Does a community of learners foster self‐regulated learning?

Abstract

Although self‐regulated learning is considered as a characteristic of individual students, the question may be raised as to whether a community of learners with its emphasis on inquiry learning in teams of students provides an appropriate environment to acquire and develop active and dynamic self‐regulation strategies. Two cases of communities of learners in university education are described and analysed. Both examples demonstrated that the acquisition and development of self‐regulation strategies is supported by a learning environment in which a community of learners has been established. However, the role of the teachers as expert, model and coach was more explicit in one of the two cases, which gave rise to the question as to whether in university education a community of learners should address genuine research questions in order to foster self‐regulation strategies. If real research issues are not at stake and the project is not going to provide data which contribute to a research programme, then precautions should be taken to actively involve teachers in providing explicit instruction, in modelling, in encouraging peer interaction, and in providing feedback to students.

Keywords:

• self‐regulated learning
• inquiry learning
• community of learners