SELF-REGULATED LEARNING IN THE MATHEMATICS CLASS

Charles Darr and Jonathan Fisher

Paper presented at NZARE Conference, Turning the Kaleidoscope,
Wellington, 24-26 November, 2004.
Downloaded from http://www.nzcer.org.nz/pdfs/13903.pdf
INTRODUCTION
Developing a sense of agency as a learner is at the heart of Self-Regulated Learning (SLR). If
students in mathematics are going to become self-regulated learners they need to be confronted
with opportunities that allow them to reveal their thinking and to observe and emulate the thinking
of others. In what follows we begin by introducing SRL and exploring its connection with
mathematics education.

In our small-scale classroom study, two elements of instruction in mathematics stood out as
providing rich opportunities for students to begin practising self-regulatory behaviours. The first
was the use of models to represent problem situations and the second, reflective journalling. We
describe the exploratory study and in particular, examine how involving models and journalling as
part of instruction, enabled students to observe and emulate self-regulating behaviours.

WHAT IS SELF-REGULATION
Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) refers to research and theory that has emerged since the mid-
1980s concerned with how students, become masters of their own learning processes
(Zimmerman, 1998, p.1). A self-regulated learner is someone who is actively involved in
maximising his or her opportunity and ability to learn. This involves not only exerting control
over cognitive activity (metacogniton), but also developing metavolitional skills that enable the
regulation of attitudes, environments and behaviours to promote positive learning outcomes.

According to Zimmerman (1998), SRL involves three major cyclical phases: forethought,
performance control, and self-reflection. The first of these, forethought involves analysing tasks
and setting appropriate goals. Performance control refers to monitoring and controlling the
cognitive, behavioural, emotional and motivational acts that affect performance. The third phase,
self-reflection is concerned with making judgements about what has been accomplished and
altering behaviours and goal orientation accordingly.

The ability to self-regulate is highly correlated with success as a learner. The skills it involves are
teachable and according to Zimmerman (cited in Pape and Smith, 2002, p.94), students with
appropriate scaffolding, progress through stages of observation, emulation and self-control before
finally arriving at what can be called self-regulation. Whether students develop or apply SRL
skills however, is heavily influenced by their judgements of self-efficacy, their beliefs about the
subject matter and their motivations.

SELF-REGULATION AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

Developing the ability to self-regulate is integral to the socio-cultural theories of learning that
have influenced mathematics curricula over the last fifteen years or so. Traditional learning goals
that focused on the mastery of facts and procedures have made way for objectives that emphasise
understanding, flexible thinking, communication, and problem solving. Students are now
expected to develop self-regulatory knowledge and skills that allow them to interact with
mathematical ideas in an active and constructive way.

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Problem solving is the area within mathematics education where the direct application of self-
regulatory skills is most apparent. To actively make sense of problem situations, expert problem-
solvers employ a fully self-regulated approach: analysing, planning, exploring and reflecting. In
comparison, naive problem solvers are much more haphazard, spending a minimum of time
planning or analysing, and using hit and miss approaches (Schoenfeld, 1992). Research shows
that students who lack self-regulation skills often rely on direct translation methods to solve
problems. These involve recognising certain key words to transform text into equivalent
mathematical sentences (Pape & Wang, 2003). Nave problem solvers are also often plagued by
the phenomenon of inert knowledge. This is knowledge that is available in students minds, but
which can not be accessed or applied when it is needed to solve new problems. Some researchers
go as far as to argue that it is classroom practices themselves that are often responsible for
students acquiring inert knowledge (Van Haneghan et al, cited in De Corte, 2000, p.709).

Developing the kinds of pedagogy that leads to SRL in mathematics learning and problem-solving
has proved to be problematic. Despite the influence of socio-cultural theories on official
curriculum documents, a transmission model of teaching and learning that emphasises teacher-
regulation often predominates in classrooms. Pape et al (2003) argue moreover, that at times a
lack of explicit teacher guidelines in socio-cultural pedagogies also hinders the development of
SRL. They advocate programmes of instruction that combine socio-cultural ideas with the
principles of SRL.

