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British Journal of Educational Psychology (2005), 75, 351372 q 2005 The British Psychological Society

The British Psychological Society

www.bpsjournals.co.uk

Learning to reect and to attribute constructively as basic components of self-regulated learning

Chris Masui1,2* and Erik De Corte2
1 2

Hasselt University, Belgium University of Leuven, Belgium

Background. Higher education is facing a number of problems: adjusting to larger and more heterogeneous student populations, increasing the number of graduating students, and preparing for lifelong learning. Improving learning competence can make a substantial contribution to solving each of these major concerns. The growing knowledge base on self-regulated learning was taken as one of the main starting points for our study. Aims. In this article we report on reection and attribution as basic components of self-regulated learning. We examine their trainability and their effect on academic performance. This study is part of a wider research project aimed at improving meta-cognitive knowledge as well as affective, conative and regulation skills. The experimental treatment consisted of an integrated set of instructional conditions, which were operationalized in a series of training sessions, as well as practice and transfer tasks. Sample. The participants in this study were 141 rst year students of business economics. The experimental group and both control groups each consisted of 47 students. Method. The effects of the learning environment were investigated using a quasiexperimental design. To control for unintended effects of the design the experimental and the rst control group had the same number of teaching hours (time-on-task) and both teachers and students were not informed about the experimental design. Attribution and reection behaviour was measured through specic assignments; study results during and after the intervention period were taken as indicators of academic performance. To test the hypotheses, t tests and effect-sizes were calculated. Results. After the intervention the experimental students showed a higher degree of reective behaviour than the control students. Moreover, their attribution skills had also measurably improved. The experimental students obtained better study results than their peers in the control groups. Conclusions. This intervention study, focused on the combined training of learning to reect and to attribute constructively, provides evidence of the successful fostering

* Correspondence should be addressed to Chris Masui, Departement of Men, Society and Communication, Hasselt University, Universitaire Campus, Gebouw D, B-3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium (e-mail: chris.masui@uhasselt.be).
DOI:10.1348/000709905X25030

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Chris Masui and Erik De Corte both of meta-cognitive and of conative learning activities resulting in a positive impact on academic achievement.

On the threshold of the third millennium, higher education in Europe is facing a number of major problems. Firstly, the demand for education is rising and more young people want to continue their studies after secondary school in order to obtain a university degree (OECD Indicators, 1998). As a result of this trend, universities are having to adjust to larger and much more heterogeneous student populations than in the past. A second problem is that, especially in Flemish tertiary education, the number of students completing a degree course is considered to be too low. Last but not least, graduates need to be trained for lifelong learning. Taking into account previous research in this area, and more specically the growing knowledge base on self-regulated learning, together with the personal experience of one of the authors as a counsellor in higher education, we chose to focus our research on the learning competence of students (see inter alia Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998; Vermunt, 1995). Our aim was to design and analyse a powerful teaching-learning environment. Starting from a constructivist perspective on learning, several aspects of student expertise were integrated into a concrete instructional context, namely a rst year class in business economics. While focusing on improving a number of meta-cognitive, affective, and conative skills and on the related meta-knowledge from a holistic view of self-regulated learning, the intervention also addressed other learning activities, including cognitive aspects. Our focus in this article is specically on reecting and attribution two of the eight aspects covered in the intervention within an ecologically valid framework. Reecting is a prime example of a meta-cognitive activity. It implies looking back on ones learning or problem-solving process. A major aspect of reecting consists of nding out which strategies, learning aids, allocation of time, and effort made a contribution to the learning outcomes (Masui, Borremans, Van Damme, & Vandenberghe, 1986). When a person is assigning his own learning outcome to particular causes, he is attributing (Graham & Weiner, 1996; Lens, 1996; Van Overwalle, 1987). Perceived causes may be internal or external, stable or unstable, controllable or uncontrollable, and global or specic. Both reecting and attributing can be used for assignments and problems that differ in scope and specicity. For example, a student can reect on studying the entire course, or he can think about the way he produced the answer to a specic task such as an examination question. The same holds true for attributing; a student can try to understand why he did not pass the nal exam for a course, or he can look for the reason why he made a mistake in working out a specic mathematics problem. In the rst two sections we describe some aspects of the empirical research on the meta-cognitive, the affective and conative component in self-regulated learning in higher education. Next, we introduce our multidimensional approach and give an overview of our experimental intervention. The remaining sections focus on the analysis of reection and attribution behaviour.

The meta-cognitive component

Meta-cognitive knowledge is knowledge about ones own cognitive functioning. It is related to personal characteristics, tasks, strategies or conditions. This knowledge may be general or subjective (Flavell, 1979, 1987). Meta-cognitive skills fall into three

