The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the self-regulated learning approach on the academic achievement and retention of visual arts pre-service teachers for art criticism course. The study group of the research conducted with the semi-experimental model with pre-test post-test control group of the experimental method from the quantitative research methods constitutes 38 pre-service teachers educated at the Department of Arts Education, Kazim Karabekir Faculty of Education, Atatürk University in 2014-2015 Fall Term. In the research, academic achievement test was used to determine the effect of self-regulated learning on the academic achievement of visual arts pre-service teachers. The courses were processed in the experimental group with self-regulated learning and in the control group based on the presentation-based learning approach. In the analysis of the data, SPSS 19 Package Program was used. For the non-parametric data, "Mann Whitney U-Test for Uncorrelated Measurements" was used. "Wilcoxon Marked Sequence Tes for Correlated Measurements" was used to compare "pretest-posttest", "posttest-retention test" scores in each of the experimental and control group. According to the findings, a certain increase in academic achievement has been observed in both learning environments in terms of final test scores of the experimental and control groups. When the test scores of the experimental group and the control group students were compared, it seemed that the academic achievements of the experimental group were higher than those in the control group. This finding shows that self-regulated based instruction provides a more effective learning environment and proves more effective in increasing the academic achievement of the students. Also, when the retention scores of the experimental and control groups were taken into account, it was seen that the teaching carried out in both learning environments maintained its permanency. When the retention scores of the experimental group and control group students were compared, the retention scores of the experimental group were found to be higher than the control group. This finding shows that selfregulating learning has more effective and lasting results in the academic achievement of students and is a more effective learning method. Based on the results of the research, it can be said that the self-regulated learning approach positively influences the academic achievements of the pre-service teachers and their attitudes to the art criticism course.