OK, so in the first post on this thread Robert Talbert of Grand Valley State University described the rationale behind flipping his calculus classroom: responding to the paradoxical situation in which students who are capable of learning independently (with guidance) have been convinced that they can’t without significant top-down intrusion by teachers. Paul Pintrich’s theory of “self-regulated learning,” discussed by Robert Talbert in this second piece of his series in the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s “Casting Out Nines” blog (did you see part 1?) — is one I find exciting, and hope to pursue further.
It reminds me of my thin experience with Marcia Baxter Magolda’s theory of self-authorship, a framework of personal development through which maturing students move from having others drive their self-definition to becoming active agents in defining their own lives.
Self-authorship is a much bigger concept than self-regulated learning, but it seems reasonable to recognize how helping students develop the latter can help them on the longer, more complex journey toward the former. What the two concepts have in common is enabling students to exercise more independent agency. Of course, this is often a scary proposition for our students, which means we need to scaffold it for them. Here’s where Talbert’s discussion of self-regulation through “Guided Practice” comes in. Enjoy!
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The inverted calculus course and self-regulated learning
March 3, 2014, 9:00 am
A few weeks ago I began a series to review the Calculus course that Marcia Frobish and I taught using the inverted/flipped class design, back in the Fall. I want to pick up the thread here about the unifying principle behind the course, which is the concept of self-regulated learning.
Self-regulated learning is what it sounds like: Learning that is initiated, managed, and assessed by the learners themselves. An instructor can play a role in this process, so it’s not the same thing as teaching yourself a subject (although all successful autodidacts are self-regulating learners), but it refers to how the individual learner approaches learning tasks.
For example, take someone learning about optimization problems in calculus. Four things describe how a self-regulating learner approaches this topic.
Teaching Prof in Progress 