CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 11, 307-313 (1986)
Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: Which Are the
Key Su bprocesses?
BARRYJ. ZIMMERMAN
The basic form and purpose of theories of self-regulated learning are described,
and the contribution to this general formulation of each article in this special issue
of Contempor-crry Edrccutiontrl P.cpc~/ro/r~g~is discussed. The articles focus on dif-
ferent subprocesses in academic self-regulation such as those involved in the self-
system, metacognitive functioning, self-verbalization, instructional context man-
agement, and socialization of children. Basic research and theory on each process
is considered, and a field study indicating a strong relationship between student
use of self-regulated learning strategies and their academic achievement is briefly
described. It is concluded that self-regulated learning theories have much potential
for guiding research on student study patterns and for assisting students to become
more self-reliant and effective a\ learners. 19X6,Ac.dr”lic I%,,. 1°C
Self-regulated learning constitutes an important new approach to the
study of student academic achievement. Previously, student achievement
has been investigated primarily in relation to student ability measures or
to the quality of teaching, schools, and home environments. Self-regula-
tion theory, in contrast, focuses attention on /WN~students personally ac-
tivate, alter, and sustain their learning practices in specitic contexts. Ac-
cording to this view, even high-“ability” students often do not achieve
optimally because of their failure to use or control contextually specific
cognitive, affective, and motoric learning processes. Furthermore, self-
regulation theorists assume that no environment ensures learning. Even
“advantaged” settings require varying amounts of selectivity and struc-
turing in order for students to learn.
This perspective has led self-regulation theorists to direct their atten-
tion to students’ use of a variety of specific subprocesses to achieve
self-designated goals in real world contexts. Although “process” ap-
proaches to learning are not new, self-regulation theories differ from
other thcorics in their focus on phcnomenological (i.e., self) and behav-
ioral processes as well as task-related informational processes. Bandura’s
(1977, 1986) social cognitive theory has had a particularly significant im-
pact on theorizing in this area. Tripartite formulations such as his have
the advantage of explaining not only student academic performance but
Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Barry J. Zimmerman: Department of Educa-
tional Psychology; Graduate School. City University of New York, 33 West 42nd Street,
New York, NY 10036.
307
0361-476X186 $3.00
308 BARRY J. ZIMMERMAN
competence-that is, the motivational and motoric dimensions of
learning as well as knowledge (Zimmerman 1983).
Thus, self-regulated learning theorists view students as metacogni-
tively, motivationally, and behaviorally active participants in their own
learning process. Metacognitively, self-regulated learners are persons
who plan, organize, self-instruct, self-monitor, and self-evaluate at
various stages during the learning process. Motivationally, self-regulated
learners perceive themselves as competent, self-efficacious, and auton-
omous. Behaviorally, self-regulated learners select, structure, and create
environments that optimize learning. According to this view, effective
learners become aware of functional relationships between their patterns
of thought and action (often termed strategies) and social and environ-
mental outcomes. The effective use of self-regulation strategies is theo-
rized to enhance perceptions of self-control (i.e., autonomy, competence,
or efficacy), and these positive self-perceptions are assumed to be the
motivational basis for self-regulation during learning.
There is a growing body of evidence attesting to the importance of
self-regulated learning processes. In addition to pioneering experimental
research conducted by such theorists as Bandura (1977), Thoresen and
Mahoney (1974), Kanfer (1971), and Meichenbaum (1977) on general
issues of self-control, there is a growing body of applied research on the
relationship between self-regulated learning processes and student aca-
demic achievement (Bandura, 1986; Schunk, 1984).
In a recent interview study (Zimmerman & Pons. in press), it was
found that high school students’ use of 14 categories of self-regulated
learning strategies during class and study was highly related to their aca-
demic achievement. These strategies included self-evaluation. organizing
and transforming, subgoal setting and planning, seeking information,
keeping records and self-monitoring, environmental structuring, self-con-
sequences, rehearsing and memorizing, seeking peer, teacher, or adult
assistance, reviewing notes, tests, or text books. Eighty students were
asked to describe the methods they used in six learning contexts and to
rate their consistency in using each method. Reported use of these strate-
gies proved to be highly correlated with academic achievement: Stu-
dents’ placement in advanced versus other achievement tracks in their
school was predicted with 93% accuracy. Students in the two achieve-
ment groups differed significantly in their mention of nearly all categories
of self-regulation. These results indicated clearly that high school stu-
dents’ use of metacognitive strategies were highly related to their
achievement level.
