Self-Regulated Learning

This week, I spent some time with my 15 year-old son, who was preparing for his English 10 Provincial Exam.  He's held his own in English class this semester, but he's a pretty concrete sequential guy, and this "finding the theme" business is a common source of frustration for him.

This time around, his class had watched the Dead Poet's Society, and they were supposed to be doing movie review which included exploration of the theme, supported with examples from the film.  They knew that going in, and were asked to take notes while they watched, but my analytical guy collected a bit of rag-tag info that was only marginally useful....for example:

          -  one kid needs confidence
          -  other teachers are uncomfortable with Mr. Keating
          -  the Dead Poet's Society meets in the woods
          -  no music at the start, now some music shows up a little
               and is gone right away
          -  away from school is more fun

Not much to build a response from.
 
In steps Mom, with a suggestion that we Google up some clips from the movie and see what we can figure out.  ("But I already watched it.  How will that help?").  A second suggestion that we accept that "Carpe Diem" might be the theme.  ("How do you know that?")  I suggested that he just roll with that one-  not too many movies have a main character who stands on a desk and shouts the theme, repeatedly, as part of the story....

Feeling frustrated, I hand him over to his Dad, who suggested making a web.  They spend over an hour watching the video clips and working on examples for the web.   By this point, my guy has accepted that we might know the theme of the movie, and has had lots of conversation about why the examples on the web have been chosen.   He's now left to craft his response from the questions his mom wrote beside his original notes, and the web he created with his father.

30 minutes later, we have an opening sentence.  "The Dead Poet's Society is a movie."  This is the high-point of the response that he continued to work on for the next 45 minutes.

Fast-forward two days, the evening after he tried to hand his first response in, and his very astute English teacher has sent the paper back home for another go-  wisely pointing out that he hadn't quite mastered the strategy he needed for doing this type of response on his exam.   He sets himself up at the dining room table with the same pile of notes.  He and I take one more read through it, and identify a few things from the original web that he may not have used.  Then I leave him.  Alone.

I phoned home about an hour later, after taking my daughter to her evening's activity, to see how it was going.  He tells me that he laid on the floor for half-an-hour, but he's back at the table, and he's rolling now.  Shortly afterward, I arrived home and was presented with a fairly well-crafted piece, complete with examples from the movie and personal opinions.  ("Look Mom, I even put in a couple of inferences where the movie didn't say.")

I'm as exhausted as he is at this point, we're both glad it's over....but it left me wondering where my learning was in all of this.

In "Critical Thinking Classrooms,"  Roland Case has a chapter about self-regulated learning where he defines it as "the ability and inclination to carry out assigned tasks in personally responsible, self-reflective ways, and to exercise reasoned judgement in the pursuit of agreed-upon educational goals" (p.177).  Case goes on to identify four attributes of such learners:  they have a repertoire of strategies to use, they have the ability to judge which of these strategies is appropriate for the given task, they are able to monitor, modify and use the strategies effectively, and they are motivated to regulate their own learning and persist with the task.

Case encourages educators to deliberately introduce strategies as part of a toolkit, in a variety of contexts, with small, manageable criteria students can use to self-assess their effectiveness.    He argues that this will increase the students' confidence with the tools, and help them find personal relevance in their use.  He's provided a wonderful self-assessment tool, allows learners to stay focused on the reasons why self-regulated learning is so valuable for their success.

My son has definitely been introduced to a number of strategies-  there is evidence all over his English book that they've been using graphic organizers, rubrics, and self-assessment tools throughout the semester.  I know it is a class that has lots of discussion and they are encouraged to reflect on each others thinking, as well as their own.

In his case, he doesn't yet know how to self-select  strategies.  He still waits for the teacher to tell him which tool to choose, and how to use it, for each assignment.  He hasn't learned to modify or adjust them for his purposes.  While being coached by his father and I, he was frustrated that we weren't approaching things the same way as one another, or in the way his teacher had done.

Finishing that assignment felt like a breakthrough the other night, though.  He experimented with a variety of strategies, spent some time evaluating which one was going to get him where he needed to be, pushed through the frustration (and thankfully didn't use lying on the floor as a strategy for the provincial exam), finally ending up with a piece he was proud of.  It was really hard work.  And if he only does it once, the lessons learned will be lost.  As educators, we all need to be doing what we can to nurture self-regulated learners.  After all, THEY'RE ALL OUR KIDS.