Several researchers have attempted to explore how classroom environments can support the
development of self-regulation in mathematics (De Corte et al. , 2000; Pape et al., 2003; Schunk
1996, 1998). In a review of some of this research, De Corte et al (2000, p.196), list three
components of instruction that appear to foster self-regulation: realistic and challenging tasks;
variation in teaching methods including teacher modelling, guided practice, small group work and
whole class instruction; and classrooms that foster positive dispositions towards learning
mathematics.

The small-scale study reported in this paper was also designed to explore how a learning and
teaching environment could support SRL, in this case, in the area of proportional reasoning. Our
initial look at the literature had convinced us that encouraging students to report and explain their
thinking would be a central feature of such an environment. We were also informed by some
previous work we had done in another classroom exploring how instruction could support the
development of proportional reasoning. In the next section we describe the methodology used to
carry out the study.

THE SMALL SCALE STUDY

The study took the form of a teaching experiment and was conducted with a Year 7 class in a
large, mid-decile intermediate school. Carried out at the beginning of the school year, students
had come to the intermediate from various contributing schools and had a wide range of
mathematics education experiences. The researchers, in partnership with the classroom teacher
planned and taught twelve lessons over a four-week period based around the area of proportional
reasoning.

SRL is highly relevant to proportional reasoning. Becoming a proportional reasoner involves

learning to recognise and strategically co-ordinate the elements that make up proportional
relationships. A skilled proportional reasoner is able to initiate a wide range of general problem-
solving heuristics and monitor their progress on their way to a solution. Percentages was chosen
as the area of proportional reasoning to focus on. In this, our approach was stimulated by the
work of Moss and Case (Moss and Case, 1999). Joan Moss and Robbie Case developed an
innovative rational number curriculum that began with instruction on percentages. Moss and

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Cases work was predicated on the idea that students everyday knowledge of percentages and
their intuitive ideas about proportions could be used to foster powerful understandings of the
rational number system.

Taking this lead, we developed lessons that invited students to apply their intuitive knowledge and
understandings about percentages and proportions to meaningful problems. Real and imaginable
contexts were developed that we hoped would connect with students experiences and motivate
them to engage in problem-solving behaviours. Most critically, we hoped that classroom
discourse (of both students and teachers) would model and support self-regulating behaviours.

Activities were designed at the whole class, group, pair and individual level and time was also
provided for students to write journal entries reflecting on their learning. We also designed an
interview protocol that was used with five students at the beginning and end of the study. Before
and after the study students took a short test. Most of the questions were written to test elements
of proportional reasoning. Some of the problem types used in the test were not covered in the
lessons.

During classroom sessions, one of the researchers co-ordinated the lesson or lesson section, while
the other videotaped the unfolding events in the classroom. The video camera was often carried
around the classroom and used to record interactions with and between students. Data was also
collected from several other sources including (1) artifacts from planning; (2) field notes; and (3)
student journals and workbooks.

Our experiences in the classroom helped inform us about the way the principles of SRL can help
focus teaching and learning. In the next section we begin by looking at the initial state of self-
regulation within the classroom. Then, based on our analysis, we describe how thinking models
embedded in rich mathematical tasks, together with reflection through journalling, opened up
opportunities for students to examine their own and others mathematical learning and problem
solving.

THE INITIAL STATE OF SELF REGULATION

Both the preliminary interviews and pre-test suggested that most of the students showed little self-
regulation as proportional reasoners. When a well-known strategy, such as successive halving,
could not be applied to quickly answer a problem, there was little or no further investigation. In
many cases, students simply reverted to using inappropriate arithmetical operations or provided a
guess.