The issue of how educators and parents can increase student levels of
self-regulation is of central importance. Educational researchers are just
BECOMING A SELF-REGULATED LEARNER 309
beginning to investigate the effectiveness of specific procedures for
teaching students to become self-regulated as learners. Each article fo-
cuses on different subprocesses in student self-regulated learning.
McCombs (1986) is interested primarily in the phenomenological dimen-
sion of student functioning, particularly the relationship between global
measures of self-perception and more specific self-processes. Corno
(1986) has directed her article to metacognitive processes-most specifi-
cally, how “state” processes (Kuhl, 1983) may interfere with student at-
tention and volition during learning. Schunk (1986) discusses the verbal
substrate of self-regulated learning-whether private speech enables stu-
dents to exercise greater self-direction and comprehension during acqui-
sition. These first three articles are concerned with the role of various
affective, cognitive, and motoric subprocesses in self-regulated learning.
Articles by Wang and Peverly (1986) and by Henderson (1986) are con-
cerned with the role of instructional processes. Wang and Peverly discuss
methods for analyzing classroom contexts in terms of student self-regula-
tion: whereas, Henderson considers how the latest computerized video-
disk technology might be structured for academic self-regulated learning.
The latter two papers deal with the impact of instructional context on
student self-regulatory processes.
McCombs (1986) presents a causal model of students’ self-system
comprised of a global self and more specific self-regulatory processes.
The global self-structure is postulated to serve as both a filter through
which all information is introduced and also as an executive planner of
such subordinate processes as self-awareness and self-evaluation. In
turn, these processes are theorized to affect students’ percepts of self-
competence ranging from global to specific. This causal model appears
best suited for explaining such general measures of student functioning as
their attitudes and achievement in school. An attractive feature of the
McCombs model is that it links previous research on general notions of
self as an ngcrzt and as an object and more contextually relative notions
of self-functioning such as self-efficacy, self-monitoring, and self-evalua-
tion within a single overarching framework.
Corno (1986) focuses her paper on two of the most fascinating topics in
self-regulation: the role of attention and volition. These processes are
fascinating because we know accomplished people can perform tasks
with little attention to the motoric details that befuddle the rest of us,
allowing them to focus their energies instead on the more strategic di-
mensions. Corno’s paper is helpful because it identifies some of the spe-
cific conditions that can interfere with students’ volitional control during
learning, such as competing action tendencies, peer pressures, and de-
gree of “state” (versus action) orientation as defined by Kuhl (1983).
310 BARRY J. ZIMMERMAN
Self-regulation is equated with volition in this account, and it can occur
only when each of the aforementioned conditions is surmounted. Kuhl
suggests five specific strategies for enhancing students’ volitional con-
trol, and each strategy seems intuitively useful in assisting children to
learn, particularly under distracting or motivationally deficient condi-
tions. Corno describes some efforts to implement these strategies in
classroom settings to assist students in improving their self-regulated
learning.
Schunk (1986) provides an overview of the literature on the role of
overt verbalization in learning. He discusses the Soviet theoretical basis
for the hypothesis that private speech improves ones self-control (Vy-
gotsky, 1962). Research on overt verbalization, or “self-instruction” as it
is often called, has blossomed from initial interest in the role of children’s
general verbalizations to an interest in their qualitative form. Schunk’s
recommendation that the effects of overt verbalization on such specific
subprocesses as attention, retention, positive task outlook, and self-effi-
cacy be examined seems not only theoretically useful but also heuristic-
ally important.
He cautions us that the influence of verbalization are far more complex
than the Soviets originally theorized. For example, verbalization can in-
terfere with as well as enhance learning (Denny, 197.5;Zimmerman &
Bell, 1972). Indeed, there have been many failures by Western psycholo-
gists to replicate the verbal enhancement results initially reported by the
Soviets (Roberts & Dick, 1982). However, these replication efforts have
often altered the timing of verbalization during training: Western re-
searchers have typically prompted their subjects to verbalize before or
during motoric acquisition, whereas, the Soviets prompted verbalization
after motoric facility was acquired. There is some evidence that when
verbalization is delayed until after motoric acquisition, it facilitates
learning, but if verbalization is required during motoric acquisition,
learning is impeded (Higa, Tharp, & Caukins, 1978). These data imply
that verbalization might facilitate performance if it serves a cuing func-
tion rather than a storage function (Roberts & Dick, 1982).
