★ Must-know
Further detail
📌 Social cognitive theory includes personal factors and reciprocal influence, whereas behaviorism focuses on how reinforcing or punishing environments predict behavior.
★ Must-know
Observers are more likely to attend to competent, prestigious, enthusiastic, or high-status models and to models they perceive as similar to themselves in attributes or competence.
Factors influencing observational learning include:
🔄 Bandura (1986) identified four elements of observational learning:
📌 Observational learning can produce acquisition of a behavior without its immediate performance, because performance may wait until the observer has motivation or an incentive.
Further detail
Observers are more likely to perform modeled actions when they believe the actions are appropriate, attainable, and likely to produce valued or rewarding outcomes.
Retention can be strengthened by mentally rehearsing or actually practicing a modeled behavior, and replaying a video can reduce the memory burden.
Production improves through practice, feedback, and coaching, but insufficient physical or developmental skills can prevent a learner from performing a behavior despite practice.
Attention → retention → production → motivation: observe, remember, perform, then repeat.
★ Must-know
Classroom observational learning can:
Modeling can teach physical, academic, and cognitive skills, including problem solving by thinking aloud, and can model attitudes such as enthusiasm for learning.
Teachers can promote observational learning by: modeling desired behaviors and attitudes, using peers, especially class leaders, as models, making clear that positive behaviors lead to reinforcement, helping students choose social environments and models wisely
📌 Self-efficacy concerns whether a person believes they can carry out the actions, whereas outcome expectations concern what they believe will happen as a result of those actions.
Further detail
For students who doubt their abilities, a peer who persists and eventually masters material may be a more suitable model than a peer who succeeds immediately with little effort. - Schunk, 2020
Observing others can produce emotional reactions to situations not personally experienced, including fear after reports of danger or inspiration from accounts of courage and kindness.
Agency involves making intentional choices and plans, designing courses of action, and motivating and regulating their execution.
Students with stronger beliefs that they can control academic outcomes have shown greater confidence in their academic abilities, higher grades, greater engagement, and a higher likelihood of graduating.
★ Must-know
📌 Self-concept is a more global self-perception based on internal and external comparisons, whereas self-efficacy assesses capability to perform a specific task (Marsh et al., 2019).
📌 Self-esteem concerns judgments of self-worth, which depend partly on the value placed on performance and concern about others’ views of one’s competence (Usher, 2015; Harter & Whitesell, 2003).
Further detail
Self-efficacy beliefs predict behavior more strongly than self-concept, particularly for performance on a specific task (Anderman & Anderman, 2014; Bandura, 1997).
Self-esteem and self-efficacy have no consistent relationship, so high efficacy in one area does not necessarily mean high self-esteem (Valentine et al., 2004).
Successes generally raise self-efficacy beliefs, while failures generally lower them (Usher, Ford, et al., 2019).
Vicarious influence on self-efficacy is stronger when observers feel similar to the model (Gerber et al., 2018).
Social persuasion is more potent when the persuader is credible, trustworthy, expert, or high in status, and feedback emphasizing prior success, short-term goals, accomplishments, or effort can support efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Usher & Pajares, 2008).
Students’ backgrounds and contexts can influence which sources they use to form self-efficacy; for example, girls in one study more often reported social sources than boys, and students reported different sources in math and reading (Butz & Usher, 2015). - Butz and Usher
★ Must-know
Higher self-efficacy is associated with greater effort, persistence after setbacks, higher goals, less fear of failure, and trying new strategies when existing ones fail (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020).
Students’ school performance and self-efficacy improve when they use short-term goals, learn specific strategies such as outlining or summarizing, and recognize their achievements as evidence of competence (Pajares, 2006).
📌 Underestimating efficacy can reduce effort and persistence, whereas overestimating it can prevent students from recognizing misunderstandings and repairing them (Pintrich & Zusho, 2002).
Further detail
The relationship between self-efficacy and achievement remains when students’ ability is taken into account; among students with the same math and reading ability, those with higher self-efficacy perform better (Grigg et al., 2018; Usher, Li, et al., 2019).
A slight overestimation of self-efficacy can support motivation (Bandura, 1997).
Teachers’ sense of efficacy is multidimensional because teaching requires confidence in lesson design and delivery, classroom management, student engagement, technology, and reaching students with varied backgrounds and learning needs (Fackler et al., 2021; Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998).
