Self-regulation and the motivation to achieve : A quantitative study on the effects of self-regulation strategies and motivation on learning English at an upper secondary school in Sweden

The Swedish National Agency for Education recently begun explicitly promoting teaching through self-regulation strategies in national steering documents intended for teachers, following a number of other countries world wide (Skolverket, 2012; LGY 11; Dalland & Klette, 2016). The goal of self-regulation strategies is for the students to take control of their own learning process, and though there is research on the benefits of self-regulation strategies and motivation, these ideas are based on abstract concepts and biological processes in the brain, that are very difficult to measure (Zimmerman, 1990; Hattie, 2012; Simpson & Balsam, 2016; Schumann, 2004). As such, more research on these strategies is warranted, and little has been done to evaluate their effects on Swedish upper secondary school students. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to attempt to operationalize the theoretical concepts of self-regulation strategies in order to calculate the correlation between students perceived usage of self-regulation strategies, and English performance, with a special focus on motivation. This was done by operationalizing motivation and self-regulation strategies into six variables based on previous research, and then surveying 40 English 05 (year one) students at Enskilda Gymnasiet upper secondary school in Stockholm, and then running correlation tests with their grades from a grammar test the week after the survey, as well as with their overall grade from the previous year. The results showed almost no statistically significant correlations between the students´ grades, and the students self-reported usage of self-regulation strategies. The exception was a statistically significant positive correlation between high levels of intrinsic motivation and good grades. The causes of these results are not specified within the parameters of this research project, however, it could be that there simply were no correlations between the perceived usage of self-regulation strategies and performance due to the strategies not having an effect on performance, or because the strategies were not being used properly. However, it could also be that the operationalizing of the variables in the questionnaire did not generate accurate levels of usage of these strategies. Either way, the results of this essay stress the need for further research that evaluates the effect of self-regulation strategies and motivation on learning English.