Expanding the parameters of self-regulated learning: Relations among children's academic and social self-regulation and achievement.

This dissertation integrated literature regarding children's social competence into a social-cognitive framework of self-regulated learning. The objective was to make explicit some of the social processes, in addition to academic processes, related to children's self-regulated learning and achievement. Specifically, this study explored whether strategies and knowledge about selecting those strategies (i.e., conditional knowledge) were associated across the academic and social domains, and, if so, which aspects were related. Additionally, it investigated whether social strategies and conditional knowledge were related to achievement, independently of academic strategies and conditional knowledge. Using structured interviews with third (n = 40) and fifth (n = 38) grade children, measures of strategies and conditional knowledge for reading, mathematics, and social situations (verbal and physical provocation) were constructed. Analyses involved investigating associations between the academic measures and achievement scores, and between the social measures and peer-rated social acceptance. Finally, analyses were conducted to investigate associations between social strategies and conditional knowledge, and academic strategies, conditional knowledge, and achievement. In the first section, regression analyses indicated that academic strategies and conditional knowledge were related to both reading and mathematics achievement. Similarly, in the second section regression analyses indicated that social strategies and conditional knowledge were related to peer acceptance. The third section addressed hypothesized indirect and direct associations between social strategies and conditional knowledge and achievement. Zero order correlations indicated some support for the hypothesis that conditional knowledge for academics and social situations were related, thus suggesting a possible indirect association between social competence and achievement. There was also evidence of a significant direct association between social competence and achievement. Regression analyses indicated that social strategies and conditional knowledge added significantly to the variance in achievement over and above that explained by academic strategies and conditional knowledge, grade level, and gender. These findings suggest that giving greater salience to social factors, such as children's strategies for social interactions, and their knowledge regarding selecting those strategies, may both increase our understanding of processes related to achievement and explain the well-documented positive relation between social competence and achievement.PhDDevelopmental psychologyEducationEducational psychologyPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131505/2/9909962.pd