Teachers who take responsibility for student success or failure, rather than attributing it to student ability or external barriers, use more intentional approaches and are more successful in meeting students’ learning needs (Putman et al., 2009).
Higher teacher efficacy is associated with greater job satisfaction and commitment and lower burnout, while high emotional exhaustion combined with low efficacy is associated with harsher discipline (Zee & Koomen, 2016; Eddy et al., 2020).
Teacher efficacy and student learning can reinforce each other: efficacious teachers teach more effectively and students learn more, while student learning can strengthen teacher efficacy (Holzberger et al., 2013).
Efficacy → higher goals, effort, and persistence → stronger performance
★ Must-know
🔄 Effective self-regulation requires students to:
Three major factors influence the development of self-regulatory skill and will:
Zimmerman’s self-regulated learning cycle proceeds through forethought, which includes goal setting, planning, self-efficacy, and motivation; performance, which involves self-control and self-monitoring; and reflection, which includes self-evaluation and adaptations that lead back to forethought and planning.
🔄 Self-regulated learners engage in four activities:
Emotional self-regulation includes awareness of one's own emotions and others' feelings, including recognition that inner emotions can differ from outward expressions.
Further detail
Self-regulated learners are metacognitive, motivated, and strategic, and they adapt behavior to conditions and inhibit actions that would be inappropriate or disadvantageous (Perry & Rahim, 2011).
Self-regulated learners need knowledge about themselves, the subject, the task, learning strategies, and the contexts in which learning is applied.
Metacognitive knowledge includes awareness of effective learning approaches, what material is easy or difficult, coping strategies, personal interests and talents, and ways to use one’s strengths (Efklides, 2011).
📌 Different learning tasks call for different strategies: a simple memory task may need a mnemonic, whereas complex comprehension may call for concept maps or frequent self-quizzing (Carpenter et al., 2020).
Knowledge for self-regulated learning includes understanding:
Motivation to learn provides commitment and includes self-beliefs and interest.
To analyze a task, students can ask what the task is and what its ideal outcome would be.
Understand the task → plan → monitor progress → adjust strategies
★ Must-know
📌 Motivation denotes commitment, whereas volition denotes follow-through. - Corno, 1992
Further detail
Students with greater individual interest in an activity tend to regulate their learning in that activity more effectively. - Renninger & Hidi, 2016
Activities valued for their usefulness or enjoyment can lead to deeper and more systematic engagement. - Eccles et al., 2015
📌 Volitional acts are voluntary decisions made amid conflict between desired outcomes, unlike automatic or habitual acts. - Oettingen et al., 2015
Motivation commits; volition follows through.
★ Must-know
People can learn self-control strategies, and those with more strategies perform better in school. - Duckworth et al.
A one-variable account of success is insufficient because self-regulation involves cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and volitional mechanisms within a broader learning context.
Further detail
In Mischel’s delay-of-gratification experiment, four-year-olds could eat one marshmallow immediately or wait through a 15-minute errand for a second marshmallow.
Follow-up studies found that children who waited for the second marshmallow had higher SAT scores, better stress responses and social skills, and fewer health problems. - Mischel
Duckworth’s account says effort contributes twice to achievement: initial effort builds skills, and sustained effort applies those skills productively.
A meta-analysis of reports from 66,807 students found that grit was unrelated to academic achievement in some academic settings.
📌 Grit measures overlap considerably with established self-regulation measures such as conscientiousness, and researchers have questioned whether grit is empirically distinct.
Grit’s promise of persistence contrasts with evidence questioning its uniqueness and predictive power.
★ Must-know
Social cognitive theory explains self-regulation through interactions among personal, environmental or social, and behavioral factors.
Self-regulation generally improves as neurobiological systems develop, while environmental stressors and social isolation can hinder its development. - Blair & Raver, 2015
During early and middle childhood, learners acquire self-regulation skills through observation and emulation, internalize modeled strategies as competence grows, and eventually regulate themselves independently in new situations. - White & DiBenedetto, 2018
The three executive functions are:
Further detail
Factors associated with earlier development include:
Adolescents’ executive functioning increases globally and plateaus toward the mid-20s, while late adolescence also brings heightened sensation seeking and risk-taking. - Steinberg et al., 2018
Executive functions are impaired by stress, poor health, or emotional turmoil and enhanced when learners are relaxed, healthy, and connected to others. - Diamond and Daphne Ling
Mindfulness practices with movement, such as tai chi, were the most effective interventions reviewed for improving executive functioning. - Diamond and Daphne Ling
Challenging activities and frequent opportunities for sustained practice sharpen executive functions. - Diamond, 2012
★ Must-know
🔄 The three phases are (Zimmerman, 2013):
In the forethought phase, learners set clear, reasonable goals, plan strategies, and draw on motivational beliefs such as self-efficacy, expected outcomes, interest, and a mastery orientation.
