The purpose of this study was to provide a developmental perspective on students’ self-efficacy in their self-regulatory learning strategies using data obtained from cohort groups of students ranging from age 9 to 17 (N=1257), to determine whether this confidence differs as a function of gender, and to discover whether these differences are a function of gender orientation beliefs rather than of gender. Confidence in self-regulation decreased as students progressed from elementary school to high school, and the decrease was steeper than a similar decrease in self-perceptions of academic competence. Gender differences favored girls, but these differences were rendered nonsignificant when gender orientation beliefs were controlled. Instead, a feminine orientation was particularly adaptive. Findings support the contentions of researchers who have argued that gender differences in academic motivation may be a function of the stereotypical beliefs that students hold about gender.

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The study aimed at identifying the role of metacognitive experiences (ME), such as feeling of difficulty, estimate of solution correctness and estimate of effort exerted, in the formation of one’s self-concept in the mathematics domain and in self-regulation. The idea was that when one enters an achievement situation, one’s self-concept in the respective domain will influence the ME evoked in response to the task at hand. The ME, in their turn, will influence and shape one’s task-specific self-concept and through it one’s more general self-concept in the respective academic domain. To test these predictions a longitudinal study was designed, in which 172 students of 5th and 6th grade participated. On the first testing, they were given a questionnaire tapping their self-concept in mathematics and two verbal mathematical problems. Before and after problem solving, ME were measured on a 4-point scale. After that, a questionnaire addressing their self-concept in verbal mathematical tasks was administered. On the second testing, one week later, the same process was repeated, with two more mathematical problems, which were more difficult than the initial two. On the third testing, the same procedure was followed with all 4 mathematical problems. Students’ ability in mathematics was represented by their respective school marks. Path analysis confirmed the predictions stated. It was found that exisiting self-concept influences ME which, along with information from task processing, feed back on self-concept and update it. Thus self-regulation becomes more adaptive to reality demands.

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Theories on self-regulated learning assume that motivational and cognitive variables interact during the learning process. Vollmeyer & Rheinberg’s (1998) model tries to specify the nature of such interactions, so to test that model we had 107 participants learn a linear system. We measured the participants' initial motivation and their ability, then during learning we collected indicators for strategy systematicity, motivational state and knowledge about the system. The final performance was measured as how well the participants could reach given goals. We explored the patterns in learning by running a cluster analysis on the variables recorded during learning. This analysis revealed five types of learners. These learner types differed in which of the motivational and/or cognitive variables collected during learning were the most important determinants of performance.

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The purpose of this study was to examine how students with different goal orientation patterns perform in a complex problem solving task under different instructional conditions. Ninth-grade students (N=143) performed a complex problem solving task after receiving either task-involving or ego-involving instructions. It was assumed that students emphasizing performance and avoidance goals (or both) would produce less positive situational appraisals than students emphasizing learning goals, and that these differences would be greater in the ego-involving condition. Consistent with the assumptions, higher levels of interest and self-efficacy were associated with the task-involving condition, while more self-handicaps were claimed in the ego-involving condition. Also as expected, the detrimental consequences of the ego-involving condition were most accentuated for performance-oriented students. In general, the results support the idea of multiple goals and multiple pathways. That is, students with different goal orientation patterns experienced task situations differently – even with no differences in their performance – and the degree and quality of these differences varied as a function of the instructional condition.

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