End-of-Lesson Reflection as a Bridge to Home Review:

Supporting Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

  The present study focused on self-regulated learning, which involves reviewing and revising each lesson, in high school mathematics classes. The participants were 234 first-year high school students (10^th graders) in seven classes taught by the third author, a mathematics teacher. During the first semester, the students were encouraged to write about tasks that they should focus on during the review at the end of the class. In addition, their teacher emphasized the importance of lesson induction after solving problems, including taking notes on key points involved in solving the problems. However, observations indicated that many of the students' reflections dealt mainly with memorizing formulas and repeatedly solving problems. Although the reflections of some of the students included achieving a deeper understanding of the tasks that they should focus on during the review, those students' actual reviews did not do that. Therefore, in the second semester, a reflection sheet was introduced that included a table summarizing examples of task settings according to the types of difficulties students faced and examples of corresponding tasks. Also, the teacher provided examples of other students' reflections and reviews. Following that, the students' reflections were directed more toward understanding the reasoning behind formulas and problem solving, and a stronger connection was observed between the descriptions in their reflections and their subsequent reviews. The conclusion deals with the importance of incorporating self-regulated learning into classroom lessons.