In the performance phase, learners use self-control and learning strategies, monitor their progress, and adjust strategies when needed.
In the reflection phase, learners evaluate their performance and consider what worked, what did not, and why. - Panadero et al., 2017
Technology-rich learning requires metacognitive and self-regulatory skills, online credibility evaluation, and motivation to remain focused in demanding or socially isolated settings. - Mayer, 2014
Further detail
Learners can record:
Attributing success to effort and good strategy use can increase self-efficacy for similar future tasks, while learners may also revise goals or reward themselves.
📌 Learners’ self-regulation depends largely on self-set or internalized standards; without adequate self-standards, people exercise little self-directedness. - Bandura, 1986
Scaffolds, prompts, and learning supports that reduce cognitive burden can enhance self-regulation in online learning, especially for challenging concepts.
Students who took notes on laptops wrote more but performed worse on a later exam than students who took notes by hand. - Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014
Students who responded to text messages while taking class notes performed worse than students who were not asked to do so. - Flanigan & Titsworth, 2020
College students performed worse on a test when they could see peers multitasking on laptops. - Sana et al., 2013
Forethought → performance → reflection.
★ Must-know
Further detail
Core competencies include:
School programs that develop emotion regulation, prosocial behavior, and social competence are associated with better mental health, social adjustment, and academic achievement in the short and long term.
In a study following almost 300 students through kindergarten, anger, sadness, and shyness were negatively related to achievement, while self-control was positively related to achievement, particularly among students with lower negative emotions.
During adolescence, anxiety, shame, and guilt can undermine attention and motivation, while rumination over negative experiences consumes cognitive and emotional energy that could support academic learning. - Ben-Eliyahu, 2019
Teachers’ stress can spread to students, so teachers’ emotional and social regulation skills are important to model and develop. - Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, 2017
RULER means (Jones et al., 2017):
Trusting, respectful relationships and culturally supportive communities can support positive emotions, reduce negative emotions, and increase students’ safety and well-being. - Jagers et al., 2019
📌 Social and emotional learning approaches should address interpersonal and structural inequalities rather than leave them unchallenged. - Dena Simmons, 2021
RULER: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, Regulating emotions.
★ Must-know
In teachers’ first years, high stress can lead to burnout when they lack effective coping strategies. - Chang, 2009
Teachers can encourage emotional self-regulation by: building classroom trust, helping students recognize and express feelings, developing empathy for others, teaching coping strategies, discussing cultural differences in emotional expression
Teachers who handle classroom stressors effectively demonstrate high teaching self-efficacy and positive emotional self-regulation (Kim et al., 2019; Schonert-Reichl et al., 2017).
📌 Teachers who feel that school leaders grant them autonomy report greater emotional buoyancy, whereas teachers who feel controlled or constrained by restrictive policies report emotional exhaustion (Collie, 2021).
Further detail
Common stress sources are: student misbehavior, interpersonal challenges, work-related pressure, including meeting personal or externally imposed standards
The COVID-19 pandemic added teacher stress through remote duties, adapting instruction for in-person and remote learners, and risks to teachers’ and families’ health.
Classroom trust can be supported by avoiding unnecessary comparisons, applying fair consequences, and giving students opportunities to improve their work.
Teachers can help students recognize others’ emotions by discussing facial expressions with young children and using diverse characters, literature, films, or role reversals with older students.
Coping strategies include: considering how another person feels, seeking help, leaving the scene, using self-talk, deep breathing, mindful movement, discussing how to handle anger, disappointment or anxiety
Teachers are more likely to maintain a healthy professional life when they manage stress without becoming emotionally charged, keep perspective, and seek peer support (Collie et al., 2012; Jennings & Frank, 2015; Woolfolk Hoy, 2013).
A meta-analysis found that engagement in mindfulness practices was associated with lower teacher stress, anxiety, depression and burnout (Zarate et al., 2019).
★ Must-know
📌 In task design, complex refers to tasks involving multiple goals and substantial meaning, not tasks that are necessarily difficult; tasks should challenge students without overwhelming them.
