Self-regulation and academic achievement and resilience: A longitudinal study

Abstract

There is a growing body of research indicating that students who can self-regulate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral aspects of their academic functioning are more effective as learners. We studied relations between the self-regulation strategies used by a group of Italian students during the final years of high school and their subsequent academic achievement and resilience in pursuing higher education. We used the self-regulated learning interview schedule, which focuses on cognitive, motivational, and behavioral strategies used during academic learning in both classroom and non-classroom contexts. The cognitive self-regulation strategy of organizing and transforming proved to be a significant predictor of the students’ course grades in Italian, mathematics, and technical subjects in high school and in their subsequent average course grades and examinations passed at the university. The motivational self-regulation strategy of self-consequences was a significant predictor of the students’ high school diploma grades and their intention to continue with their education after high school.

Introduction

Over the last few decades, technological progress has transformed the international economy from one based on goods and services to one that is centered on information. Acquiring and applying this ever growing body of information requires continuing self-directed learning across the lifespan. Consequently, one of the most important goals of education has become to help students acquire self-regulation skills, not only to improve learning during school years, but also to prepare them to further their education after compulsory schooling has been completed. By continuing their education, students increase their opportunities for a better-paid and more satisfying career (Boekaerts, 1996). Students who are defined as “self-regulated” participate proactively in the learning process—emotionally, motivationally, and cognitively (Zimmerman & Schunk, 1989). These students self-activate and self-direct efforts to acquire knowledge and skills by implementing specific strategies rather than just passively reacting to their teachers’ instructions (Nota & Soresi, 2000; Zimmerman, 1998).

Self-regulated learning strategies are personal methods aimed at acquiring knowledge and skill. Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons (1986), Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons (1988) identified 14 commonly used academic self-regulated learning strategies, which include: self-evaluation, organising and transforming, goal-setting and planning, seeking information, keeping records and monitoring, environmental structuring, self-consequences, rehearsing and memorising, seeking peer assistance, seeking teacher assistance, seeking adult assistance, reviewing tests, reviewing notes, reviewing texts (see Table 1 for definitions and examples of each strategy). These researchers used a structured interview, which they labelled the self-regulated learning interview schedule (SRLIS), to assess use of these strategies by tenth grade students attending a middle class high school in the United States. No class of strategies is viewed as essential across the broad range of tasks that students encounter but rather the range of strategies in the SRLIS represent a repertoire of alternative methods that adaptive students can use to overcome difficulties in learning.

Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons (1986), Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons (1988) found that the students’ frequency of self-regulated strategy use predicted a substantial amount of variance in their achievement test scores. Moreover, these high school students’ reports of implementing these strategies correlated significantly with their teachers’ evaluations of the students’ use of self-regulatory processes in class. In this research, the effects of the students’ gender and socioeconomic status (SES) were assessed using regression procedures (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986). Although both gender and SES were significant predictors of the students’ achievement in mathematics and English, use of self-regulated learning strategies was stronger than either of these student background characteristics. When self-regulated learning strategies were entered first in the prediction equation, it accounted for 84% of the variance in English achievement and 81% of the variance in maths achievement, and the additional effects of gender and SES were of little statistical significance. When SES and gender were entered first and second, respectively, in the prediction equation, self-regulated learning strategy use accounted for an additional 41% of the variance in English achievement and 36% of the maths achievement, respectively, over the effects of SES and gender. Unfortunately, the correlations between SES, gender, and self-regulated learning strategy use was not reported in this study, but it was clear that the strategy use measure predicted a substantial amounts of achievement over and above that due to SES or gender.

The SRLIS was also used in a cross-sectional developmental study involving fifth, eighth, and eleventh graders selected from students attending a school for gifted children and from students attending a regular school in a large metropolitan area (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990). The school for the gifted was tuition-free, and students attending both schools were middle class in background and were diverse in race (White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian). Although achievement was not included as a dependent variable in this study, the gifted students scored above the 99th percentile on a standardized test of mental ability. Interestingly, the one self-regulation strategy that distinguished gifted students from regular students across the grades was organizing and transforming strategy.

The SRLIS has been used in research conducted outside the United States as well. Purdie, Hattie, and Douglas (1996) studied self-regulated learning strategy use by Japanese and Australian students. They found that Japanese students displayed significantly more seeking information, rehearsing and memorizing, reviewing tests and textbooks strategies than Australian students did. By contrast, Australian students surpassed the Japanese in the following learning strategies: goal setting and planning, keeping records, using self-consequences, seeking teacher assistance, seeking adult assistance, and reviewing notes. Although non-American students displayed national differences in their patterns of self-regulated learning, their strategy use was predictive of their academic achievement (Purdie & Hattie, 1996).

Although there is clear evidence that the frequency of students’ self-regulatory strategy use is predictive of their academic achievement, research on the impact of these strategies on students’ academic resilience has been limited to date. Academic resilience is defined as students’ inclination to pursue long and demanding learning experiences, such as university training. Although the importance of academic resilience has long been recognized, scientific understanding of its underlying dynamics has remained elusive. However, contemporary research has revealed that academic resilience requires more than naive optimism, it requires realism about the difficulty of learning tasks and well-developed skills to cope with these tasks (Zimmerman, 2003). The possession of self-regulatory strategies should enhance students’ educational and career choices (Nota & Soresi, 2000).

Educators have long emphasized that personal resilience is needed to succeed in life and that great achievements that change the world require extraordinary resilience. Although the impact of students’ use of self-regulatory strategies on their academic resilience is limited, Ley and Young (1998) found that the combined self-regulatory strategy totals of Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons’ scale was highly predictive of the limitations of developmentally disabled students entering college in the United States (i.e., 94% of the variance is explained). These data suggest that self-regulatory skills may play a key role in success at the university level although their impact on long-term resilience remains unknown. The specific type of self-regulatory strategy that is likely to optimally influence students’ academic resilience is difficult to predict with regard to foreign population of students based on research in America. However, the strategy of organizing and transforming was highly correlated with American students’ academic track (advanced versus regular) in school (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986) and their level of academic giftedness (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990). It should be noted that these prior studies of American students were not longitudinal in design and did not focus on issues of academic resilience.

The present study was aimed at investigating high school students’ reports of using self-regulation strategies, their scholastic achievement, and their academic resilience (i.e., their intentions to continue with higher education). In particular, we examined the relations between Italian students’ use of the various strategies assessed by the SLRIS (Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986), their higher education aspirations, and their subsequent academic attainments. The study was conducted in two phases. Regarding the first phase of this study, we hypothesized that high school students’ use of self-regulated strategies would predict their high school academic achievement as well as their intentions to further their studies in higher education. Particular attention is directed toward the strategy of organizing and transforming because of its predictive power with American students in prior research.

During the second phase of the study, we investigated correlations between the participants’ use of self-regulation strategies and their Italian high school diploma grades (“esame di maturità”, a nation-wide exam required of all Italian school students at the end of their fifth and final year of high school) and achievement during the first 2 years of university study, which in Italy corresponds to the period with the highest drop-out and failure rate for university students (Arcuri & Soresi, 1997). We specifically predicted that our participants’ self-regulation strategies (investigated in phase 1) would predict their later scholastic achievement, i.e., better performance on high school diploma grades, the number of university exams taken, and grade point average after 2 years at university (data collected in phase 2).