More student trust, more self-regulation strategy? Exploring the effects of self-regulatory climate on self-regulated learning

Abstract

Self-regulated learning has been one of the important areas in educational research. The authors adopted structural equation modeling to explore and compare the impacts of three aspects of self-regulatory climate (i.e., academic emphasis, teacher trust, and student trust) on three features of self-regulated learning (i.e., self-efficacy, intrinsic motive, and self-regulation strategy). The results revealed both direct effects of academic emphasis on students’ use of self-regulation strategy, and indirect effects mediated by self-efficacy and intrinsic motive. Teacher trust has a positive impact on self-efficacy. While student trust has a positive impact on intrinsic motive, its relationship with self-regulation strategy is negative. Significant differences in school levels and gender were identified. The findings indicate that students in different cultures may have different expectations for teachers’ support in learning, which in turn influence the relationship between student trust in teachers and the use of self-regulation strategy. Implications for cultivating self-regulated learners are discussed in the article.

Keywords:

• Self-regulatory climate
• self-regulated learning
• collective trust
• structural equation modeling

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Professor C. M. Adams and Professor Wayne K. Hoy for their support in this study. Thanks are also extended to the Centre for Excellence of Learning and Teaching and Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education and Human Development, the Education University of Hong Kong, for their support during the preparation of this manuscript.

Notes

1 Different from collective trust, which covers a good number of stakeholders (including principal, teachers, parents, and students), the trust within the concept of self-regulatory climate is constrained between teachers and students.

2 Self-direction, originated from the field of adult education and showing macro-level dimensions, denotes the shift of the responsibility for learning from the external sources such as teacher and parents to the students themselves (Boye & Usinger, 2012; Saks & Leijen, 2014). Actually, self-directed learning could be considered as the initial process of self-regulated learning (Bodkyn & Stevens, 2015; Loyens, Madga, & Rikers, 2008). Saks and Leijen (2014) compared between self-directed learning with and self-regulated learning and concluded that they shared many commonalities. These included the two dimensions of “external/process/event” and “internal/personality/aptitude”; four main phases, namely specification of tasks; establishment of goals and planning; implementation of strategies, self-evaluation and reflection (also found by Khiat, 2015); and active engagement, goal-directed behavior under the influence of intrinsic motivation, and metacognitive learning. In this article, the term self-regulated learning is used interchangeably with self-directed learning (e.g., Robertson, 2011; Saks & Leijen, 2014; Khiat, 2015).