Investigating Teacher-Student Interactions That Foster Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

This article describes the use of qualitative methods to study young children's engagement in self-regulated learning. In particular, it describes how fine-grained analyses of running records have enabled us to characterize what teachers say and do to foster young children's metacognitive, intrinsically motivated, and strategic behavior during reading and writing activities in their classrooms. This article argues that in-class observations followed by semistructured, retrospective interviews ameliorate many of the difficulties researchers have experienced in past studies of young children's motivation and self-regulation. The observations and interviews provide evidence of children in kindergarten through Grade 3 engaging in self-regulatory behaviors, such as planning, monitoring, problem-solving, and evaluating, during complex reading and writing tasks. Also, they reveal variance in young children's motivational profiles that is more consistent with older students than has heretofore been assumed. Moreover, the in situ investigations of young children's self-regulated learning offer important insights into the nature and degree of support young children require to be successfully self-regulating.