An Evaluation of the Distinction Between the Four Areas of Self-Regulated Learning

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.

Pintrich and his colleagues conceptualized that there are four different areas that students can regulate when engaged in academic work: cognition, motivation, behavior, and context (Pintrich 2000, 2004; Pintrich & Zusho, 2007). However, there is limited empirical work that has directly focused on evaluating this theoretical distinction (Panadero, 2017; Zusho, 2017). The present study tested whether the regulatory strategies associated with each of the four areas can be empirically distinguished. We found that regulation of cognition, motivation, context, and behavior were related but distinct constructs that each reflected a more general tendency for students to regulate their own learning. The strategies that students use to regulate different areas of learning operated differently in their association with motivation and academic outcomes.