Childrens SelfRegulatory Behaviors During TeacherDirected, SeatWork, and SmallGroup Instructional Co

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Childrens Self-Regulatory Behaviors During
Teacher-Directed, Seat-Work, and Small-Group
Instructional ContextsSierra Feliciano, Amber
Cook, Seema Yedavalli
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Definition of Terms

• Classroom adjustment Students ability to make
  adjustments in a classroom setting
• Instructional contexts Teaching functions
• Small Group -students working together in a small
  group on a collective task (Cohen, 1994).
• Teacher directed - the teacher leading
  instruction for the entire class
• Seat work - children work alone on an assigned
  task

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Definition of Terms

• Self Regulation the process we use to activate
  or sustain our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions
  in order to reach our goals. (Barry Zimmerman,
  2002)
• Self-Regulatory Behaviors
• Attention to instruction - children direct their
  behavior to the learning task (Schunk, 1986)

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Definition of Terms Self Regulatory Behaviors

• Help Seeking seeking additional instructions or
  help from the teacher or peers
• Monitoring - monitoring of their cognitive
  efforts. (Pressley Ghatala, 1990 Schunk, 1986)
• Organization the combining, arranging,
  recombining, and rearranging of behaviors into
  coherent systems. (Woolfolk, 30)
• Metacognitive talk - children talking about their
  thinking

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Purpose

• To extend previous research that instructional
  context is related to childrens self-regulatory
  behavior, by investigating differences between
  children's observed self-regulatory behaviors in
  three common instructional contexts (teacher
  directed, seat work, and small group).
• Significance to Educational Psychology
• Self-regulation influences learning and
  performance in educational environments

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Methodology Participants

• Ethnographic study to investigate differences
  between childrens observed self-regulatory
  behaviors in three common instructional contexts.
• Participants were 22 third grade girls and 29
  third grade boys from a small midwestern
  university city, that were all white except for 1
  Asian American and 3 children of mixed race.
• All participants came from two-parent,
  middle-class families.

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Methodology Procedure

• In order to assure observer agreement, the two
  observers were trained for 2 months by coding
  together in a third grade classroom not involved
  in the study.
• Observers visited each child 6 times during a
  mathematics lesson and 6 times during a science
  lesson.
• Observations in each subject were divided equally
  between the 3 different instructional contexts
• No more than three 5 minute intervals of data
  were collected for a child during one classroom
  observational visit in different instructional
  contexts.

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Methodology Measures

• Attention to instruction was rated on a 1-3 point
  scale with 3 being consistently following
  instructions.
• Seeking help from a teacher or peer,
  self-monitoring, and metacognitive talk were
  assessed by a frequency count of the behaviors.
• Disorganization was rated on a 1-3 point scale,
  with 3 being extremely disorganized.
• Teacher ratings of student grade on a scale of
  1-5, 5 being excellent was collected during the
  spring semester.

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Findings Attention to Instruction

• Students were significantly less likely during
  teacher-directed instruction than during small
  group or seat work to attend to instructions.
• Almost half of the students (48) listened
  attentively to and read instructions carefully
  during small-group instruction.
• Less than one third of the students (31) did so
  during teacher-directed instruction.
• Twenty-seven percent of the students failed to
  follow instructions at least once during
  teacher-directed instruction, compared with 17
  and 19 of the students during seat-work and
  small-group contexts, respectively.

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Findings Monitoring Progress

• Students were significantly less likely to
  monitor progress during teacher-directed
  instruction than during small-group instruction
  or seat work.
• Almost one third of the students (29) were never
  observed monitoring their work during
  teacher-directed instruction, compared with 0
  and 6 of the students during the seat-work and
  small-group contexts, respectively.

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Findings Help Seeking

• Students were significantly less likely to seek
  help during teacher-directed instruction than
  during small-group instruction or seat work.
• Over half of the students (58) never sought help
  during teacher-directed instruction, whereas only
  31 and 25 of the students never sought help
  during seat-work and small-group

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Findings Disorganization

• Students were significantly less likely to be
  disorganized during teacher-directed instruction
  than during the small-group or seat-work
  contexts.
• Few of the students (6) were very disorganized
  during teacher-directed instruction.
• Fourteen percent and 16 of the students were
  very disorganized during seat work and
  small-group instruction

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Findings Metacognitive Talk

• Students were significantly more likely to talk
  about their thinking during small-group contexts
  compared with the teacher-directed or seat-work
  contexts.
• Almost two thirds of the students never discussed
  their thinking during the teacher-directed (65)
  or seat-work (62) contexts.
• In contrast, only 27 of the students never
  talked about their thinking during small-group
  instruction.

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Findings Teacher Ratings

• High ranks in attention to instruction, and
  frequent occurances of monitoring work, and
  metacognitive talk was correlated to higher
  teacher ratings.
• Highly disorganized ratings were correlated to
  lower teacher ratings
• Help seeking was not related to grades.

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Findings 4 types of students

• Students that do well in all contexts
• Students that do poorly in all contexts
• Students who excelled in small group contexts and
  were average in other contexts
• Students who excelled in seat work and were
  average in other contexts

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Conclusions

• The results suggest that children are more
  self-regulated learners in small-group work and
  seat work.
• However, the results do not imply that
  teacher-directed instruction is not an effective
  means of teaching.
• Some strategies are more effectively taught and
  enhanced through teachers' direct instruction and
  modeling.
• Teachers' direct or explicit instruction of
  learning strategies can promote children's
  regulatory performance
• The classroom should include all three contexts
  to provide direct instruction, independent
  practice, and the opportunity to practice
  metacognitive skills in a social context

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Reflections

• Teacher-directed instruction provides students
  with opportunities to learn while the teacher
  plays a role in regulating students' learning.
• This context may provide limited opportunities
  for children to practice self-regulated learning
  skills but will provide children with teacher
  regulation of their behavior, which will help
  their organization and attention.
• Seat work may provide an opportunity to practice
  self-regulation.
• Small-group work may provide both the opportunity
  and peer models for students to practice
  self-regulated learning strategies.

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Reflections

• Because of the small sample size and the large
  number of variables, the results should be
  considered exploratory.
• It would be helpful to explore with a larger
  sample whether the 4 groups of students found in
  this study is supported in future studies.
• It may also be helpful to investigate what
  individual differences can be used to predict
  students self regulation in the different
  instructional contexts.
• Possible differences that may be related to
  students self-regulation in different
  instructional contexts are temperament,
  perception of control, and metacognitive skills.

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Questions?

• The End