Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview

Barry J. Zimmerman is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. I AN ERA OF CONSTANT DISTRACTIONS in the form of portable phones, CD players, computers, and televisions for even young children, it is hardly surprising to discover that many students have not learned to self-regulate their academic studying very well. Consider the case of Tracy, a high school student who is infatuated with MTV. An important mid-term math exam is two weeks away, and she has begun to study while listening to popular music “to relax her.” Tracy has not set any study goals for herself—instead she simply tells herself to do as well as she can on the test. She uses no specific learning strategies for condensing and memorizing important material and does not plan out her study time, so she ends up cramming for a few hours before the test. She has only vague self-evaluative standards and cannot gauge her academic preparation accurately. Tracy attributes her learning difficulties to an inherent lack of mathematical ability and is very defensive about her poor study methods. However, she does not ask for help from others because she is afraid of “looking stupid,” or seek out supplementary materials from the library because she “already has too much to learn.” She finds studying to be anxiety-provoking, has little self-confidence in achieving success, and sees little intrinsic value in acquiring mathematical skill. Self-regulation researchers have sought to understand students like Tracy and to provide help in developing key processes that she lacks, such as goal setting, time management, learning strategies, self-evaluation, self-attributions, seeking help or information, and important self-motivational beliefs, such as self-efficacy and intrinsic task interest. In recent years, there have been exciting discoveries regarding the nature, origins, and development of how students regulate their own learning processes (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). Although these studies have clearly revealed how self-regulatory processes lead to success in school, few teachers currently prepare students to learn on their own. In this article, I discuss students’ self-regulation as a way to compensate for their individual differences in learning, define the essential qualities of academic self-regulation, describe the structure and function of self-regulatory processes, and, finally, give an overview of methods for guiding students to learn on their own.