Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning:Theory, Research, and Applications (review)

Motivating students is not a new problem for educators, but given the attention that motivation research has received, it seems to be a persistent one. The phenomenon of lack of motivation in millennial students has even been given a name, “the ambition gap” (Association for Career and Technical Education, 2006). We may blame student lack of motivation on a variety of causes. We may wonder if it is only our imagination. Maybe students haven’t changed at all. Motivation is clearly a complicated issue. Whatever our perspective, it is our responsibility as postsecondary educators to find ways to help unmotivated students become motivated.

Schunk and Zimmerman have tackled the complicated construct of motivation as it relates to self-regulated learning in their book, Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning: Theory, Research, and Applications. Schunk and Zimmerman are the editors of, as well as contributors to, this extensive collection of work on this construct. The book weaves back and forth between motivation and self-regulation, pulling the two topics together by saying that each strengthens the other.

Schunk and Zimmerman begin by giving us some definitions and background. They define self-regulation as controlling one’s own conduct in order to achieve a goal. Students who use self-regulation set better learning goals, implement more effective learning strategies, and exert more effort and persistence. Motivation can be a precursor to self-regulated learning. For example, if a student is interested in a subject, the student is more likely to begin the task of studying it. Motivation affects the process of self-regulated learning. In other words, if a student is motivated, the student is likely to spend more time studying. Motivation can also be the result of self-regulated learning. When a student is successful in completing a task, the result is more confidence in learning ability and more excitement about learning something else. Schunk and Zimmer-man list 13 different sources of motivation that can play a role in self-regulation. Among the 13 are: interests, self-efficacy, volition, causal attributions, task values, and future time perspective. It becomes obvious why this topic requires more than a chapter. It requires at least an entire book.

At this point the reader may be thinking, I agree motivation and self-regulated learning are both good, but how can I even begin to make unmotivated students motivated? The chapter titled “Self-Theories Motivate Self-Regulated Learning,” written by Dweck and Master, gives us an interesting perspective on how we can help students become motivated to be self-regulated learners. Dweck and Master say that the way students learn is influenced by their self-theory of intelligence. A student who subscribes to the entity theory of intelligence believes that intelligence is fixed. In other words, we each are born with either a high IQ or a low IQ. If we have to put forth much effort in our learning, then it proves that we are not very smart. The emphasis then becomes on looking intelligent, at all costs. On the other hand, students who subscribe to the incremental theory of intelligence believe that they can learn how to be better learners, thus motivating them to be self-regulatory learners. Dweck and Master describe an experiment they conducted called the “Brainology” workshop. They found that when students were given lessons in how the brain works and how it can be made to work better (through such things as diet, sleep, and study strategies), the students became more motivated learners. I found this to be exciting research. It helps to explain why study skills classes are not always as successful as we think they should be. “Brainology” may be exactly what is missing. In this chapter Dweck and Master present a number of other strategies that educators can use to foster incremental theory. It should be noted that most of their examples used seventh grade students. However, the same strategies...