Student interpretations of their self-regulated learning in individual and collaborative learning situations

Thesis event information

Date and time of the thesis defence

Place of the thesis defence

Linnanmaa, lecture hall L10

Topic of the dissertation

Student interpretations of their self-regulated learning in individual and collaborative learning situations

Doctoral candidate

Master of Education Marika Koivuniemi

Faculty and unit

University of Oulu Graduate School, Faculty of Education, Learning and Educational Technology Research Unit

Subject of study

Educational science

Opponent

Professor Marjaana Veermans, University of Turku

Custos

Professor Sanna Järvelä, University of Oulu

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Student interpretations of their self-regulated learning in individual and collaborative learning situations

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is valuable for meeting continuously changing education needs. SRL skills can help us identify the learning challenges and problems that we face as well as our own behaviors and actions in such situations.

However, regulating one’s own learning is not always easy. Consequently, there is a need to consider how the development of these skills can be supported in school contexts and what kind of support learners need for their futures in particular.

This study aims to investigate how students interpret their own and their group’s regulated learning in both individual and collaborative learning processes and to discuss how different SRL aspects can be supported in different learning contexts. The study consists of three separate studies. The first two are empirical studies that investigated student interpretations and experiences of challenging learning situations and how these connect to the SRL skills of students in individual and collaborative learning. The third study is a literature review that focused on evaluating different characteristics of existing SRL instruments that can be used to measure and support different aspects of students’ SRL.

The results show how the interpretations of individual students regarding their own SRL skills and the challenging learning situations they experienced are connected and can predict the students’ learning support needs. However, recognizing one’s own regulatory actions or the challenging learning situations one experienced is not always easy for students, especially in connection to emotionally challenging situations as well as motivation and emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, the findings indicate that SRL support instruments do not often focus on supporting student motivation and emotion regulation skills in comparison to cognitive functions of learning.

This dissertation highlights how individual student interpretations can be a useful source of information for both practitioners and SRL research by increasing awareness of student interpretations of learning in both individual and collaborative learning processes. In addition, more comprehensive SRL support tools need to be designed in order to respond to the SRL needs of students.
Last updated: 1.3.2023