📌 Teachers should provide choices suited to students’ skills and knowledge, using constraints when needed, such as requiring a minimum amount of writing while allowing students to write more or choose another way to demonstrate understanding.
Further detail
Complex tasks extend over time, engage varied cognitive and metacognitive processes, and allow varied products; a study of Egyptian pyramids, for example, can produce reports, maps, diagrams, skits, models or a museum.
Complex tasks promote deep thinking, planning and problem solving, help students develop cognitive and metacognitive strategies, and can increase self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation when students succeed (McCaslin & Good, 1996; Turner, 1997).
Involving students in decisions encourages them to plan, set goals, monitor progress and evaluate outcomes, while perceived control over learning activities supports motivation to complete tasks.
Teachers can scaffold student choices by modeling decision making, giving feedback, and tailoring options—for example, suggesting accessible research topics or collaborative work when learners need support.
Participatory projects linked to broader social or cultural goals can strengthen personal and shared responsibility, and tasks with self-transcendent rather than self-focused goals can enhance academic self-regulation and motivation (Yeager et al., 2014).
★ Must-know
Meichenbaum’s self-instruction method progresses from adult modeling aloud, to child performance with external guidance, to aloud self-guidance, whispered self-guidance and finally private self-instruction (Meichenbaum, 1977).
Self-regulation-supportive evaluation is nonthreatening, ongoing, focused on processes and products, centered on personal progress, and treats errors as learning opportunities (Paris & Ayres, 1994).
Collaborative learning supports self- and co-regulation when it fosters community and shared problem solving, enabling students and teachers to exchange ideas, compare strategies and share expertise (Perry & Drummond, 2002; Perry et al., 2002).
Behavioral theory explains cues, consequences and practice; cognitive theory explains information processing and memory; constructivist perspectives explain learners’ construction of knowledge; and social cognitive theory highlights modeling, agency and self-direction.
🔄 The four perspectives form this teaching sequence:
Further detail
The four self-management skills are (Manning & Payne, 1996):
Having students create self-instruction prompts and hearing teachers think aloud can increase students’ awareness and sense of control over their learning (White, 2017).
The Coping Power Program trains parents and children in emotion regulation and social problem solving, including recognizing feelings, relaxing, redirecting attention from anger, using coping self-statements, taking others’ perspectives, solving social problems and resisting peer pressure. - Lochman & Wells, 2003
Having students help set evaluation criteria and assess their work gives them control, can reduce assessment anxiety, and helps them reflect on and improve their learning approaches (Winne, 2011; Winne & Perry, 2000).
Teachers support effective collaboration by establishing participation routines and norms, including constructive feedback, turn-taking, task sharing, and responding to peers’ suggestions.
Model aloud → guided practice → student aloud → whisper → private speech.
★ Must-know
📌 Self-efficacy concerns judgments of personal capabilities, whereas self-esteem concerns judgments of self-worth.
The four sources of self-efficacy are:
Teachers can support self-efficacy and self-regulated learning by involving students in complex, meaningful tasks that extend over long periods.
Giving students control over learning processes and products, including opportunities to make choices, supports their agency as learners.
Teachers can involve students in setting evaluation criteria for learning processes and products, then give them opportunities to judge their progress against those standards.
Further detail
📌 Self-concept is a global set of evaluative perceptions about oneself in comparison with others, whereas self-efficacy concerns capabilities for a particular task.
When self-efficacy is low, people may avoid a task or give up easily when problems arise.
Teachers with a high sense of efficacy work harder, persist longer, and are less likely to experience burnout.
Teachers’ efficacy is higher in schools where colleagues and administrators have high expectations for students and principals help teachers solve instructional and management problems.
Teachers’ self-efficacy grows from real success with students, so experiences or training that support success in day-to-day teaching tasks can provide a foundation for efficacy.
Teachers can help students manage themselves through strategies such as cognitive behavior modification and self-talk.
Teachers can encourage students to work collaboratively with peers and seek feedback from them.
★ Must-know
📌 Intrinsic motivation arises from freely chosen personal interests and enjoyment of the activity itself, whereas extrinsic motivation arises from outside influences or outcomes unrelated to the activity itself.
Further detail
Behavioral, cognitive, constructivist, and social cognitive theories are presented as four pillars for teaching.
Failing to attend to any part of the learning process results in lower-quality learning.
Motivational components include learners’ needs, goals, values, and beliefs, while outcomes include choices, engagement in learning, and academic performance.
