The nature of student teachers' regulation of learning in teacher education

Background: Self-regulated learning (SRL) has mainly been conceptualized to involve student learning within academic settings. In teacher education, where learning from theory and practice is combined, student teachers also need to regulate their learning. Hence, there is an urgent need to extend SRL theories to the domain of teacher learning and to obtain scientific knowledge on the nature of student teachers' SRL to enable support of these processes in teacher education.

Aims: This study was aimed at exploring the nature of student teachers' regulation of learning across various theoretical and practical contexts in teacher education.

Sample: Twenty-eight students from a post-graduate academic teacher education institute participated in this study.

Method: For the measurement of student teachers' regulation activities, an open question log, called Learning Report, was developed. Content analysis and multiple correspondence analyses of 133 Learning Reports were used to identify qualitative differences in regulation activities and the underlying structure in the data.

Results: The analyses resulted in the identification and description of the variety and frequency of student teachers' regulation activities. The relations among the regulation activities were described by an underlying structure of two dimensions: passive versus active regulation of learning and prospective versus retrospective regulation of learning. Active regulation dominated in practice schools, passive regulation at the university.

Conclusions: It is argued that for learning to teach, a different conceptualization of SRL is needed, focusing less on setting initial learning goals and more on retrospective aspects of SRL. Building blocks for such a conceptualization are offered.