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categories: control activities such as planning and repairing; monitoring activities such as process monitoring, self-testing, diagnosing and evaluating; and activities which precede controlling such as orienting and reecting (Brown, 1987; De Jong, 1992; Kluwe, 1987; Vermunt, 1992). Both the knowledge and the skills dimension of metacognition may be domain-specic or general in nature and may vary from tacit, conscious and strategic, to reective (Perkins, 1992). Empirical research on meta-cognition in higher education has provided us with evidence of its effect on learning and study results (Minnaert & Janssen, 1999; Swanson, 1990; Veenman & Elshout, 1991; Veenman, Elshout, & Meijer, 1997; Vermunt, 1992; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1990, 1993), and has demonstrated that both meta-cognitive knowledge and skills can be taught (Hofer, Yu, & Pintrich, 1998; Weinstein, Husman, & Dierking, 2000). At the same time, we identied major gaps or weaknesses in intervention research at the level of higher education. First and foremost, researchers rarely made use of a quasi-experimental design (Lan, 1998; Volet, 1991). Secondly, effects were restricted to the inuence on academic performance, on school career, and on subject-specic tests, while intervening variables such as regulation behaviour were not measured. Furthermore, in most cases transfer to new contents or situations was measured in an indirect way by using open or closed self-reports. Self-reports are open to an inherent bias. Firstly they depend on the participants ability to understand the questions, and secondly they rely on the provision of honest answers (Wolf, 1997). It is not clear that these conditions have always been met. Finally, an extensive description and analysis of the implementation of the intervention is rather rare (Butler, 1998; Masui et al., 1986; Volet, 1991).

The affective and conative component

In their Taxonomy of Individual Difference Constructs, Snow, Corno, and Jackson (1996) divide the eld into cognitive, conative and affective constructs. Affect is subdivided into temperament and emotion, and conation into motivation and volition. While motivation mediates the formation and promotion of decisions, volition mediates their implementation and protection. We drew up an inventory of affective and conative learning skills on the basis of attribution theory and recent self-regulation literature, and situated it within the learning process. Among the affective and conative skills we identied, the skill to attribute learning outcomes in a constructive way is a crucial one. A student who attributes his failures and successes in a constructive way concentrates on the causes over which he has control, and in doing so creates a positive expectation and hence a learning intention. The effect of affective and conative skills on learning outcomes in higher education has been demonstrated in empirical investigations focused on regulation of motivation and effort (Elliot, McGregor, & Gable, 1999; Volet, 1997; Wolters, 1998), on preparing and protecting decisions (Ethington, 1990; Larose, Robertson, Roy, & Legault, 1998), on making motivating attributions (Van Overwalle, 1987), and on success expectations in students (Pokay & Blumenfeld, 1990). The fact that knowledge and skills in this area can be improved in tertiary education has been conrmed in intervention research. However, as is the case with meta-cognition, additional research is required. In the rst place, most interventions were not integrated into content-specic instruction but were organized as separate treatments; it is obvious that an integrated intervention will be easier to implement on a large scale and will pose fewer transfer problems. Secondly, the

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extent of the intervention was often rather limited as sometimes the treatment was even restricted to one session (Van Overwalle, 1987). Although the short-term effect of such a rst session can be relatively large, it is unclear whether it will have a lasting impact on student attitudes and behaviour. Thirdly, in spite of the fact that most interventions have taken place in a group setting, there have been only a few in which the group setting itself was part of the treatment. Precisely this social dimension is an important characteristic of powerful teaching learning environments (De Corte, 1996). Further, a variety of instructional techniques were used, but some of them were not suited for use in large groups because they were too labour-intensive or too expensive. From the point of view of educational policy, interventions that require fewer resources are preferred. Finally, with regard to effects, most studies have examined academic performance or study career. However, in only a few cases were changes in meta-knowledge or affective and conative skills looked at. Moreover, in a number of studies the outcomes only applied to special groups of students, such as low achievers for example. Clearly, this limits the scope for generalizing from the ndings of these studies.

A multidimensional approach
To specify our central research question concerning the trainability of learning competence, we identied a number of key variables from the large variety of listed meta-cognitive, affective, and conative characteristics of the expert student. We opted for a multidimensional approach because the literature has revealed an intimate relationship between the various components of self-regulated learning (Boekaerts, 1996, 1997; Kuhl, 1987, 2000; Snow et al., 1996). Moreover, such an approach was strongly recommended by several researchers (Corno, 1993; Mayer, 1998), but only poorly represented in the training studies available at the time. On the basis of pragmatic, logical, and empirical factors, we decided to focus on eight regulatory skills four meta-cognitive and four affective and conative skills and the meta-knowledge about those skills. First, we selected four meta-cognitive activities, namely orienting, planning, self-checking, and reecting. As argued in the literature, these represent different aspects of meta-cognitive behaviour which are signicant for university students (Boekaerts, 1996, 1997; Davidson & Sternberg, 1998; Janssen, 1996; Vermunt, 1996). Moreover, empirical research (Schoenfeld, 1985; Veenman & Elshout, 1991; Volet, 1991) conrmed that these learning activities have a favourable inuence on study results. It also indicated that there was a need for intervention studies focusing more on the effects on regulation behaviour and on the transfer to new tasks and situations. In addition, no training study combined a quasiexperimental design with an integration of the treatment into several academic subjects. Considering the research context and the interrelationships between the meta-cognitive and affective-conative domains, we subsequently chose four affective and conative skills. Since orienting implies evaluating ones own weaknesses and strengths, we rst chose self-judging. Next, we assumed that learning to plan offered an opportunity to learn how to make choices or to value. Thirdly, we included coping with emotions, as the affective counterpart of self-checking. Finally, reecting seemed to provide sufcient reason for learning to attribute in a constructive way. There is sufcient empirical evidence examining the effect of each of these activities on study results in higher education (Dweck, 1999; Ethington, 1990; Magnussen & Perry, 1992;

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Van Overwalle & De Metsenaere, 1990), but a fully integrated approach using these types of skills has rarely been used in training studies. We decided to design an intervention study in which we would try to teach students the eight selected skills and the related meta-knowledge. We opted for a quasiexperimental design with one experimental and two control groups. To guarantee a balance between internal and external validity, we decided to carry out a eld experiment. This meant that we integrated the training into the courses taken by business economics students at Hasselt University.

