How instruction supportive of self-regulated learning might foster self-efficacy for students with and without learning disabilities during literacy tasks

• Main Author: Scott, Jennifer
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2011
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/35970

While self-efficacy (SE) and self-regulated learning (SRL) are key processes that are related to successful literacy performance, these are two areas where students often struggle, particularly students with learning disabilities (LD). Fortunately, research has identified instructional features that can be embedded in classrooms to support SRL. This study built from that research to investigate whether those SRL-supportive instructional features might also support students’ SE while working on literacy tasks in different kinds of classroom placements (inclusive, support, or pull-out). An instrumental qualitative case study design was used to examine the SE of seven intermediate students at different achievement levels, including three students with learning disabilities. Results revealed: (a) similarities across teachers working in different kinds of placements in their use of SRL-supportive instructional features, with some features being implemented with greater frequency and consistency, (b) relationships between environmental conditions and SE, such as the provision of choices, but also (c) the ways in which SE perceptions were mediated by students' perceptions of environmental conditions. Overall, cross-case analyses highlighted the complex, dynamic, and situated nature of SE, and identified ways in which environmental and personal factors interacted in students’ SE attributions. In closing the thesis, these results are considered in the context of previous research, and theoretical, methodological, and practical limitations, contributions and implications are outlined.