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Abstract
Much research has been conducted on children's self-talk and its use to regulate thinking and behaviour, but research has typically been conducted on audible self-talk when undertaking specific tasks designed by researchers and in laboratory situations. Addressing the need to study self-talk in the classroom and by students of an age when self-talk is largely internalised, this study investigated the association of self-talk with children's self-regulatory behaviour and academic performance. The findings reported in this paper are based on the data from self-report questionnaires on self-talk completed by eight-to-nine-year-olds, national mathematics achievement test results, and a teacher-completed behaviour rating scale. Based on the previous research, results were somewhat unexpected, including that self-talk may not have a very strong role in children's behavioural self-regulation and calling into question an effect of self-talk on children's learning in the classroom. Possible reasons are provided and the need for future research is acknowledged.
Notes on contributors
At the time of writing, Dr Scott Lee was a research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, Faculty of Education and Arts. His research interests include children's thinking and problem-solving skills, self-talk, construction play, assessment of thinking skills, and early childhood education.
Dr Andrea McDonough is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Arts at Australian Catholic University. Her research interests include the effective teaching and learning of mathematics in the primary school, the teaching and learning of measurement for young learners, children's perspectives on their learning, and early childhood education.
