Successful Distance Learning: Pedagogical Strategies for Teachers to Enhance Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

Research on self-regulated learning (SRL) has shown that students who are capable of taking an agentic role in their learning process can use more appropriate learning strategies and preserve their motivation for learning, resulting in better academic performance. The importance of SRL is particularly emphasised in distance learning settings where a teacher’s timely support, namely scaffolding, can be limited. Because students with good SRL skills can manage tasks, plan work, and keep their motivation, they can better maintain their wellbeing in remote schooling. Hence, it has been argued that fostering distance learning requires educators to provide a supportive environment that facilitates students’ engagement in regulating their own learning.

Teachers can facilitate students’ self-regulation by enhancing students’ awareness of their learning processes and supporting them in monitoring and controlling their cognition, motivation, emotions, and behaviour. The critical element here is the teachers’ own understanding about the mechanisms of SRL. Prior research suggest that teachers become capable of designing learning tasks and implementing prompts to promote students’ SRL into their teaching after acquiring the adequate information and training. In this paper, we introduce a set of evidenced-based strategies, accompanied by a designated pedagogical framework, that have been developed to address the increased need for supporting teachers in developing students’ SRL skills in distance learning.

First, we have reviewed literature of SRL and motivation, deciding on our definition and theoretical model to develop a scientifically grounded pedagogical framework. We start by determining the different areas of learning that benefit from SRL support, then draw attention to different phases of SRL. Then, we suggest how educators can provide support for their students in these phases, particularly in distance learning settings. While acknowledging that it is challenging to teach in a distance environment, we shed light on the advantage of this unique setting that keeps students’ traces of actions. We conclude, by going back to the agentic role of the learner in distance learning settings, that scaffolding processes eventually help develop students’ SRL skills though gradually shifting pedagogical decision making from a teacher to the students themselves.