SUPERVISOR: alieke van dijk
To prepare students for the complex and rapid-changing environment that they will enter after graduation, the UT invested in the Twente Educational Model (TEM) which embraces a student-driven learning (SDL) approach. SDL allows students to actively take initiative to shape their own learning process. However, to make sure that students do not only become highly knowledgeable but also gain relevant skills, personal development skills and self-regulation skills should be included in the curriculum.
Providing students with the opportunity to make decisions about their learning, which is a main prerequisite for SDL, their core psychological needs of competence (i.e., ability to produce desired outcomes and experiencing mastery) and autonomy (i.e., feelings of ownership) will be met. According to self-determination theory (SDT), this then leads to higher levels of intrinsic motivation among students, as competence and autonomy are considered two of the three core psychological needs to determine one’s goal directed behavior.
However, students often struggle to take charge in their learning processesa and teachers indicate to find it difficult to let go of the control during the change to a more student-driven learning approach.This theme investigates how to provide students with the right instruction and tools to develop their self-regulation skills and their feelings of autonomy and how both relate to an improved learning process and improved learning outcomes. In addition, the role of teachers in this process can be investigated.
Example research questions within this theme:
- To what extent do teachers’ ideas and vision on students’ self-regulation skills match students’ actual and/or perceived self-regulation skills?
- What is the role of autonomy in students’ development of self-regulation skills, and vice versa?
- To what extent do students of different ability levels differ in terms of self-regulation abilities?
- To what extent do individual self-regulation skills determine the success of a collaborative learning process?
- How can we improve students’ socially-shared regulation skills?