Overview of the experimental intervention

The basis for the construction of a powerful teaching-learning environment were the general characteristics of effective learning as described in recent research on learning and instruction, namely the active, cumulative, constructive, goal-oriented, selfregulated, interactive, situated, individually different, transfer-promoting, and problemsolving character of learning (Boekaerts, 1999; Boekaerts & Niemivirta, 2000; Brown & Campione, 1994; De Corte, 1996; Dochy, 1992; Elen, 1992; Pintrich, 2000; Prawat, 1989; Salomon & Perkins, 1998; Simons, 1990; Vermunt, 1992; Voss, 1987). Instruction should stimulate these learning characteristics. However, this imposes a number of conditions on the training course, such as the requirement that the prior knowledge and learning orientations of the students are taken into account, and that constructive frictions and a transfer culture are created. According to Vermunt and Verloop (1999), constructive frictions occur when the incompatibility between the learning strategies of the students and the teaching strategies of the lecturers present a challenge for students, forcing them to increase their learning or thinking competence. The learning environment was designed as follows. We selected as the learner-related designparameters prior knowledge, meta-cognitive, affective and conative skills, and metaknowledge. As instruction-related design parameters, we used goals, content, support, and assessment. Finally, the particular research context, namely rst year students of business economics at Hasselt University, was also an important parameter. This instructional environment was characterized by allowing free choice of, and admission to, programmes of study, shared supervision of student behaviour, a varied study programme, use of different social settings, ensuring good reception and coaching of rst year students throughout the academic year, and the subject-matter orientation of teachers and students. In order to cope with all these variables (characteristics, conditions, and parameters), the design of the intervention was based on an integrated set of instructional principles. These were mutually dependent, partly overlapping, and often contained different elements. We formulated them as follows; (1) embed acquisition of knowledge and skills in the concrete study context, that is, the selected activities have to be taught in the context in which students have to apply them (situated learning), (2) take into account the study orientation of the students and their need to experience the usefulness of the learning and study tasks (personal usefulness), (3) sequence teaching methods and learning tasks and relate them to a time perspective (sequencing and time perspective), (4) use a variety of forms of organization and social interaction (variation in organization and social settings), (5) take into account informal prior knowledge and wide differences between students (adjusting to prior knowledge and differentiating), (6) stimulate the articulation of and reection upon learning and thinking processes (verbalizing and

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reecting), and (7) create opportunities to practise and to transfer the acquired skills to new content domains (practice and transfer).

Hypotheses
In this article we seek to address ve hypotheses. The rst two hypotheses relate to an improvement in regulation behaviour, and more specically to two of the eight regulation skills (see above) that we tried to improve by means of our experimental intervention. The three others concern the impact of our intervention, and indirectly of regulation behaviour, on academic performance. It is predicted that: (1) After the intervention, the experimental students will be better self-regulators than the control students, because this improvement was the main goal of the intervention. In particular: (a) they will reect more on their study approach in the non-intervention courses, (b) they will attribute their study results in a more constructive way. (2) The study results of the experimental students will be better than those of the control students. The intervention will have a positive impact on their study results. In particular: (a) they will perform better in the intervention courses, (b) they will perform better in the non-intervention courses after the intervention, (c) their overall performance will improve.

Design
Subjects The experimental group and the two control groups each consisted of 47 rst year students of business economics at a Flemish university. The average age of the experimental students, 24 males and 23 females, was 18.4 years. In the rst control group with 27 males and 20 females, the average age was also 18.4 years. In the second control group, with 24 males and 23 females, the average age was 18.3 years. For the experimental group (E) we designed an intervention embedded in the natural context of university teaching. The rst control group (C1) was exposed to the same number of teaching hours as the experimental group. The second control group (C2) was only exposed to the instructional and study-guidance support, which is provided to all rst year students. All three groups were selected from the total group of rst year students (N 352), taking into account several entrance characteristics (prior academic knowledge, intelligence, cognitive study skills, attribution behaviour, self-judgments about executive regulation activities, and gender). E and C1 were independent groups. E and C2 were matched groups. The cognitive component was dened in terms of the amount of mathematical training in secondary school, the outcome of an intelligence test and the results of a study skills test as the one developed by Minnaert and Janssen (Minnaert, 1996). The affective-conative component was partially measured by means of an academic self-efcacy questionnaire and an attribution test concerning study results. The regulatory component was measured by means of a self-assessment questionnaire, which was based on the Leuven Executive Regulation Questionnaire (LERQ) for students who have just nished secondary school (Minnaert, 1996).

