strategies and the other one being motivational beliefs. The self-regulation strategies include other strategies, cognitive learning as well as self-regulatory strategies, which help in controlling cognition (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994).The cognitive learning strategies comprise of organizational and elaboration strategies.
The elaboration strategies involve summarizing all the material learned, use of analogies, and incorporating procreativity in taking notes. The organizational strategies on the other hand include activities such as defining what is to be learned clearly, picking out main ideas from the text being learned, and finally the use of different techniques for identifying, organizing and presenting those ideas (Garcia & Pintrich, 1994).Strategies to control cognition, also referred to as metacognitive strategies, and self-regulatory strategies refer to the students’ ability to set goals as well as plan, monitor and regulate activities (Pintrich et al., 1993).
The proposed plan will be implemented in three different phased cycle as proposed by Zimmerman (2000). The first phase of the cycle will involve planning where students will equipped to regulate themselves more effectively. This will include teaching the students on the importance of self-regulation, different self regulating strategies, and helping them understand how they can implement those strategies in a practical manner. To do this, there will be one-hour seminars conducted on regular intervals, weekly during the introduction period and monthly for the remaining period, for the remaining period of the program. Additionally, goal setting encouragement stickers will be placed strategically throughout the college and changed on monthly basis to maintain relevancy.
The second phase involves the implementation and monitoring the strategies learned in phase one. This will be done through ensuring that students acquire new knowledge and skills, have challenging but reasonable tasks and lastly providing them with all the resources they require to complete the tasks successfully. Students will be required to observe and bench mark their performance against pre set standards. This part of the plan will be implemented throughout the remaining period of the program. The final phase of the cycle will involve self-regulation. In this phase, students will be required to react to the observations from phase two and make improvements where necessary. Every student will be required to conduct this activity at the ends of every school term.
The Plan
Phase 1. Forethought
This phase will precede the actual presentation in order to set the stage and map out the tasks so as to decrease the unknown. This in turn will help cultivate a positive mindset among students. Realistic expectations will be set in order to make learning more appealing. Students will be asked to consider a number of things in order to make the strategies personal. The issues to be considered include:
- When should the student start?
- Where will the student conduct the work?
- How will the student get started?
- What conditions will affect, positively or negatively, the student’s learning activities?
For example, must be assisted to consider their performance and reflect on how they can perform better. They will consider better ways to perform their tasks and list them down.
Phase 2. Performance control
In this phase, students will actively attempt to utilize the strategies put down in phase 1 in order to ensure that they are more successful. In this phase, students must to consider the following issues:
- Is the student accomplishing what he/she hoped to?
- Is the student being distracted?
- Is completing tasks taking the student more times than they thought?
- Under what conditions would the student accomplish the most?
- What questions should the student ask him/herself during tasks completion?
- How can the student encourage him/herself to keep working
- The student should employ the strategies he/she has thought about in phase 1 and considering their success or failure.
Phase 3. Self-reflection
This phase will involve reflection of the performance as well as self-evaluating of results compared to the preset goals.
The students have to consider the following:
- Did the student accomplish what he/she planned to do?
- Was the student distracted and how did he/she get back on track?
- Did the student plan sufficient time or did he/she need to allocate more time to complete the task?
- Under what circumstances did the student accomplish the most tasks?
- The student will consider the things they did differently, whether they worked, whether the changes made effective, and how effective or non-effective changes were.
Students will also be required to take a few minutes daily to complete the checklist below indicating the activities performed, when they were performed, and how long it took to complete them. This report will assist the students with self-monitoring:
| Activity | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
| Interviewed student on goals | |||||
| Worked on setting short-term goal | |||||
| Explained self-consequating |
Theoretical Framework
The model of self-regulated learning is founded on the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997). In this model, personal, contextual and social factors intermingle harmoniously so as to present students with an opportunity to take greater control of their learning. Pintrich (1999) suggested that self-regulated learning is an active and a productive process through which learners can set and monitor their own learning goals as well as regulate their behavior, cognition and motivation.
The nature and effectiveness of a self-regulated plan is influenced by an individual’s goals and contextual framework and the ability to mediate the two (Zimmerman, 2000).
Pintrich and De Groot (1990) suggested that conceptualizing student motivation could be linked to three motivational components, which include an expectancy factor, a value factor, and an affective factor.
The expectancy factor refers to what a student believes to be their expected success, value factor refers to the appreciation that the student has concerning a task’s importance, and affective component concerns the emotional reaction that a student has towards the task being conducted. The three motivational components are closely linked to the student’s cognitive engagement and his/her academic performance. (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990).
Self-regulation is an important aspect of performance and student’s achievement. It therefore goes without saying that every student should strive to ensure that they master the skill. Self-regulated learning skills do not however develop instinctively and therefore every student must have an effective strategy and implement it correctly in order to get the desired results.
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