Speaker: Gideon Sappor, PhD Student, Department of Psychology and Human Development, UCL Institute of Education

Key words: Self-regulated learning, culture, motivation, cognition

Abstract: 

Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills have attracted a lot of research interest lately because they have been identified as arguably the most important determinants of academic performance and achievement. Learners with good SRL skills perform better because they have a better awareness of the effective strategies needed for a task and when to apply and adapt them – above all, they learn more effectively. Furthermore, they are intrinsically motivated so they set higher goals, put in more effort and show greater perseverance at learning tasks. An important element of SRL skills is Self-efficacy. It is of crucial significance to understand how these all important skills are developed and why some children develop such skills better than others. It has been observed that some cultural groups consistently exhibit higher achievement than others and variation in SRL skills by culture has also been observed. This hypothesis driven study investigated the relationships between self-efficacy and the other variables of SRL by comparing children from a Chinese cultural background with White British children (collective culture versus individualistic), in the context of maths problem solving. A three stage prospective design study involved participants drawn from UK primary schools (Age 8-11, N=35 per group). The results suggest culture may have an influence in how children develop self-efficacy and how it interacts with the other variables. There appears to be a clear difference in how the motivational and cognitive components interact in the two cultural groups.