Self-Regulated Inquiry and Learning

Response to My Learning Community on Student SRL

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https://sr2learn.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/get-a-grip-on-quality-goals/

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          Thanks for your article.  I really like how you identify SRL as "deliberately adopting strategic approaches to learning."  I have made the connection of student goal-setting to SRL practices in my own classroom and I am challenged to further this thinking.  Self-Regulated Learning "involves the active, goal-directed, self-control of behavior, motivation, and cognition for academic tasks by an individual student" (Pintrich, p.5).  It is an ongoing process by which students revisit goals, reflect, make alterations, and push forward to find success.  As a learner and teacher, many of my own professional goals seek to enhance the growth of my students by inspiring them to achieve their best.  In the primary classroom, I have found that electronic portfolios are a wonderful platform by which students can showcase their SRL process by looking back, reflecting on where they have come from and where they are going in order to celebrate goal success.

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            Assessment for learning is a large component of this process.  Every student has his or her own journey, and it is important for individuals to identify what they already know, what they have learned, and what their next steps might be.  The word "evidence" is used in my classroom as a way for students to identify what they have learned, and to use it to compare it to criteria to identify these "next steps" or goals.

            On any given day, students re-enter our grade two classroom after a lunch recess break.  Given that they eat lunch in the classroom prior to recess, I write the question on the front whiteboard, "What was happening in our classroom before you left for recess?"  Students answer the question directly, but then I will ask for evidence.  I give them magnifying glasses to make observations around the room.  We proceed to list the evidence that would back up our conclusion.  There are crumbs on the floor, wrappers in the garbage, people were actually there to witness and take part, and so on.  I proceed to ask them, "How do I know that I am learning in Grade Two?"  Crickets.  One boy reluctantly puts up his hand and says, "I am a good writer."  I smile and praise his response and then ask, "What evidence shows that you are a good writer?"  Another student pipes in, "You could look at something you wrote at the beginning of the year, then put something you just did next to it to show the difference."   And so begins our exploration around the room (and desks!) with magnifying glasses to find evidence of our learning.

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            Even at a young age, children are very capable of identifying their learning growth in an environment that identifies specific criteria and where students are given the chance to set goals and reflect on them.  This process of learning through analysis and critical thinking is essential for life-long learning.  Students should be able to show their learning in a variety of ways and analyze and explain how they came to that understanding.  They should be encouraged to figure out how they learn best and to utilize those strengths when communicating their learning.   

        I have found that electronic portfolios have helped to showcase student learning in a meaningful way. Electronic portfolios offer a wide variety of options when it comes to showing where students have come from, what they now know, and what their next steps in learning might be.  Videos, interviews, written communication, apps like Explain Everything, and pictures are some examples of ways to assess on e-portfolios.  Students can select their own evidence to show (and upload themselves in most cases), and teachers can do the same.  Parents and even grandparents can speak to the child's learning immediately instead of at conference time, and triangulated assessment ensues.  Students take ownership of their learning, and can comment on a piece of work.  They may compare their evidence to the criteria given and comment on how they have shown that they have met the criteria, and where they need to go.  As Anne Davies, Sandra Herbst, and Brenda Augusta argue, "students develop insights into their own learning…and engage in metacognition as they gain an awareness and understanding of their own thought and learning processes." (Davies, Herbst, Augusta, 2017, p.27).

        In Reading in my primary classroom, for example, after our initial individual reading conferences in September, I had students reflect on the CAFÉ menu (comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expansion of vocabulary) to figure out their reading strength, and what they needed to work on to become a better reader.  We found a strategy to help them with their goal, and students spoke to this in their videos which was uploaded to Freshgrade (our e-portfolio site).  Eight months later, after fairly frequent reading assessments throughout the school year, students watched their initial videos, and spoke to where they had come from and where they were at the end of the school year to celebrate their success.  Goals for future reading were also included.  Students were motivated to reach their own goals and knew exactly how to do it.

       E-portfolios provide evidence of learning that tests and rubrics cannot always capture.  Those students that speak to their learning benefit from such methods.  With so much technology used in the classrooms in the 21st Century, e-books, electronic presentations, and other forms of technological learning can be uploaded and saved as evidence of learning.

Portfolios are also a method of assessment that engage students and challenge them to analyze, evaluate, and self-regulate.  These are deep-thinking skills that go beyond recall and simple output assessment strategies.  Students need to figure out what evidence it is that would best reflect their learning, and speak or write about whether they have indeed met the criteria.  Students are often more motivated to learn when they are involved in this process.

Resources:

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Anne Davies, Sandra Herbst, and Brenda Augusta, Knowing What Counts:  Collecting Evidence and Portfolios:  Engaging Students in Pedagogical Documentation.  Building Connections Publishing: 2017.

www.freshgrade.com

Pintrich, P.R., New Directions for Teaching and Learning:  Understanding Self-Regulated Learning, 1995, pp3-12.