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The experimental and control intervention Interventions concerning reecting and attributing We designed our experimental intervention in line with the instructional principles discussed above. Reecting and attributing related to the studying of a course were explicitly addressed in 3 of the 10 experimental sessions, namely during the rst session (in the second week of the academic year), during the fourth session (in January, after the rst examination period), and nally during the last session in April at the end of the intervention. During the rst session, reecting and attributing were situated in the intervention as a whole and their signicance in relation to the studying of a course was explained. A set of orientation questions concerning the course in macro-economics (situated learning and personal usefulness principles) was discussed. Some of these questions required thinking about experiences in secondary school and during the rst lectures at university: What is the aim of the lectures? What output of the lectures is required to make them effective? What do you need to do during the lectures? Is this easy or not? How can you organize taking notes?, and, Do you have prior knowledge about macro-economics? Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? Do you expect language difculties with the English textbook?. In order to practice and transfer learning activities (practice and transfer principle), students were assigned homework in two other subjects, namely a history course and an English language course. In both cases students had to think about their prior knowledge and their experiences with studying history and English. By means of a questionnaire, students had to report on the accomplishment of these transfer tasks (articulation and reection principle). During the fourth session, in preparation for their coursework for the second trimester, the experimental students had to reect on their experiences in the rst trimester. Specic assignments were given for all nine courses, which the students had to take (sequencing principle). These stressed study load and study approach. Examples are: Can you use the experiences you gained in the history course in the rst trimester to plan your approach to the sociology course?, and, Which learning strategies were useful in the rst trimester? Make a list of recommendations for yourself and your fellow students. Students worked in groups of four. In the rst part of the session, all groups had to answer questions about the same two courses. In the second part, each group could choose one or two other courses to work on (principle of differentiation between students). At home, they had to complete the remaining questions and to report back by lling in the related forms. In the last session, students were invited to reect on all their experiences during the preceding months (articulation and reection principle). Examples of the assignments were: Give a description of the ideal student of macro-economics, and, Make a list of at least seven instructions you would follow in answering multiple-choice questions. You can use your experiences with the examination of macro-economics. At the end of the last session, students received a booklet containing a summary of the learning activities they were supposed to have covered during the intervention. In addition to these sessions and the related homework, students received reecting assignments concerning their examination experiences and their results after the rst and second trimesters (sequencing principle). Students were invited to answer the following questions for each course: What score do you expect? Make a list of your mistakes and your correct answers. How do you feel about your actual score? Discuss your score with your lecturer. Take some decisions about the future. This last assignment was explained as follows: Reect upon the causes for good, moderate or

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weak results. Formulate for each course two or three conclusions regarding the future. When a score mainly induced negative feelings, think about the possibilities you have to cope with these feelings, and to avoid them. If a score has mainly led to positive feelings, think about how you can repeat this experience, and extend it to other courses. In the remaining seven sessions of the intervention the focus was on the same learning skills, but the scope was ranged over specic problems or assignments in macro-economics, management accounting or some of the transfer courses (courses that were only involved in the intervention by means of homework or transfer exercises). Reection on the learning and problem-solving process was part of each session. This learning activity was at least modelled by the lecturer. After discussing an assignment, useful strategies or thinking methods such as making a drawing can be helpful or dont forget to check the plausibility of an outcome were formulated. Furthermore, reection tasks were always part of the homework assignments. In reecting about processes and outcomes, a major concern was to look for controllable causes and variables and thus for attributing in a constructive way.

Interventions in the control groups To control for unintended effects of the design, the rst control group was submitted to the same number of teaching hours (time-on-task) as the experimental group. Moreover, both teachers and students were not informed about the experimental design. Instead of focusing on affective/conative and meta-cognitive activities, the students of the rst control group were asked to carry out different cognitive activities, namely relating, structuring, analysing, concretizing, practising, and memorizing. During the rst session for example, they had to concretize concepts they had learnt in the rst chapters of their macro-economics course. The fourth session was devoted to analysing content-free problems and to looking for relations between the different courses. In the last session the students of the rst control group summarized a few pages of one of their courses and of a text on the functioning of memory. After each session they received a list of activities related to a number of their courses and forms for reporting on the accomplishment of these activities. The second control group was only exposed to the normal instructional and studyguidance support consisting of lectures, practicals, consultation hours, individual feedback on assignments and examinations, and individual and group coaching by their tutor including one (regular) attributional training session after the rst exams. This means that no special sessions were organized. These students only participated in the measurements before and after the intervention. As such this group was a so-called nontreatment group.

Measurement instruments and analysis Reecting behaviour During the last post-assessment session, we tried to nd out whether students had improved their learning skills, in the sense that they transferred the acquired study activities to a course that was not involved in the intervention, more specically, statistics. They were asked to ll out a questionnaire with 11 questions about study activities and experiences in the statistics course. The respondents were encouraged to skip questions that they could not answer spontaneously, and to provide sufcient

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detail. In this section we describe the question that was aimed at detecting reecting behaviour. In the process of studying a course you can reect on your learning strategy, on what is important to take into account and take care of. Formulate on the basis of your experiences with studying the statistics course a number of recommendations that you and your fellow students surely should take into account. Start a new line with each new suggestion. This assignment was intended to provide an indication of spontaneous reection behaviour; respondents who had thought more frequently about their learning strategy for statistics should be able to give a more detailed answer than those who had done so to a lesser degree. However, potential differences in actual regulation behaviour in a nonmeasurement context could be hidden by this explicit verbalization task. In other words, it is possible that the task induced meta-cognitive activity that would otherwise be absent. In encoding the answers we made a distinction between the recommendations and the arguments to support them. Examples of the recommendations were: you have to prepare assignments before the practical, you need to study regularly, if you do not understand, ask for an explanation, and, make a list of formulas. Examples of the arguments were: to keep on track during the practicals, to become skilful in working out exercises, and, to obtain useful information. For each respondent we took the number of recommendations and the number of arguments as a measure of reecting behaviour. In Appendix A we illustrate the coding system with a few examples. Inter-scorer reliability was .97 for the number of recommendations and .95 for the number of arguments. The main reason for using this reliability measure was the fact that the application of the coding rules was straightforward.