Students with the same abilities and prior knowledge may perform differently depending on their motivation (Wentzel & Miele, 2016).
📌 Motivation can be viewed as a relatively enduring personal trait or as a temporary state affected by context, and an individual’s motivation may combine internal factors with external situations.
Extrinsic motivation has been associated with (Corpus et al., 2009):
Extrinsic motivation can provide incentives to try new things, help students get started, or support persistence in completing a mundane task.
Motivation can be viewed along a continuum from externally determined by environmental and social factors to self-determined through internal processes.
Intrinsic motivation comes from the activity itself; extrinsic motivation comes from outside it.
★ Must-know
📌 Motivation can lie on a continuum from externally determined extrinsic motivation to internally determined intrinsic motivation, rather than falling into an all-or-nothing dichotomy.
Further detail
The same behavior can be motivated at once by intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such as training for fitness benefits and recognition in a triathlon. - Vansteenkiste & Mouratidis, 2016
Four theoretical perspectives emphasize:
📌 Satisfying deficiency needs reduces motivation to fulfill them, whereas satisfying being needs does not end motivation because those needs cannot be completely filled.
Intrinsic motivation rewards the activity itself; extrinsic motivation looks to external outcomes.
★ Must-know
📌 When students feel autonomous, competent, and related at school, their motivation tends to be more intrinsic; when schools or teachers are controlling, unsupportive of competence, or unwelcoming, students tend to become more extrinsically motivated.
📌 Classroom events can be controlling by pressuring students to act or feel a certain way, or informational by providing appropriate information without coercion; controlling events reduce intrinsic motivation, while informational events can increase perceived competence and intrinsic motivation.
Goals improve performance by (Locke and Latham, 2002): directing attention to the task and away from distractions, energizing effort, increasing persistence, promoting new knowledge and strategies when existing strategies fall short
Goals that are specific, elaborated, moderately difficult, and proximal tend to enhance motivation and persistence more than vague “do your best” goals. - Anderman, 2021
Further detail
Need-supportive classroom environments are associated with greater interest, curiosity, competence, creativity, conceptual learning, grades, attendance, satisfaction, engagement, self-regulated learning, well-being, and preference for challenge.
Students exposed to a highly controlling teacher had higher salivary cortisol levels, a marker of stress, than students exposed to an autonomy-supportive teacher in one experiment. - Reeve & Tseng, 2011
Teachers can support self-determination by: offering meaningful choices, helping students plan actions toward self-selected goals, holding students accountable for the consequences of their choices, providing rationales for limits, rules, and constraints, acknowledging and accepting negative emotions, using noncontrolling, positive feedback, displaying patience
Students who feel connected to teachers, parents, and peers are more emotionally engaged in school and more intrinsically motivated. - Furrer & Skinner, 2003
Teacher support was the strongest factor predicting students’ sense of school belonging in a meta-analysis. - Allen et al., 2018
Fourth- and sixth-grade students wrote more persuasive essays when given specific subgoals for stating an opinion, providing at least two supporting reasons, and explaining why those reasons supported the opinion. - Ralph Ferretti and his colleagues, 2009
📌 Students with higher self-efficacy tend to set higher goals, and setting and accomplishing manageable goals can in turn raise self-efficacy. - Locke & Latham, 2019
CAR: competence, autonomy, relatedness.
| Belief | Focus | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Self-efficacy | Capability to perform a task | Specific and context-dependent |
| Self-concept | Perception of how good one is | More global; uses comparisons |
| Self-esteem | Judgment of self-worth | Influenced by valued domains and others’ views |
| Process | Who regulates | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Co-regulation | Adults guide students | Modeling, teaching, feedback, and coaching |
| Shared regulation | Students and teachers regulate each other | Reminders, prompts, and other guidance |
Take a 11-question practice quiz on Self-Regulation and Learning, with every answer explained.
1. A student’s low confidence leads to less effort, which prompts a teacher to change instruction; the new instruction then affects the student’s confidence. Which framework best describes this cycle?
2. What does social cognitive theory add to social learning theory?
Memorize the key concepts of Self-Regulation and Learning with 10 flashcards.
What factors does social cognitive theory add to social learning theory?
Cognitive factors such as beliefs, self-perceptions, and expectations.
Which models are observers more likely to attend to?
Competent, prestigious, enthusiastic, high-status, or self-similar models.
What does social learning theory emphasize?
Learning through observation of others.
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