Instructional practices and self-regulated learning in Chinese language classes

Abstract

This study investigated the relation between teachers’ instructional practices and students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) in Hong Kong Chinese language classes using quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 1121 Grade 10 students from six secondary schools in Hong Kong. A Chinese reading comprehension (RC) test was used to assess the students’ reading performance and a self-reported questionnaire measured their perception of reading instruction, strategy use and reading motivation. Classroom observations and in-depth interviews were conducted in one class at each school to explore what and how instructional practices supported or impeded SRL in real contexts. The findings of this study generally support the positive relation between SRL-based instruction and Chinese students’ SRL. Among the four instructional variables, instrumental support from teachers showed the strongest relation with students’ strategy use, motivation and RC. The degree of autonomy was low in Chinese language classes and was associated with students’ negative reading behaviours.

Keywords:

• Chinese students
• instructional practices
• self-regulated learning

Notes

1. Under the Secondary School Place Allocation system in Hong Kong, all secondary schools can be generally categorised into Bands 1–3 which mainly admit the highest, middle and lowest 33.3% of students, respectively. In this study, two schools from each banding were chosen.

2. In Hong Kong, there are usually three or four teachers for major subjects, such as Chinese language, English or mathematics, for the same grade. The head of a subject panel usually assigns one teacher for each grade to coordinate the curriculum design and teaching of that subject. Schools use their own criteria to select form coordinators. Because of the assigned administrative duty, Chinese language form coordinators are usually very familiar with the reading instruction in their grade and should be more willing than other teachers to assist the collection of qualitative data. For this reason, form coordinators and their students were invited to participate in qualitative analyses.

3. The independent observer has over 10 years of experience teaching Chinese language and is a doctoral student of educational psychology. The topic of her doctorial thesis is enhancing students’ writing ability through SRL-based writing instruction.

4. Each interview or observation code was composed by the research method (I = interview; O = observation), school code (S1 to S6), class code (CA to CF) and the interview or observation date.

5. The Chinese lessons and interviews were in Cantonese. All excerpts in this paper are verbatim translations.

6. Student names in the transcripts are pseudonyms.