Attributing behaviour To measure their attribution behaviour we asked the students to explain their best and worst scores in the Easter exams and to describe how they felt they could maintain or prevent, respectively, such a score in the future. Respondents were asked to identify their highest and their weakest score by comparing each exam score with the related mean score for all rst-year students. This procedure meant that their best and worst results were not based on personal evaluation or absolute scores. This evaluation took place a few weeks after the students received their examination scores. More details are provided in Appendix B. Our aim was to discover to what extent the respondents felt responsible for their study results, for their successes and failures. What factors did they mention in order to explain their exam results? Did they refer to internal or external causes, to factors that they experienced as controllable or as uncontrollable? Examples of the causes mentioned for the good study results were: weekly, I learned my lesson, from secondary school, I had a good prior knowledge, I always prepared the practicals, when something wasnt clear, I asked the lecturer, I always paid attention during the lectures, I liked to study this material, I worked very hard, and, I concentrated on the most important topics. Examples of the causes mentioned for the weak study results were: I started too late with the preparation of this examination, The lectures were boring, From the start, I felt this was difcult because my exercises never were completely correct, You need to have luck when you take a multiple choice

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exam, I was too nervous, and, I lost a lot, because I didnt read the exam questions well enough. Most of the causes described by the students could easily be categorized as either internal or external. It was not always clear whether a cause was perceived as being stable or unstable. Moreover, it was sometimes difcult to deduce the perceived controllability. Apparently similar factors (e.g. intelligence or help by the lecturer) were perceived as being controllable by one student but as uncontrollable by another. According to attribution theory, the perception of controllability does not refer to the cognition that one should control a particular factor, but to the subjective feeling of controllability. In order to measure accurately this dimension of causal attribution, we devised the following solution. Firstly, we drew up a list of all the different causes that the respondent mentioned with regard to one outcome (the weakest or the best exam score) and derived, for each cause, as many indicators as possible to assess the perception of control. Secondly, we took into account each students personal opinion about the controllability of a set of 10 general factors such as intelligence, effort, prior knowledge, and luck. Finally, we combined all this information to allow us to make a distinction between causes that the respondent perceived as controllable, as uncontrollable, or as uncertain. For each respondent we calculated six scores: three for the control over the best exam score and three for the control over the weakest exam score. In both cases a subscore for the number of controllable, uncontrollable, and uncertain or neutral factors was given. In Appendix C we provide some examples of our coding work. Interscorer reliability for the subscores for the best outcome were .94, .91, and .85. The reliability correlations for the three subscores for the weakest outcome were .93, .92, and .77. The interpretation of the responses required so much knowledge of the instruction context to which the students referred in explaining their best and weakest exam scores that we decided to do the coding work ourselves.

Academic performance As an indicator of academic performance we used all examination scores in the rst year of academic study. Each course was evaluated on a 20-point scale, with 10 being the pass mark. A students overall result was computed as the weighed sumscore over all the courses in the rst year, expressed as a percentage. Each course had a weight that corresponded with the budgeted study load. To test the hypotheses concerning the effect of the intervention on study results we made use of the overall result, consisting of the exam scores on the two intervention courses, macro-economics and management accounting, and the exam scores on four non-intervention courses, statistics, law, psychology, and research methods.

Results
Self-regulation behaviour Reecting about study approach in non-intervention courses The average number of recommendations that the students formulated on the basis of their experiences with studying statistics was rather small (Table 1). Within each group we found large differences between individuals. In E and C1 the students formulated between 0 and 7 recommendations (SD 2:11 for E; SD 1:60 for C1) and between 0

Learning to reect and to attribute constructively Table 1. Reection behaviour: Average number of recommendations and arguments E(46) Reections Recommendations Arguments M 2.83 0.43 SD 2.11 0.87 M 2.12* 0.20 C1(41) SD 1.60 0.51 M 1.82** 0.18* C2(45) SD 1.40 0.44

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*p , :10, **p , :05 (after Bonferroni correction) refer to the differences with the experimental group.

and 4 recommendations in C2 (SD 1:40). Nevertheless, the experimental students described signicantly more recommendations for studying statistics than the control students (t 1:76, df 82:93, p :041 for the difference between E and C1; t 22:61, df 43, p :006 for the difference between E and C2).1 In both cases the effect size was small: .37 for the difference compared with C1, and .39 for the difference compared with C2, respectively. In all three groups only a minority of the respondents supported their recommendations with arguments. Nevertheless, in comparison with their peers in the control groups, the experimental students mentioned more arguments. Only with regard to C2 the difference was signicant (t 1:57, df 63:36, p :061 for the difference between E and C1; t 21:86, df 43, p :035 for the difference between E and C2). The effect size was small in each case: .33 for the difference with C1, and .28 for the difference with C2. The fact that the experimental students reacted more extensively to the explicit reection task suggests that they were more skilful in thinking about learning strategies or that they reected more on their study approach for statistics than the control students. Constructive attribution behaviour In explaining their study results, the experimental students mentioned more causes than the control students, and they described more controllable and fewer uncontrollable factors. On average the experimental students described ve factors to explain their best exam score, whereas the control students mentioned four factors (Table 2). The differences were signicant (t 1:82, df 79, p :036 for the difference between E and C1; and t 3:75, df 37, p :001 for the difference between E and C2), and they also attributed a small and a medium effect, respectively, to the intervention: .40 for the difference compared with C1, and .60 for the difference compared with C2. In each group, students mainly allocated their best result to controllable factors. However, this outcome was most pronounced in the experimental group. Compared with the control students, the experimental students on average mentioned one more controllable factor (t 2:35, df 79, p :011 for the difference between E and C1; t 2:90, df 37, p :003 for the difference between E and C2). The effect size was medium (.52) for the difference compared with C1, and small (.47) for the difference compared with C2.
1

In accordance with the characteristics of the samples in our quasi-experimental design (see Subjects), the differences between E and C1 are always tested with t tests for Independent Samples and the differences between E and C2 are always tested with t tests for Paired Samples.

