Summary:

Self-Regulation Involves More Than Met cognition:

A Social Cognitive Perspective

By: Barry J. Zimmerman

The article talks about Winne's theory that students failure to self-regulate should be looked at from a social cognitive perspective. Winne believes that the failure to self-regulate must be looked at beyond met cognitive trait, ability, or stage formulations, but looked at as a complex interactive process involving social motivation and behavior components. Winne believed that there are five problems with looking at self-regulation from merely a met cognitive perspective.

The first problem is the willingness of learners to exert the effort necessary to engage self-regulatory processes. It is one thing to possess met cognitive knowledge and skill but another thing to be able to self-regulate its use in the face of fatigue, stressors, or competing attractions. Students need the capability to mobilize direct and sustain one's instructional efforts. The student needs to have their self-beliefs, behavioral, as well as met cognitive forms of self-monitoring investigated within the role of social context.

The second problem is conflicts between met cognitive self-monitoring and cognitive acquisition processes. Subjects that are given specific challenging goals perform better than those who were asked to just do their best. This indicates that monitoring should be delayed until encoding of declarative knowledge shifts to procedural knowledge. But it is believed that self-monitoring can be helpful during all phases of learning, but its focus needs to shift depending on the task.

The third problem is that learner's epistemic orientation toward academic self-regulatory development on task may be a negative attribution to learning. Students with quick epistemic orientation overestimated their future scores on a test and did poorly when compared to other students. The role of the students' ability and beliefs were related directly to learning. They were over confident and did not prepare for the test.

The fourth problem is the inaccurate predictions of learning based on massed practice. This is known as "feeling of knowing" or FOK. Testing showed that students who learned from printed material had a more accurate estimate of self-efficacy. Students who learned from television overestimated self-efficacy. Self-efficacy beliefs depend on the validity of prior learning and test experiences. This idea of overestimating one's confidence may sound negative but may also be essential for an individual to persevere. Optimistic self-beliefs can motivate efforts that, over a course of time, can lead to success.

The fifth and final problem is the difficulty involved in a novice learner's development of a strategic plan for shifting tactics when studying in a naturalistic setting. Study strategies and tactics work well with only certain tasks under specific conditions, and learners confronting unfamiliar tasks must figure out which strategy or tactic is most useful with that particular task. Novice learners need information about the contextual conditions and strong sense of self-regulatory efficacy to sustain motivation, in addition to met cognitive skills.

The article brought to light the role of our self-doubts, false beliefs, unfortunate self-monitoring, and strategy choices, in the process of self-regulatory learning. Most importantly the article revealed that self-regulation is not just a trait, ability, or cognitive stage of development, but rather a complex interactive process involving not only met cognitive components but also motivational and behavioral components.

---

"Self-Regulation Involves More Than Metacognition: A Social Cognitive Perspective" is an article written by Barry J. Zimmerman. It examines self-regulation of students and the various things that have a bearing on it. It is a "complex interactive process involving social, motivational, and behavioral components (Zimmerman, 217).

Winne wrote that there are obstacles that hinder the learning of self-regulation. The first obstacle is the failing to apply enough effort to academic self-regulation. The second is engaging in self-monitoring when it conflicts with acquisition. The third is expecting quick learning. The fourth is making incorrect learning predictions based on mass practice. The fifth is failing to coordinate study tactics as one behaves (Zimmerman, 217).

Winne sees SRL (self-regulated learning) as a cognitive process. He sees motivation as a way to reach learning goals. Students are viewed as being rational in setting goals, monitoring, and using learning strategies.

Winne sees problems in the SRL method. The first problem is students being willing to put forth effort to engage in SRL. The second problem is conflicts between cognitive acquisition process and metacognitive self-monitoring. The third problem is the students' epistemic orientation toward academic self-regulation. The fourth problem is the role of learning prediction inaccuracies based on massed practice. The fifth and final concern is the difficulty involved in a learner's development of a strategic plan for shifting tactics when studying in naturalistic settings.

Winne raised many issues. Some of the issues included motivation, self-monitoring, and self-beliefs. He saw how complex it is. He concluded that self-regulation is not a generalized human trait, ability, or cognitive stage of development (Zimmerman, 220). It is an interactive process of motivation, behavior, and metacognition.

Obstacles	Reason
Not applying effort	Insufficient motivation
Conflicts with acquisition	Ineffective self-monitoring
Quick learning expectation	Inaccurate expectations
Wrong predictions based on massed practice	Inaccurate expectations
Not coordinating study with behavior	Ineffective self-monitoring