A new way to think about how teachers can promote students' self-regulated learning.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) knowledge, skills, and dispositions are strong predictors of student success (see note below), above and beyond other individual difference factors. Charlotte Dignath has done great work to document both the direct and indirect ways teachers can instruct SRL. Yet, finding time to teach students how to self-regulate can be tough. So how can they fit SRL instruction into the regular school day, which already packed with other content?

In a new paper by Stella Vosniadou, Charlotte Dignath, and colleagues (2024), they present a new framework of Self-Regulated Learning Teacher Promotion, where they combine Dignath's taxonomy of direct and indirect instruction techniques with Chi's ICAP (Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive) taxonomy of classroom engagement activities. This Framework can help teachers and observers better understand the activities teachers use, whether and how they directly and indirectly instruct SRL, and where there are opportunities to integrate SRL instruction into existing activities. The authors demonstrate really useful tools for using the Framework to observe and improve teaching.

Hopefully, the Framework can be a time saver for teachers. Goodness knows they have more than enough to do. The Framework will help teachers maximize the precious time they have with their students. Let's get more SRL instruction in less time!

Note: On Bluesky, Marcus Crede pointed out that the phrasing "strong predictors" is somewhat misleading. Depending upon how one defines a "strong" effect (e.g., some say Cohen's d needs to be .8 or higher for the effect to be "strong" - others have different measures, criteria, or cutoffs), correlations between SRL and academic achievement, or the effect sizes of SRL interventions, do not reach the "strong" threshold. What I meant above was that there is strong evidence (e.g., meta-analyses of both non-experimental and intervention research) that SRL predicts academic achievement - I should've written that more clearly.