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Table 2. Perceived causes of the best exam score in the second trimester E (43) Causes of the best exam score Controllable Uncontrollable Uncertain Total M 3.93 0.63 0.58 5.14 SD 2.52 0.82 1.10 2.14 M 2.79** 0.84 0.68 4.32* C1 (38) SD 2.00 1.05 1.07 1.89 M 2.90*** 0.68 0.37 3.95*** C2 (41) SD 1.74 1.08 0.58 1.73

*p , :10, **p , :05, ***p , :01 (after Bonferroni correction) refer to the differences with the experimental group.

For the uncontrollable factors, the differences between the experimental and control students were in the expected direction but did not reach signicant levels. In explaining the weakest exam score, the differences between the groups were rather limited. On average, all students mentioned between three and four causes (Table 3).
Table 3. Perceived causes of the weakest exam score in the second trimester E (44) Causes of the weakest exam score Controllable Uncontrollable Uncertain Total M 1.83 1.16 0.45 3.45 SD 1.43 1.10 0.82 1.34 M 1.72 1.62 0.38 3.72 C1 (39) SD 1.56 1.66 0.63 1.86 M 1.73 1.50 0.34 3.57 C2 (44) SD 1.17 1.30 0.53 1.73

As expected, the experimental students described more controllable and fewer uncontrollable factors than the control students. Though (without reaching signicance) only with regard to the absolute number of uncontrollable factors the effect size was small: .31 for the difference between E and C1, and .25 for the difference between E and C2. With regard to the explanation of both the best and the weakest exam scores, the average number of explanatory factors mentioned hid large individual differences within each group. The experimental students mentioned between one and 10 factors to explain their best exam score (SD 2:14), while the control students described between one and nine factors in group C1 (SD 1:89), and between one and eight factors in group C2 (SD 1:73). With regard to the weakest exam score, the experimental students mentioned between one and six explanatory factors (SD 1:34), while the control students described between one and nine factors in group C1 (SD 1:86), and between one and ten factors in group C2 (SD 1:73). The study results Performance in both intervention courses Students in the experimental group obtained better scores in the examinations in macroeconomics than their peers in the control groups (Table 4 ). More students attained the

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pass mark (33 in E vs. 21 in C1 and 28 in C2), and their average score was signicantly higher: t 1:97, df 82:62, p :026 for the difference between E and C1; t 1:80, df 45, p :040 for the difference between E and C2. In both cases the effect of the intervention was small: .41 for the difference compared with C1, and .26 for the difference compared with C2.
Table 4. Exam scores for intervention courses: Participants, mean and standard deviation for the experimental group (E) and both control groups (C1 and C2) E N Macro-economics Management accounting 47 45 M 10.9 10.4 SD 2.8 3.0 N 44 45 C1 M 9.6* 8.4** SD 3.5 3.9 N 46 47 C2 M 10.0* 9.3* SD 3.0 3.1

*p , :10, **p , :05 (after Bonferroni correction) refer to the differences with the experimental group.

For the second intervention course - management accounting the outcome was similar. More experimental students attained the pass mark (28 in E vs. 18 in C1 and 21 in C2), and the average score was signicantly higher: t 2:75, df 82:07, p :004 for the difference between E and C1, and t 1:79, df 44, p :040 for the difference between E and C2. The effect size was medium (.57) for the difference compared with C1, and small (.26) for the difference compared with C2.

Performance in non-intervention courses Approximately 2 months after the intervention, students sat exams for four courses that were not involved in the intervention: statistics, law, psychology and research methods (Table 5). With the exception of the psychology examination, more experimental students than control students obtained the pass mark in each case. As expected, the average score of the experimental group was always higher than that of the control groups. In three cases the differences were signicant. For the law course the average score of the experimental students was signicantly higher than the average score of the rst control group (t 2:80, df 72:97, p :004). For research methods the experimental students obtained higher scores than both control groups (t 2:96, df 61:70, p :002 for the difference between E and C1 and t 5; 16, df 39, p :000 for the difference between E and C2). In six cases the effect size was at least small. For the statistics exam, the difference between E and C1 resulted in a small effect
Table 5. Exam scores for non-intervention courses: Participants mean and standard deviation E N Statistics Law Psychology Research methods 43 43 43 43 M 10.4 11.9 11.9 13.1 SD 4.6 3.1 2.6 2.1 N 43 44 41 39 C1 M 8.7 9.5* 11.2 11.1* SD 6.3 4.9 3.7 3.5 N 45 44 44 44 C2 M 9.9 11.3 11.4 11.2** SD 5.2 2.9 2.2 1.8

*p , :01, **p , :001 after Bonferroni correction refer to the difference with the experimental group.

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of the intervention (.31). For the law course the effect sizes were medium and small, respectively: .60 for the difference compared with C1 and .20 for the difference compared with C2. For psychology the difference between E and C2 resulted in a small effect (.20). For research methods the effect sizes were medium and large, respectively: .65 for the difference compared with C1 and .81 for the difference compared with C2.

