Self-control refers to the alignment of thoughts, feelings, and actions with enduringly valued goals in the face of momentarily more alluring alternatives. In this review, we examine the role of self-control in academic achievement. We begin by defining self-control and distinguishing it from related constructs. Next, we summarize evidence that nearly all students experience conflict between academic goals that they value in the long run and nonacademic goals that they find more gratifying in the moment. We then turn to longitudinal evidence relating self-control to academic attainment, course grades, and performance on standardized achievement tests. We use the process model of self-control to illustrate how impulses are generated and regulated, emphasizing opportunities for students to deliberately strengthen impulses that are congruent with, and dampen impulses that are incongruent with, academic goals. Finally, we conclude with future directions for both science and practice.
Achievement emotions are critical because of their impact on success and failure in important domains such as learning. These emotions may be modified via emotion regulation (ER). The dominant process model of ER (PMER;Gross, 1998Gross, , 2015, however, provides a domain-general account of ER strategies and has not had substantial contact with theories of achievement emotions such as Pekrun's ( 2006) control-value theory (CVT) and the academic achievement literature. Moreover, ER has not been a focal point of major theories related to achievement emotions, such as CVT. We propose an integrated model of ER in achievement situations (ERAS) that integrates propositions about the generation of emotions from CVT with propositions about how emotions are regulated and types of ER strategies from PMER. The ERAS model also offers new propositions regarding how different achievement situations, object foci, and time frames, as well as discrete emotions with different appraisal patterns, impact ER strategies.
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