A Review of Self-regulated Learning: Six Models and Four Directions for Research

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a core conceptual framework to understand the cognitive, motivational, and emotional aspects of learning. SRL has made a major contribution to educational psychology since the first papers in which scholars began to distinguish between SRL and metacognition (e.g., Zimmerman, 1986; Pintrich et al., 1993a). Since then, publications in the field of SRL theory have increased and expanded in terms of conceptual development, and there are now several models of SRL (Sitzmann and Ely, 2011). In 2001, a theoretical review was published (Puustinen and Pulkkinen, 2001) that included the most relevant models at that time–those articulated by Boekaerts, Borkowski, Pintrich, Winne, and Zimmerman. However, the field has developed significantly since 2001. A first sign of that evolution is that there are now three meta-analyses of the effects of SRL: Dignath and Büttner (2008), Dignath et al. (2008), and Sitzmann and Ely (2011). A second indicator is that there are now new SRL models in the educational psychology field that did not exist in 2001 (e.g., Efklides, 2011; Hadwin et al., 2011, in press). And lastly, a third aspect is that there is a new handbook (Zimmerman and Schunk, 2011) that presents a variety of established methods to evaluate SRL. Compared to the previous handbook (Boekaerts et al., 2000), the recent handbook has no sections dedicated to presenting new models, being focused on specific aspects of SRL (e.g., basic domains, instructional issues, methodological issues), which shows that the field has evolved and reached a more mature phase.

It is time, then, to reanalyze what is known based on the development of SRL models by comparing them and extracting what are the theoretical and practical implications. Therefore, the aim of this review is to analyze and compare the different SRL models accordingly with the current state of the art and the new empirical data available.