A Growing Body of Research Offers Guidance About How to Design

Essay

A growing body of research offers guidance about how to design tasks and structure classroom interactions to support students' development of and engagement in self-regulated learning. This research indicates that students develop academically effective forms of self-regulated learning and a sense of efficacy for learning when teachers involve them in complex, meaningful tasks that extend over long periods of time. Further development occurs if teaching incorporates these features: student control over their learning processes and products (choices), involvement in self-monitoring and self-evaluation, and opportunities to work in collaboration with peers and seek feedback from them. Mr. LeBlanc, in designing a unit on crustaceans, has planned complex, meaningful tasks for his students to do over a 3-week period to meet learning goals in science. How might he incorporate the other 3 features for promoting self-regulated learning?