In the following interview transcript, Irene demonstrates this lack of regulation. Although, to start
with, she shows that she can confidently manipulate halves and quarters, as soon as she moves out
of this comfort zone Irene resorts to guessing.

Interviewer: Let's go back to this one. How do you know that a quarter of one hundred is
twenty five?
Irene: Because, going back to the question about how many twenty-fives in a hundred.
That's four times twenty five is a hundred. So I just went back to the four.
Interviewer: And what about this one? What's a fifth of one hundred?

Irene: What did I say?

Interviewer: I think you said 5.

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Irene: I just looked at one fifth and sort of guessed it was five.

There was plenty of evidence however, suggesting that Irene had access to knowledge that could
have informed her attempt to find a fifth. Later in the interview, she explained that she could
form a picture of one fifth of a hundred, even if she could not calculate it.

Interviewer: What do you think someone's asking you, when they're trying to make you get a
fifth of something?
Irene: Well when someone asks me that. Go to a pie.
Interviewer: Oh. Show me.
Irene: [Draws a circle.] This is the pie. If someone asks for a fifth, I'd cut a fifth off.
... it's that [pointing to a fifth section].
... and so, I, that's one hundred [indicates the entire pie] and that's a fifth [indicates
the fifth section].
Interviewer: So how much do you think it would be, do you think?
Irene: Sixteen.
Interviewer: Sixteen? Something like that?

Irene had other knowledge of fifths too. When she was asked to find 20% of the dots in a pattern,
she very quickly demonstrated how the dots could be partitioned into five equally sized groups.

Like Irene, the majority of the students who were interviewed could draw pictures to help
represent a problem, or display knowledge that could have been usefully applied to a problem
situation. Without prompting from the interviewer however, they were unlikely to do so.

Thinking Models
If students are to become actively involved in their mathematics learning and problem-solving,
they must be confronted with learning experiences that encourage them to think and that make
their thinking visible to themselves and others. When we were able to present learning
experiences that allowed students to develop rich representations of problem situations, we found
that the opportunity for students to observe and emulate behaviours that promote SRL was
enhanced.

Researchers working in the tradition of Realistic Mathematics Education refer to these kinds of
problem representations as models. According to Van Den Heuvel-Panhuizen (2003), models
reflect essential aspects of mathematical concepts and structures that are relevant for the problem
situation, but that can have different manifestations (p.13). Models can be based around concrete
objects, such as cuisenaire rods, while others can be more abstract, involving systematic ways of
organising ideas and data to form a picture of a problem situation. Van Den Heuvel-Panhuizen
lists materials, visual sketches, paradigmatic situations, schemes, diagrams and symbols as
possible models (p.13).

Throughout the teaching experiment, students were introduced to various ways of representing
proportional relationships using models. These included double number lines, geometrical
shapes, cuisenaire rods, and decimal pipes. One of the most successful models was the double
number line. This model allows the elements in a proportional relationship to be modelled
graphically. For instance, the double number line below was used by a student to illustrate a
problem comparing a part to the whole.

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The double number-line was introduced to the students through a series of hands-on activities
involving two-litre milk containers. In the first lesson, pairs of students were given a container
and asked to construct a scale that could be used to show both the percentage of milk left and the
corresponding number of millilitres. Students very quickly
applied successive halving to identify the 50 and 25 percent
points on the scale and their corresponding millilitre amounts.
Some carried on the halving process to mark in the 12.5
percent point. Many of the students also realised that the scale
could be turned upside down and the method reapplied to find
out where the 75 percent mark would go.

In the next lesson the students were invited to design a scale

for a milk bottle company. To satisfy the companys design
specifications this scale had to be calibrated in 10 percent
sections. It also had to be accurate. It soon became obvious to the students that the halving
strategy would not be appropriate in this situation. After some discussion, most agreed that the
markings could be located by dividing the length of the scale into ten equal intervals. The
students then applied their measurement skills to construct the scale and went on to interrogate
how accurate they had been by filling their containers with known amounts of water.

