Teachers’ self-regulated learning: Situational judgment test finds cognitive skills outperform motivational skills

Evaluating teachers' self-regulated learning (SRL) knowledge, including that which relates to problem solving (PS) is crucial. This exploratory study developed a novel situational judgment test (SJT) to evaluate teachers' SRL-PS knowledge. Ten K-12 teachers participated in SRL-PS training, mostly middle and high school educators from diverse disciplines, with a wide range of teaching experience. Midway, their classroom experiences were collected and refined by researchers to develop the SJT tool. Post-training, teachers were asked to answer selected situations. Analysis of teachers' open-ended responses to the selected situations (post-training) revealed stronger knowledge in their personal SRL usage compared to teaching SRL strategies to students; limited knowledge in executing complete PS processes; and notably low knowledge of motivational and behavioral strategies. Positive feedback from teachers regarding the new SJT tool was observed. The SJT approach for evaluating teachers’ SRL-PS knowledge diversifies existing evaluation methods while effectively identifying teachers' SRL-PS knowledge strengths and weaknesses. • Developing a novel situational judgment test to assess teachers' SRL-PS knowledge. • Teachers' knowledge in SRL usage was stronger than their knowledge of teaching SRL. • Teachers' knowledge in executing complete problem-solving (PS) processes was limited. • Teachers' knowledge of motivational and behavioural strategies was low. • Positive feedback toward the new situational judgment test (SJT) was observed.