Self-regulated learning enters the European scene

The interest in self-regulated learning varies quite a bit between countries, but this might start to change as self-regulated learning is being promoted by multiple international policy institutions.

I'll share some examples:

The Education Endownment Foundation in the UK published a Learning and Teaching Toolkit that lets you sort educational practices according to its implementation cost, impact, and available evidence. 'Self-regulated learning and meta-cognition' comes out as the educational practice yielding the biggest impact on student performance. Other countries, like the Netherlands, started to translate this impressive body of evidence to their own languages. Soon, self-regulated learning could be on many countries' educational priority lists.

Just a couple of months into the pandemic, UNESCO published a report identifying the support of students' self-regulated learning as a crucial intervention during times of home schooling.

Also, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified self-regulated learning skills as an important indicator of successful learning. Therefore, the 2025 PISA survey will assess students' self-regulated learning skills in a digital learning context.

And finally, the Joint Research Center of the European Commission has launched the LifeComp Framework which identifies 9 competences that are crucial for living and thriving in the 21st century. Two of the nine competences are related to self-regulation. Can you spot them in the tree below?

If the LifeComp framework becomes as successful as its predecessor - the DigiComp framework - we can expect many different actions targeted at implementing the framework.

And you know what, we're helping to shape some of those first activities!

In April, European Schoolnet will launch a MOOC about lifelong learning which puts self-regulated learning in the center. Teachers across Europe can follow the MOOC and get access to key scientific insights that will help them become even more effective in supporting their students' self-regulated learning. I'm really thrilled to be involved as an expert in developing this MOOC.

Can't wait for the MOOC to be launched? I was also asked to write a short opinion piece on lifelong learning. And guess what? I've added self-regulated learning to the mix. What did you expect. You can read it here! It's available in 29 languages, so no excuse not to read it ;-).

Let me know what you think about it!