Self-regulation of secondary school students: self-assessments are inaccurate and insufficiently used for learning-task selection

Abstract

Self-assessment and task selection are important self-regulated learning skills for secondary school students. More specifically, selecting new tasks based on selfassessments is very important for them, because teachers are not always present or able to select tasks for them individually. However, little is known about the processes underlying these self-regulated learning skills, and thus no guidelines exist for teaching self-assessment and the selection of subsequent learning-tasks. We propose a model for self-regulated learning-task selection (SRLTS) which represents a possible pathway for the task-selection process, and which students could use as a norm when making task selections. The model could help students to decide what possible new tasks might be suitable for their current skill level, based on self-assessments. The aim of this study is to evaluate to what extent secondary school students select learning tasks according to this model, and whether they use self-assessments to this end. Secondary school students (N = 15) selected learning tasks in the domain of genetics from a structured task database. The tasks varied in difficulty and amount of support provided (i.e., completion problems vs. traditional problems). We used eye tracking, performance estimates, estimates of mental effort, judgments of learning, and open questions to gain more insight in what students focus on and think about when selecting a task. Results suggest that students roughly follow the SRLTS model, but they base their decisions on inaccurate self-assessments. This implies that students might benefit from self-assessment and task-selection advice, which could provide feedback on self-assessments and stimulate students to use self-assessment information as input for task selection in the way the model prescribes to optimize their learning.

Developing Personalized Education: A Dynamic Framework

“…The assumption behind these learner-driven approaches is that learners will generally know best what is best for them. Psychological research on metacognition, however, shows that this is not necessarily the case and learners do not always select the most appropriate tasks (Nugteren et al 2018;Son and Metcalfe 2000). We posit that simply shifting control to the learner is not sufficient for personalized instruction.…”

Effects of group experience and information distribution on collaborative learning

“…An interesting result is that inexperienced groups reported a lower mental effort in the short-term retention phase which significantly decreased efficiency in experienced groups. One possible explanation for this result is that their lower knowledge level may have reduced their assessment of the complexity of tasks, overestimated their current performance which in turns decreased their mental effort ratings (Nugteren et al 2018).…”

Cognitive Architecture and Instructional Design: 20 Years Later

“…In addition, task selection has been used in a series of experiments (e.g. Nugteren et al 2018) as an indicator of regulation accuracy: when learners are asked to select their own learning tasks for study, measures of performance and invested mental effort can be used to draw conclusions on their quality of task selection (i.e. do learners select tasks that are either too difficult or too easy for them?).…”