Overall performance in the rst year In the rst year the experimental students achieved better overall results than their peers in the control groups. The total percentage marks were calculated for all students who did not drop out before the end of the academic year (Table 6). This overall study result was (almost) signicantly higher for the experimental students than for the control students: t 1:59, df 61:33, p :059 for the difference between E and C1, and t 2; 37, df 38, p :012 for the difference between E and C2. In both cases the effect size was small: .36 for the difference compared with C1 and .38 for the difference compared with C2.
Table 6. Overall study result in the rst year E (42) M Total percentage of points 59.5 SD 10.3 M 54.6 C1 (38) SD 16.3 M 55.4* C2 (44) SD 10.4

*p , :05 after Bonferroni correction refers to the difference with the experimental group.

The experimental students achieved a higher pass rate (38 for E, 28 for C1, and 34 for C2, respectively) in their rst year of study. These gures include students who failed the rst year and had to re-sit their exams.

Discussion
This article reports on an attempt to stimulate the integration of meta-cognitive and conative activities in students learning processes. This integration, typical of what is called self-regulated learning, has received increasing attention in educational psychology over the past 15 years (Boekaerts, 1996; De Corte, 1996; Pintrich, 2003; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998; Zeidner, Boekaerts, & Pintrich, 2000). We focused on the combined training of reecting and attributing with regard to the studying of a course. In this nal section we summarize the results of our study and formulate some methodological comments. Finally, we put forward a few suggestions for future research and challenges for instructional practice. With respect to the rst hypothesis, we may conclude that through the experimental intervention we were able to improve in a modest way the regulation behaviour of students. The experimental students were more skilled in reecting because they reacted more extensively to an explicit reection task. In addition, they had learned to attribute in a more constructive way, and their sense of being in control of success and failure had been increased in comparison with their peers in the control groups.

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These results showed that the intervention had the expected positive effect on the intermediate criterion measures we described in this article. However, most effects were small or in some cases did not reach signicant levels. On the other hand, Gage (1996) argues that the behavioural sciences, just as medical science, should take small effects seriously especially when they are supported by relevant theory and are consistent with other research ndings. Besides, there may be a number of reasons which explain the observed effect sizes or the lack of signicance. Each measure can be viewed as an intervention on its own (Winne & Perry, 2000), and it is not impossible that the differences between the experimental and control groups were reduced by the measurement intervention. The second group of hypotheses concerned the impact of the intervention on academic performance. These hypotheses were almost fully supported by the outcomes. The experimental students obtained better examination results than the control students not only for the intervention courses, but also for the non-intervention courses although these were not always signicant and for the overall study result as well. It is even possible that the differences in exam scores for one of the nonintervention courses (statistics) underestimated the effect of the intervention. This unintended underestimation could have been produced as a consequence of our transfer measurement procedures. Although we did not intend to inuence students by asking them to reect on their approach to the statistics and law courses, we could not avoid doing so. At a rather crucial moment in the third trimester, experimental and control students spent 50 minutes answering questions about their experiences with these courses. Inevitably, this reection made students aware of what they ought to know and ought to be doing, and also of their situation with regard to these courses, and so may have prompted them to make the appropriate effort in preparation for the exams some weeks later. This explanation is supported by the fact that respondents referred to their new intentions as a consequence of answering questions about study activities such as planning and valuing. This methodological comment also illustrates the complexity of conducting research in an everyday context. It should also be borne in mind that reecting and attributing with regard to the studying of a course were only a part of what we addressed with our experimental intervention (Masui & De Corte, 1999). We should therefore point out that the benecial effect of this intervention on academic performance was the overall result of the complete experimental intervention involving eight regulatory skills, not just of the two skills which are the focus of this article. This experimental study was an attempt to contribute to the literature on selfregulation in higher education by using a quasi-experimental research design in a regular educational context. In addition, we sought to measure the skills we were aiming to improve. To do this we did not use self-report questionnaires, but rather tried to measure the behavioural component by giving students an explicit reection and attribution task. Of course, we need more training studies involving other populations and other disciplines to validate our general conclusions. Moreover, many questions remain unanswered. Two of them are discussed below. In the post-intervention sessions, we noticed large individual differences in reection and attribution behaviour between students in the same group. How can these differences be understood and explained? It seems important to examine for what type of student this teachinglearning environment is most powerful and to what extent alternatives need to be provided taking into account gender, cognitive skills, study orientation, anxiety level, meta-cognitive beliefs, and the combinations of these variables. In general it would be

