Self-Regulated Learning and the 21 Century Competencies

2 The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the relation between the 21 st Century Competencies (21CC) and self-regulated learning (SRL). The 21CC framework emerged out of efforts to improve and reform educational systems in order to better prepare students to be for 21 st Century Skills, 2009a, 2009b). Within this framework, competencies move beyond simple content area knowledge or skills to encompass the abilities needed to meet the complex demands within any particular context. Hence, in this framework a competence includes a broader understanding that comprises the skills, attitudes, knowledge and students will need to successful in school, in the workplace, and in life more generally. Models of SRL are rooted in broader conceptions of self-regulation that have been developed with regard to a variety of domains in order to understand how individuals' take an active, purposeful and reflective role in their own functioning or behavior. For example, there is Pintrich, & Zeidner, 2000). SRL concerns the application of general models of self-regulation to issues of learning with a particular focus on academic contexts. Models of SRL, that is, attempt to understand how students can and do take an active role in managing their own academic functioning. Even within this specific focus, models of SRL have emerged from a number of theoretical traditions including those that stress volition, information processing, behavioral, cognitive development, and sociocultural views of learning (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). Hence, there is no single universal model used to understand SRL but rather a number of views that, while stressing somewhat different constructs and conceptualizations, overlap in substantial 3 ways. The present discussion draws most directly on prominent models of SRL that arise from a Social-cognitive models share several basic assumptions about the nature of SRL (Pintrich, 2004). One assumption is that SRL is dependent on students having a necessary set of skills or abilities as well as adaptive attitudes and beliefs that can be taught and learned by most students. In the past, this assumption has been phrased as students needing to have both the " skill " and the " will " to learn. An important caveat of this assumption is that, although subject to biological, developmental, and contextual constraints, the underlying competencies, attitudes and beliefs necessary for SRL can be learned by most all students. A second assumption in these models is the importance of setting goals or having performance standards or criterion. …