In subsequent discussions, many of the students soon realised that it was now possible to name
how many millilitres corresponded to other percentage amounts such as 35 percent, by finding the
halfway point between adjacent multiples of ten percent. The scales were now being used to
demonstrate methods to find different percentage amounts.

In creating the scales the students had become familiar with how to set up and draw a double
number line. At this stage new problems were introduced that were not connected to the milk
bottles. New scales, which we now referred to as double number-lines, were drawn to solve
problems such as 15 percent of 60. The students were happy to move away from the
concreteness of the milk bottle scale to the more generalised double number-line. From this
point on, regular use was made of double number lines to solve problems and demonstrate
thinking. Students used double number lines to explain their solution strategies to their peers and
they were constantly referred to by the researchers and the classroom teacher when solutions were
modelled to students.

It was also at this point that we were able to observe students in rich discussions about their
methods and thinking. Double number lines often became the centre of discussions. Alternative
solutions were often demonstrated using the same number line, and strategic decisions justified by

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appealing to the relationships that had been illustrated. In the transcript below, two students have
been working with double number-lines to find 75 percent of 40 dollars. They have drawn two
different number lines to solve the problem. In an ensuing discussion with the teacher, the double
number-lines assist them to explain their methods and make comparisons between them.

100 40 100 40
90 36
80 32
75 30
70 28
60 24
50 20 50 20
40 16
30 12
25 10
20 8
10 4
0 0 0 0
Line 1 Line 2
Teacher: Can you tell me how you managed to work this out?
Student 1: Well, for this one we divided it into ten equal bits and we wanted 75%...so we got
around about half way [points to halfway between 70% and 80% on line 1], which
we figured would be exactly in between these two. We took 28 away from 32,
which is 4 and then ... seeing as we only wanted half we did 42.
Teacher: You found the difference?
Student 1: Then we went 32-2=30, which is 75%.
Teacher: What's this one setup for?
Student 1: [Pointing to line 2]. Well, what happened was we halved 40 ... which equals 20.
And then we halved 20, which is 10, then you plus 20 + 10, which equals 30.
Teacher: Which one [of these two double number lines] do you think was easier - dividing
into tens or dividing into halves?
Student 1: I think it was that one [pointing to line 2] and then that one was close behind
though.
Teacher: So, if I said to you say what's 60%, which one would be best to use?
Student 1: 60%? Probably that one [Points to line 1]
Teacher: OK, and if I said 25%, which one?
Student 1: That one [points to line 2]
Student 2: That one would be more detailed though [indicates line 1]
Teacher: So, basically whatever percentage you get asked for, can determine what kind of
double number line you make

In this conversation the students are able to clearly articulate their thinking. The number line acts
as a kind of scaffold that they can literally point to when explaining their methods. Moreover, the
students are able to acknowledge two different types of reasoning that lead to the same answer
and even discuss which of the two might be more efficient. The students here are exhibiting
metacognitive and reflective behaviours, both of which are essential to SRL.

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By the end of the series of twelve lessons many of the students were using the number line
spontaneously to attack questions. In the post-test several students employed the number line to
successfully attempt problem types that had not been covered in the lessons. Here is one example.

In this example the student has identified the 35 students as representing 100% of the people in the class.
She has then worked out that 10% is 3.5 students and built up from there until 21 students (which
corresponds to 60%) has been reached. It is interesting to note that the student is happy to label the
number line, but is not concerned about drawing the line to scale.

The double number line played an important role in eliciting and revealing thought, thus allowing
the students to actively engage in their mathematics learning and problem-solving. In particular
it allowed three important SLR skills to be practised.