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worthwhile looking in detail at the effects of the intervention on participants, making use of case studies or diaries (Lindblom-Yla nne & Lonka, 1999; Pressley, Van Etten, Yokoi, Freebern, & Van Meter, 1998). Another major question is whether it would be possible to obtain more signicant effects if the scope of the intervention were enlarged by increasing the number of sessions and implementing our experimental training as part of an entire curriculum in which cognitive and motivational self-regulation are explicit educational targets. However, this could only be achieved if we were able to change universities into smart schools (Perkins, 1992) in which the teachers shift their role from being experts in transmitting declarative and procedural knowledge, to coaches (Boekaerts, 1997), creating an intellectually stimulating climate, modelling learning and problem-solving activities, asking provocative questions, providing support to learners through coaching and guidance, and fostering students agency over and responsibility for their own learning (De Corte, 2000). Now that we have obtained some empirical evidence concerning the trainability of self-regulation skills, it is important to raise the question as to the possible educational implications and challenges. The rst challenge consists of integrating self-regulation strategy training into the everyday study context of students. This means that the students need to experience the fact that activities such as reecting and attributing are really part of the entire range of study activities. Consequently, affective, conative and meta-cognitive competencies need to be introduced into their programmes.2 This ambitious implementation of strategy training calls for a learning culture in which students and teachers openly discuss all aspects of learning and instruction. To create such a favourable climate, all actors need to reect on their implicit theories about teaching and learning and to overcome their resistance to changing their attitudes and behaviour. For instance, in the selection context of the rst year in Flemish universities, many students have a performance orientation. Although this can have positive effects (Pintrich, 2000), a learning or mastery orientation would be a better starting point for meta-cognitive reection and thoughtfulness (Dweck, 1999; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1998). Students should be supported to become aware that a mastery orientation is the best preparation for obtaining good study results and valuable qualications (Husman & Lens, 1999). Finally, instruction focusing on students learning and problem-solving competence requires from the teachers a range of teaching and communication skills and the ability to switch between content-oriented and competence or process-oriented teaching activities. Universities should therefore invest heavily in the professional development of their teaching staff and develop a policy that rewards teaching competence.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Professor Julie Dockrell and to the two anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Recent guidelines for constructing new Bachelor and Master programmes in Flemish higher education in Flanders stress the importance of these kinds of competencies in the context of lifelong education. These guidelines are an important element in the educational development plan 20032006 of Hasselt University.

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Appendix A
Illustrations of the encoding of reection behaviour Answer 1: Be sure to make a lot of assignments (recommendation 1). This student received score 1 for recommendations and score 0 for arguments. Answer 2: Be able to explain all concepts (recommendation 1) It is necessary to keep up with the course (recommendation 2) Make free assignments (recommendation 3) to check that you can make them all by yourself (argument 1) This student received score 3 for recommendations and score 1 for arguments. Answer 3: Attend classes (recommendation 1) Be attentive/concentrate (recommendation 2) Make assignments (recommendation 3) Ask for explanations (recommendation 4) This student received score 4 for recommendations and score 0 for arguments.

Appendix B
Attribution task with regard to examination scores Calculate for each of the following ve exams of the second trimester your highest and your lowest score in comparison with the mean score for all participants (macroeconomics: 8.6/20, nancial accounting: 9.2/20, management accounting: 9/20; sociology: 10.8/20; mathematics: 11/20). The course for which your own score has the largest positive difference with the related mean score gives your relative best score. When all your scores are below the mean scores the one with the least negative difference with the group mean is your relative best score.

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The course for which your own score has the largest negative distance to the related mean score gives your relative lowest score. When all your scores are above the mean scores the one with the least positive difference with the group mean is your relative lowest score.
Macro-economics : : : : 2 8.6 : : : Sociology : : : : 2 10.8 : : : Management accounting : : : : 2 9.0 : : : Financial accounting : : : : 2 9.2 : : : Mathematics : : : : 2 11.0 : : : Conclusion: relative best score : : :: : :: : : relative lowest score : : :: : :: : :

Calculate for each course the difference between your own score and the group mean: (a) Describe how you achieved your highest exam score in the second trimester. Which factors explain according to you this good or best score? (b) What conditions have to be fullled to obtain the same result? (2) (a) Describe how you achieved your lowest exam score in the second trimester. Which factors explain according to you this bad or weakest score? (b) What conditions have to be fullled to prevent a similar outcome? (1)

Appendix C
Illustration of encoding attribution behaviour Illustration 1: Attribution concerning a best exam score On the rst part of the question (see Appendix B) student X listed the following factors: Above all a good understanding of everything, (cause 1: intelligence or strategy) to attend all classes, (cause 2: effort) to take notes, (cause 3: strategy) to try to make all assignments (cause 4: strategy or effort) all by yourself, (cause 5: effort) to study in Lipsey (the textbook being used; cause 6: strategy). On the second part of the question (conditions to maintain the good mark) the same student X partly repeated the same factors and added another two: (see a) above all: understanding everything, (repetition of cause 1: intelligence or strategy) to make additional assignments (cause 7: effort) all by yourself, (repetition of cause 5: effort) to memorize, when necessary (cause 8: strategy). From another questionnaire we knew that this student perceives intelligence, learning strategy and effort as factors controllable by himself. Therefore, all eight causes were counted as controllable factors. This respondent did not mention uncontrollable or uncertain causes in his explanation about his best exam score. He received the following scores with regard to the perceived reasons for his best exam score: controllable causes: 8 uncontrollable causes: 0 uncertain causes: 0 total: 8.

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Illustration 2: Attribution concerning a weakest exam score On the rst part of the question student Y listed the following factors: I am not good in this subject (cause 1: ability) I had to guess a bit because I had to give enough answers (on the multiple choice exam) (cause 2: luck or bad luck). On the second part of the question (conditions to avoid a weak mark) the same student Y added one other factor: I probably need to work harder for this course (cause 3: effort). From another questionnaire we know that this student perceives effort and bad luck as a controllable and an uncontrollable factor, respectively. The rst statement seems to refer to a factor that the student perceives as uncontrollable. Because the student perceives intelligence as fairly controllable this answer was coded as referring to an uncertain factor. He received the following scores with regard to the perceived causes of his weakest exam score: controllable causes: 1 uncontrollable causes: 1 uncertain causes: 1 total: 3.