Australian Students’ Perceptions of Their Teachers’ Self-Regulated Learning Strategy Instruction

While research has established the importance of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies for student achievement, their effective instruction in classrooms is often lacking. This study adopted a novel methodology that focused on Australian students' perspectives of their teachers' promotion of SRL strategies. Eight secondary school teachers completed a professional learning programme aimed at promoting SRL during regular classroom instruction and submitted a video excerpt of their instruction. These videos were used as stimuli for semi-structured stimulated recall interviews conducted with 25 students. Students were asked to describe their teachers' SRL strategy instruction in terms of 'What, When, Why and How?'. Associations between instances where students provided a clear description of the purpose and possibilities for transfer of SRL strategies and their teachers' actions, manner of promotion and choice of strategy type were explored. Results indicate that SRL instruction was most noticed by students when it consisted of naming the strategy, providing a clear process to be followed to apply the strategy, and was accompanied by teachers' explanations about how and why the strategy improves learning, combined with prompts to encourage students to provide examples of transfer. The implications of these results for how teachers can best promote SRL in the classroom are discussed.