Research Blog #7: Frame

Some of the theories used in my paper are the SRL theory, the MSLQ, and although it's not necessarily a theory, I also use a few ideas from the Marshmallow Test to expand and compare on other topics. These concepts help me make sense of my project because they are quite renowned and frequently used in the self-regulatory researching field; making them very useful to explain certain studies or tests. The SRL (self-regulated learning) theory is a revised version of the IP (information processing) theory, which mostly took the cognitive aspect into account when evaluating self-regulation. Pintrich’s SRL theory “takes a much more inclusive perspective on student learning to include not only cognitive, but also motivational and affective factors, as well as social contextual factors (Pintrich, 2000b)” (Pintrich, 386). There are also four general assumptions that most of the SRL models share:

1. active, constructive assumption
2. potential for control assumption
3. goal, criterion, or standard assumption
4. self-regulatory activities are mediators between personal and contextual characteristics and actual achievement or performance

I go into further detail about these 4 assumptions in my paper, but this is the basis of the SRL theory; which is most likely going to be the my most used and important source.

Research Blog #6: Visual

It was a bit tough for me finding a visual that could fit my project, but when I saw this one I was satisfied and decided to use it. This image shows some of the components that affect self-regulation, and having control over them could lead to better self-regulation. If the word on the right next to the upward arrow isn't that visible, it says "performance." The way it's placed along side the arrow indicates that as mastery over the three self-regulation strategies increase, so will overall performance. I think this visual fits in with my paper because one of the things I try to show in my paper is that increased self-regulation will lead to better performance academically for college students. I think this will also be a useful image for my oral presentation and perhaps my research paper as well.

Literature Review Blog #4

Visual


Citation

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-control. Little, Brown. Print. 

Summary

This book revolves around the implications of self-control and how even something as trivial as taking a marshmallow now or waiting to receive two is an indicator of a student's potential in academics or other functions.

Author

Walter Mischel: Mischel is a renowned American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. I think this fact alone is reason enough for me to use his material in my paper, especially this book of his as it focuses on self-regulation. 

Key terms

1. High delay - those who could, on a consistent basis, wait and were not subject to their impulses.
2. Hot or Cool - two ways used to describe the brain with "hot" being emotional, reflexive, unconscious — and t "cool" being cognitive, reflective, slower, and effortful.

Quotes

1. "Self-control is crucial for the successful pursuit of long-term goals. It is equally essential for developing the self-restraint and empathy needed to build caring and mutually supportive relationships.It can help people avoid becoming entrapped early in life, dropping out of school, becoming impervious to consequences, or getting stuck in jobs they hate." 
2. "The marshmallow experiments convinced me that if people can change how they mentally represent a stimulus, they can exert self-control and escape from being victims of the hot stimuli that have come to control their behavior."
3. "Beginning in early childhood, far too many people live in untrustworthy, unreliable worlds in which promises for delayed larger rewards are made but never kept.  Given this history, it makes little sense to wait rather than grab whatever is at hand."

Value

I think this source has the potential to be the backbone of my research due to the fact that it explores my topic of self-regulation fully and it is also very famous; which means many other researchers have review or critics of this experiment which will broaden the type and amount of information I have.

Literature Review Blog #3

Visual: Author - Dionne Miller



Citation:

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self- Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.

Summary: This study investigates how students in an urban 2-year college used self regulation strategies in a General Chemistry I course. It points to a positive correlation between performance and self-regulation, and on the basis of these findings, the author proposes possible interventions to improve self-regulation with the larger goal of improving student performance in chemistry and other science-related disciplines.

Author: Dionne A. Miller is an assistant professor of chemistry in the Natural Sciences Department of LaGuardia Community College. She received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the CUNY Graduate School and University Center in 2008. She is very knowledgeable in thew researching field and was previously a college professor so I feel as though she is qualified for this work.

Key terms: 
1. Self-regulation - the ability to manage disruptive emotions and impulses, and to think before you react.
2. Educational evaluation - the evaluation process of characterizing and appraising some aspect/s of an educational process.

Quotes: 


1. "A self-regulated learner is able to monitor his or her learning and identify and implement strategies to bring it up to the predetermined standard of the course, and therefore self-regulation has an important role in learning even if this role is not explicit to the student (Boud, 1995)."

2. "Boud (1995), Zimmerman (2002), and Schraw et al. (2006) agreed that self-regulation enables students to become effective and responsible learners who can continue their education as “lifelong learners” without the intervention of teachers."