According to Schunk’s suggested framework, verbalization may facili-
tate students’ use of attention processes more than, perhaps, retention
processes. At the present, it seems most appropriate to conclude that
verbalization and such other psychological subprocesses as attention and
motoric performance function as separate “streams” that can mutually
influence each other under certain conditions (Roberts, 1979). Schunk’s
proposed analysis would appear to be particularly well-suited for sorting
out these issues.
Wang and Peverly (1986) offer a contextualist model (e.g. Jenkins,
1979: Zimmerman, 1983) for the study of self-instructive processes in
BECOMING A SELF-REGULATED LEARNER 311
classrooms. This model has the advantage of explaining what learners do
as well as what they bring personally to the classroom setting. The model
directs researchers’ attention to the very important issue of how
classroom environments sponsor or impede self-regulated learning by
students, and it identifies the teacher, the instructional program, and the
setting as relevant variables for researchers’ consideration. Furthermore,
the model seeks to explain the influence of such individual characteristics
of learners as their prior achievement, temperament, demographic status,
as well as their domain-general and domain-specific subject matter
knowledge on their ability to be self-instuctive.
The Wang and Peverly model offers a comprehensive categorization of
variables within each of four main clusters: learner characteristics,
classroom learning environments, student self-instructive processes, and
learner outcomes. To test their self-regulation model. Wang and Peverly
have undertaken an ambitious program of research using teachers and
students in a substantial number of experimental classrooms. Most re-
search on self-regulated learning has been conducted with children who
have been removed from their classrooms to participate in what Bron-
frenbrenner (1979) might call unusual tasks in an unnatural settings with
strangers. Many of the complex interactions postulated by self-regulation
theorists may be observable only in ecologically complex environments
such as experimental classrooms. The Wang and Peverly model is de-
signed specifically to explore the role of classroom context on student
self-regulated learning.
Henderson (1986) describes the Soviet developmental perspective
(e.g., Vygotsky, 1962) of how young children acquire self-regulatory
competence, and he reviews research bearing on this formulation as well
as other closely related models. The Soviet view of childrens’ self-regula-
tion posits a central role for socialization processes using such constructs
as “scaffolding” and “zone of proximal development.” Self-regulation in
the form of instructions and motoric strategies are transferred from the
parent to the child during dyadic encounters using such instructional
techniques as modeling, guided practice, and verbal instruction. The
adult gradually withdraws support as the child internalizes the self-regu-
latory functions.
This account seems particularly compelling because it suggests that
self-regulation is not an idiosyncratic product of a child’s own discovery
experiences, but rather, it is a culturally transmitted method for opti-
mizing and controlling learning events. Implicit in this account are as-
sumptions about the importance of the relationship between children and
their socializing agent (and analogously between students and their
teachers). It suggests that the absence of a supportive social figure who
knows and can effectively communicate self-regulatory strategies may
312 BARRY J. ZIMMERMAN
exert lasting effects on children. This account leads to a particularly so-
bering question: Given recent changes in parenting practices in this
country toward a greater prevalence of single-parent families, are chil-
dren being provided with requisite social interaction opportunities with
adults to acquire needed self-regulated learning skills? If not, who will fill
the gap? Is there a need for schools to become more involved in training
students to self-regulate during learning, and if so, do we have the man-
power?
Fortunately, Henderson offers us a glimpse of an answer to this ques-
tion. He provides a brief description of how instructional technology in-
volving computerized videodisks can be developed to simulate the sort of
teacher-student encounters that Vygotsky discussed. The idea that con-
structs such as zone of proximal development and ideational scaffolding
can be incorporated into computer menus and subroutines is very in-
triguing, and the addition of video components to microcomputer in-
struction seems to make the medium more socially and ecologically nat-
ural. The suggestion that computer technology can be designed to make it
more effective in teaching self-regulated learning skills is indeed novel
and challenging.
In conclusion, theories are useful heuristically to the degree that they
raise specific issues that can be resolved through research. Each of the
formulations of academic self-regulation in this special issue raises many
provocative questions. The authors offer a different. but on the whole,
complementary view of the key subprocesses in student self-regulated
learning. Although each article emphasizes a different class of subpro-
cesses, all accounts posit a role for other subprocesses. Ultimately, of
course, the importance of each subprocess, even its very definition, will
be established by research. The theoretical accounts presented in this
special issue of Contcmpornry Edlrcationtrl Psychol0g.v represent attrdc-
tive alternative frameworks for guiding this research.
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