Adolescents’ Out-of-School Learning Strategies

Abstract

Little is known about how students go about learning in out-of-school settings, how they self-regulate their learning in these settings, and whether school learning affects out-of-school learning. Research on these questions is important because a major purpose of schooling is to enable students to learn on their own in the world beyond school. In the present study, high school students were surveyed to determine their out-of-school activities, use of learning strategies in these activities, engagement in school-prompted interests, and self-efficacy for out-of-school learning. Students reported low rates of using learning strategies in their out-of-school pursuits. Students who became so interested in a topic in school that they learned more about it outside of school (i.e., a school-prompted interest) did not have greater self-efficacy for learning or higher grades, but they did report greater use of out-of-school learning strategies, a higher number of out-of-school activities, and greater likelihood of having done a large project on their own. African American and White students were equally likely to have experienced a school-prompted interest, but Whites were more likely to have done projects. These findings suggest the need for more school instruction in learning strategies that encourages their transfer to the out-of-school domain.