Supporting young children's self-regulated learning in digital contexts

<p dir="ltr">This thesis by publication investigates how primary school-aged students self-regulate their learning in digital contexts, an under-researched area of concern in educational research. Little is known about how young students manage, monitor, control, and evaluate their learning in digital contexts, despite the prevalence of technology in primary classrooms, the reliance on technology during remote learning, and the known importance of developing the self-regulated learning (SRL) capability of students. Accordingly, the main purpose of the thesis is to understand how young students self-regulate while learning through and with technology, by drawing together research and theory from educational psychology and educational technology. Longitudinal data were collected from 83 Year 5 and 6 Australian students (Mage = 10.75) and their six teachers throughout the 2021 school year. Observation, self-report measures and interviews were used to examine self-regulated learning in two distinct contexts: classroom and remote learning. </p><p dir="ltr">In the first of the five papers that constitute this thesis, the SRL behaviours of young students were individually observed while they completed a 20-min online research task, and were subsequently analysed using an established coding scheme. Key findings of this study were that students spent over 75% of their task time using cognitive strategies (for example, reading and summarising), and little time planning (7%), monitoring (6%), managing their environment (5%) or showing interest (1%) (Paper 1). These SRL observations were further investigated to determine if there were any associations between or patterns of demonstrated behaviours, task performance and other self-report measures of SRL (Paper 2). Results showed that time spent on different self-regulated learning behaviours were not significantly correlated to task performance scores, with the strongest correlate to task performance being students' ability to identify and explain effective self-regulated learning behaviours in written form. </p><p dir="ltr">The remote learning intervention, caused by the natural experiment due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, enabled the comparison of SRL knowledge, understandings, and behaviours in the regular classroom with the remote learning context (Paper 3). When learning remotely, students demonstrated remarkably similar patterns of overall SRL behaviour to those exhibited during task observations in their traditional classroom, suggesting that students did not automatically acquire or develop self-regulation skills, nor adjust their existing patterns of SRL behaviour in this new learning context. However, detailed examination of each student through the lens of teacher perceptions (Paper 4), revealed that there were often substantial changes in individual SRL during remote learning, with social support through co- and shared regulation during remote learning benefiting the SRL of young students. </p><p dir="ltr">Paper 5 synthesises the key findings of this thesis within the context of the Australian curriculum (a key guiding teaching document) and proposes a way forward for educators to support and develop situated self-regulated learners in primary schools through modifications to policy and practice. These include: the promotion and teaching of planning and monitoring skills, encouraging the independent application and practice of SRL skills, and ensuring an iterative process of planning, monitoring, and reflecting is applied during learning and teaching. As the development of SRL is layered within a broad, situated context, consideration and inclusion of both co- and shared regulation is also crucial.</p>