One thing I learned while reading this chapter is perhaps one of the biggest topics of the chapter; the concepts of self-efficacy and self-regulation. Despite these topics being such a huge part of the educational world, this is the first time I’ve been introduced to them, which is interesting because the concepts of the other self-schema are a lot more common to hear about, both in a school environment or through the media. Before reading this chapter, I was completely unaware of both self-efficacy and self-regulation, including how the sense of self-efficacy and self-regulation in both teachers and students affects how they teach and learn respectively.
Another thing I learned in regards to self-regulation was the cycle of self-regulated learning. Going from analyzing the task, to setting goals and creating plans to complete a task is something that I didn’t think was terribly uncommon. After learning about self-regulation through the text, I would say that I have a fairly strong sense of self-regulation and can connect with the ideas presented about it. As such, the strategies stated in the cycle are fairly common to me subconsciously, but to see it actually printed out is a little foreign and strange since I’ve never really had to think about it before.
One more thing I learned about this chapter are the influences of self-regulation. One thing that interested me the most about this was that motivation and volition are considered separate ideas. I had always considered them to be practically the same thing, more specifically I considered volition the same or extremely similar to motivation. However, reading into a bit more, it appears to me that while volition is more of a conscious decision, motivation is more unconscious
Something I connected with aside from self-regulation is the idea behind modelling. Similarly to Piaget’s Theory from a few chapters ago, I also learned quite a bit about modelling in my high school Psychology class. However, we did not quite as in depth with modelling as the text presents it. Something that is new to me about the concept of modelling is the consequences of a model’s actions and the observer’s expectations about performing said actions. From the way I understood it before, it was a simple reenactment of what they saw, not necessarily taking into account any risk or rewards.
One question I have after reading the chapter is do with this new knowledge of modelling that the chapter has shown me: Will a very young child (say, around a year old) still take into account risk vs. reward when it comes to modelling? Even though at that point, they may not have gone through as much mental or cognitive development, is it still “innate” to consider the consequences or rewards of ones actions?
Jesse Simpson 