3. "Students who are self-regulated report much higher levels of academic satisfaction and are more likely to persist in the face of significant challenges (Bandura, 1997; Zimmerman, 2002). Self-regulation is thus highly desirable in our students, especially those in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and majors where these courses stress understanding, application, and synthesis of the fundamental disciplinary concepts rather than simple memorization (Glynn & Muth, 1994; Zoller, 2000)."

Value:
This material helps me explore my research question because it gives me some insight into how performance is related to self-regulation. It seems as though performance is indeed positively correlated with self-regulation, and this supports my potential argument that the more self-regulated someone is, the more they will see their performance in academics increasing.

Research Blog #5: Bibliography

Bibliography

Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2013. Print.

Lehrer, Jonah. "Don't!" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 18 May 2009. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.
Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Pintrich, Paul R. Understanding Self-regulated Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1995. Print. 

Su, Xiaoxia, Ron E. Mcbride, and Ping Xiang. "College Students’ Achievement Goal Orientation and Motivational Regulations in Physical Activity Classes: A Test of Gender Invariance." JTPE Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 34.1 (2015): 2-17. Web. 
Todd, Jemma, and Barbara Mullan. "The Role of Self-regulation in Predicting Sleep Hygiene in University Students." Psychology, Health & Medicine 18.3 (2013): 275-88. Web.

Research Blog #4: Research Proposal

Working Title: Self-Regulation among College Students

Topic

My paper is going to be focused on the implications and effects of self-regulation in college students. Taking pieces from what I have read, it seems that most researchers find that the amount of self-regulation a student possesses has the potential to affect a plethora of different things; academic success, sleep hygiene, and engagement are just a few. I am interested in this topic because self-regulation is a concept that intrigues me and seeing as I am currently a college student, I want to know how it affects those like me.

Research Question

What sort of implications arise for college students depending on their ability to self-regulate?

Theoretical Frame

Although I am not yet sure about what theories I will be using to analyze facts and case studies, I do have an idea of what I am trying to explain. I want to understand what role self-regulation plays in determining the many factors of a college student’s life; their grades, social life, etc. Is self-regulation even that big of a factor when it comes to these things? I want to find out the answer to that question as well. Most cases suggest that the more self-regulated a student is, the more positive affects they'll see as a result of that. One specific framework that did interest me from one of my readings was the SRL(self-regulated learning) Perspective. “the SRL perspective takes a much more inclusive perspective on student learning to include not only cognitive, but also motivational and affective factors, as well as social contextual factors (Pintrich, 2000b).” This quote, from the article “A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students,” presents an interesting theory on how relying on the self can change the way motivation and other factors affect a person. Moreover, Dionne A. Miller performed a study explaining how self-regulation can lead to better performance for students, and improving self-regulation is the way to go if students want to see improvements in their performance.

Research Plan, Case, or Additional Questions

Some additional questions that arise are as follows: How does self-regulation affect a tudent’s academics? Is it possible to change your own control over self-regulation? There are many more questions that also come from this topic, including the one I posed in the theoretical frame section, which was: is self-regulation even that big of a factor when it comes to a college student’s lives? To continue, I am going to be looking for information or case studies pertaining to anything having to do with college students and self-regulation; perhaps a study about how self-regulation affects academic success, or information regarding to what affects the differences in self-regulation among college students. I know it still sounds rather unorganized and it’s clear my paper is not as focused as it should be; but, I feel as though the more I research on the topic, the more my paper will come together. One of the studies that caught my eye was actually in one of the readings we went over in class, “Paying for the Party,” by Armstrong and Hamilton. Even though the main focus is not self-regulation, the study talks about one case where even though the student was very self-regulated, she ended up doing poorly in her classes due to other factors like social status. This shows me that self-regulation is not the only thing that can affect the life of a college student .

Bibliography

Armstrong, Elizabeth and Laura Hamilton. Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. 2013. Print.

Lehrer, Jonah. "Don't!" The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 18 May 2009. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.

Miller, Dionne. "Two-Year Community: Learning How Students Learn: An Exploration of Self-Regulation Strategies in a Two-Year College General Chemistry Class." Journal of College Science Teaching J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 044.03 (2015): 11-16. Web.

Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-control. Little, Brown. Print.

Pintrich, Paul R. "A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students." Educational Psychology Review 16.4 (2004): 385-407. Web.

Su, Xiaoxia, Ron E. Mcbride, and Ping Xiang. "College Students’ Achievement Goal Orientation and Motivational Regulations in Physical Activity Classes: A Test of Gender Invariance." JTPE Journal of Teaching in Physical Education 34.1 (2015): 2-17. Web.

Todd, Jemma, and Barbara Mullan. "The Role of Self-regulation in Predicting Sleep Hygiene in University Students." Psychology, Health & Medicine 18.3 (2013): 275-88. Web.