Is Good Strategy Use Possible?

Abstract

How much truth and how much theory is there to the description of good strategy use provided in the last chapter? Are there really people who know many strategies and have a lot of strategy knowledge? Unfortunately, there are no large-scale, process-sensitive direct observations of learning and memorization across a variety of ecologically valid domains to provide the answers to these questions, despite a great deal of interest in ecologically valid, self-regulated learning (e.g., Bandura, 1977, 1982, 1986; Meichenbaum, 1977; Pressley, Borkowski, & Schneider, 1987). More positively, there are data that permit the conclusion that some people regulate their learning better than other people do.