Regulation of Motivation: Contextual and Social Aspects

By C. Wolters. Teachers College Record, 2011

210 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Models of self-regulated learning have been used extensively as a way of understanding how students understand, monitor, and manage their own academic functioning. The regulation of motivation is a facet of self-regulated learning that describes students’ efforts to control their own motivation or motivational processing. The regulation of motivation includes students’ knowledge, monitoring, and active management of their motivation or motivational processing. Purpose The purpose of this article is threefold. One, a conceptual understanding of regulation of motivation highlighting three core facets is presented. These aspects are knowledge of motivation, monitoring of motivation, and use of strategies to regulate motivation. Two, prior empirical work documenting the regulation of motivation across contexts is reviewed. This work indicates that students at different developmental levels use motivational regulation strategies and that their use varies as a function of the academic task or context. Three, social influences on the development of regulation of motivation that include modeling, scaffolding, direct instruction, and sociocultural processes are discussed. Research Design This article is an analytic essay in which selected prior research is reviewed only briefly. Conclusions/Recommendations Overall, it is argued that motivational regulation is a critical aspect of self-regulated learning that must be studied more thoroughly. Specific avenues for future studies are noted and include work that examines students’ knowledge and monitoring of motivation, how regulation of motivation varies across contexts, and how instructional and social processes impact its development.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d19333b5d0c71320f4fd790cf084b78334039ad2

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development (2019, background): “Use of strategies for increasing motivation has been found to improve grades and other measures of achievement (Wolters, 2011).”
The Role of Metamotivational Monitoring in Motivation Regulation (2018, methodology): “…motivational problems may also help in making sense of empirical findings from existing studies of motivation regulation, such as the fact that “the motivational problems reported by students [in Wolters’s, 2001, study] varied as a function of the context or academic task” (Wolters, 2011, p. 272).”
Encouraging Self-Regulated Learning in the Classroom: A Review of the Literature (2011, background): “It can help students create better learning habits and strengthen their study skills (Wolters, 2011), apply learning strategies to enhance academic outcomes (Harris, Friedlander, Sadler, Frizzelle, & Graham, 2005), monitor their performance (Harris et al.”
College Students’ Time Management: a Self-Regulated Learning Perspective (2020, background): “For instance, students’ exposure to appropriate models affects their development of the values, beliefs, knowledge, and skills that are essential to SRL (Schunk and Zimmerman 1997; Wolters 2011).”