Firstly, it provided a tool for analysis. The double number line allowed students to analyse the
components of the problem and develop a visual representation of the proportional relationships
involved. In doing so, it lessened some of the cognitive load involved in problem solving and let
them concentrate on observing and controlling the problem-solving process. It also allowed
students to explore. Different methods could be recorded or demonstrated on the number lines
and the lines used to support reasoning. As students became more familiar with the number lines
they recognised strategies that had been applied in analogous problems and attempted to apply
them in new situations. Thirdly, students also used the number line to verify their answers. The
number-line had to look right if the solution was going to be any good. It also had to convince
others.

Models, such as the double number-line invited students to engage in thinking and helped sustain
that engagement. As such, they provided opportunities for students to observe and emulate self-
regulating behaviours. In the next section, we look at how involving journalling as a
complementary part of the classroom routine provided a structured opportunity for students to
reflect on their learning.

Journalling
An important phase of SRL involves reflecting on performance to judge progress and make
decisions regarding new goals and altered behaviours. It was decided before the lessons began
that a process of journalling could provide significant opportunities for students to examine their
thinking and reflect on their learning behaviours.

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Journalling in mathematics allows students to write about the experiences, ideas and feelings
involved in their mathematics learning. At its heart, journalling recognises that writing is a means
of "knowing what we think".

... writing can engage all students actively in the deliberate structuring of
meaning: it allows learners to go at their own pace; and it provides unique
feedback, since writers can immediately read the product of their own thinking
on paper" (Emig, paraphrased in Borasi and Rose, p.384).

Journalling was used in the classroom on six different occasions. Each time a writing prompt was
introduced by one of the authors to stimulate a writing time lasting for approximately ten minutes.
The prompts we developed were generally concerned with the students problem-solving
behaviour and conceptual development. For instance, one prompt asked students to write a short
explanation for a younger child explaining how to find three fifths of the squares in a five by five
grid. In a subsequent session the students read several of their peers responses and an ensuing
discussion looked at what made a good mathematical explanation. Students then commented in
their journals on the strengths and weaknesses of their explanations and how they might improve
when writing a similar explanation in the future.

Writing itself did not present a barrier for the majority of students in the class. Where it did, the
task was altered to suit the child. Students were also encouraged to use diagrams and drawings
when needed, to illustrate their writing and were told that the journals would not be assessed for
spelling and grammar.

The written feedback by the

authors, who read the journals
after each session, promoted
further reflection. Students
were given time to respond to
the feedback, which often
asked questions about what
they had written or requested
them to clarify their thinking
or provide further examples.
Feedback from the journalling
was often used to initiate
discussion about learning on a
whole class or group bases.
Moreover, it often helped
focus lesson direction and
content, often highlighting
developing misconceptions
and areas of need.

In the example shown a

student has written an
explanation of how to divide
70 into 10 percent sections.
He has illustrated his method
with a double-number line.
Written feedback from the
teacher has resulted in a
response in a following lesson.
His answer shows he can think

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in a flexible manner and is developing increasing sophistication as a proportional reasoner. The
journal has provided an opportunity to reflect on his thinking and provided a window through
which the teacher can observe his increasing range of strategies.

Journalling took time, both to complete in the classroom and for the authors to read the journals
before the next lesson. In a busy classroom the practice could be hard to sustain. However, it
quickly became evident that the process did not have to occur every lesson. We would argue that
the benefits to the mathematics programme and even to writing generally makes this sort of
activity very worthwhile.

CONCLUSION
Developing the ability to self-regulate in mathematics learning or as a proportional reasoner does
not happen in a vacuum. Supportive classroom environments that nurture the types of thinking
and behaviours that support SRL are critical. In this study we have identified models and
reflective journaling as two elements of instruction that do just that. Both of these provided
students with opportunities to structure and reflect on their thinking and to observe the thinking of
others. When they did this, many demonstrated that they could engage in proportional reasoning
in an active way.

The work we have done here represents only a tentative start in exploring how SRL might be
integrated into mathematics teaching and learning. Overall, we feel that SRL provides a
perspective on instruction that is valuable, and that can help promote the kinds of classroom
norms, which will support the development of powerful learning and learners.

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