Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice

Vol. 16, No. 4, August 2010, 491–505

Self-regulated pupils in teaching: teachers’ experiences

May Britt Postholm*

Programme for Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology,

Trondheim, Norway
(Received 14 October 2008; final version received 5 October 2009)
Taylor and Francis
CTAT_A_476010.sgm

Teachers
10.1080/13540601003754889
1354-0602
Original
Taylor
402010
16
May
may.britt.postholm@plu.ntnu.no
000002010
BrittPostholm
&Article
and
Francis
(print)/1470-1278
Teaching: Theory(online)
and Practice

This article outlines in a theoretical and practical way the concepts of self-
regulated learning, learning strategies and metacognition by looking at concrete
examples in the classroom. The teachers presented in the article were taking part
in a research and development (R&D) work project in which they were
cooperating both with each other and a researcher who was facilitating their way
through the development processes. The article focuses on how the teachers
introduced learning strategies, how the strategies were adapted to the pupils, how
the strategies were connected to various tasks and what the use of strategies means
for the pupils’ learning in the studied context. The overall aim of the article is to
illuminate how the teachers experienced the pupils’ use of strategies in their
learning work. Findings from the study indicate that teachers have to adapt the
introduction and use of strategies to the pupils’ development levels and that pupils
from 13 to 16 years of age need help from their teachers, both in learning and in
controlling their own learning processes.
Keywords: self-regulated learning; learning strategies; metacognitive strategies;
metacognitive knowledge; teachers’ experiences; adapted teaching; qualitative
method

1. Introduction
One of the aims of the teaching practice in the Norwegian school (Læreplanverket for
Kunnskapsløftet, 2006) is that the pupils should regulate their own learning processes.
This means that learning is initiated, controlled and managed by the pupils them-
selves. The purpose of this article is to show how teachers introduce and include
cognitive learning strategies as part of their teaching and, furthermore, to describe
how pupils experience the use of strategies in their learning processes, as seen from
the teachers’ perspective. Using strategies for learning is considered to be a part of
self-regulated learning, a process that also includes metacognitive processes. Self-
regulated learning, learning strategies and metacognition are thus key concepts in this
article that will be outlined in a theoretical and practical way by using examples from
the classroom.
The school taking part in the research and development1 (R&D) project is situated
in a suburban area and has pupils from the first to tenth grades. Forty teachers are
working in the school, which has 500 pupils. The pupils are, for the most part, from
middle-class families and there are few immigrants in the school. The teachers are

*Email: may.britt.postholm@plu.ntnu.no

ISSN 1354-0602 print/ISSN 1470-1278 online

© 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13540601003754889
http://www.informaworld.com
492 M.B. Postholm

divided into three teams. Teachers in Team 1 teach pupils in grades 1–4, teachers in
Team 2 teach pupils in grades 5–7 and teachers in Team 3 have the responsibility of
pupils in grades 8–10. Each of the three teams has a team leader, who is one of the
teachers. I was connected with Team 3 and therefore it is the teachers and pupils in
this micro society (Krogh, Ichijo, & Nonaka, 2000) who are in focus in this article.
This team has 160 pupils and 12 teachers. The teachers in Team 3 and I developed the
research question together. We arrived at: ‘How can various work methods with the
focus on learning strategies contribute to each pupil’s subject and social develop-
ment?’ Both learning strategies and adapted education are key parts of the Norwegian
national curriculum, so the teachers had every opportunity to satisfy national require-
ments for learning and support for learning when choosing this research question as a
framework for their teaching. The research question was the overall thesis guiding
both the research and the development work in the school. Within the framework of
this thesis, a sub-question emerging from the ongoing processes during the first
semester directed the focus on to the teachers’ arrangement of strategy use and how
the pupils experienced this strategy use during their learning work, as seen from the
teachers’ perspective. It is this key thesis statement that I aim to discuss in this article.
Before I outline the organisation of the development work and how I collected the
data, I will present theories on the concepts of self-regulated learning, learning strate-
gies and metacognitive processes and on related research findings. Using this theory
as my framework, I will then present the teaching and learning processes as seen from
the teachers’ perspectives and end the article with some concluding comments.

2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Self-regulated learning and strategies
Self-regulated learning includes thoughts, feelings and planned and adapted actions
that are all managed by the learner to reach learning goals. The actions, environments
and people mutually impact each other. According to Pintrich (2000), learners are
active participants who consider their actions in relation to aims and standards. Self-
regulated work is described as a cyclic process comprising three phases: planning,
implementation and self-reflection (Zimmerman, 2000). During the planning phase,
the task and one’s own motivation are analysed, which makes this a process of strate-
gic planning. Zimmerman furthermore states that if a skill is going to be mastered or
accomplished successfully, the learner needs methods or strategies suitable for the
task and setting. Learning strategies are defined as goal-directed actions that are not
obligatory. This means that there is not just one way or correct strategy that can help
learners to attain their goals (Siegler & Jenkins, 1989). The planning and choice of
strategies require constant adaptation because the acting person changes or there are
alterations in the actual action environment. No self-regulated strategy will function
the same way from one person to the next, and few or no strategies will function opti-
mally for one person for all tasks and opportunities. Thus, strategies are dependent on
the actual situation, the persons involved and the specific tasks (Flavell, 1987). In
essence, using Pintrich’s words (2004), self-regulated learning mediates the relation
between context, learner characteristics and performance.
Schraw, Crippen, and Hartley (2006) argue that self-regulation is of tremendous
importance to all learners and claim that the literature on general education supports
this view. According to Pintrich (2000), pupils who display more adaptive self-
regulatory strategies demonstrate better learning and higher motivation for learning.
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 493

The belief that control over one’s own learning affects the motivation for learning is
supported by Mooij (2008). He has found that that when pupils exert more control
over their own learning processes, the degree of self-regulated learning competence
increases, which then motivates a realisation of the next learning tasks. Self-regulation
is also important in a social context.

2.2. Individual learning in a social context

Pupils can instruct themselves during the implementation phase. This is about self-
monitoring one’s processes (Zimmerman, 2008) and the core issue is whether a learner
displays personal initiative, perseverance and adaptive skills (Zimmerman, 2000).
According to Zimmerman and Schunk (2007), although it has been viewed as espe-
cially important during personal forms of learning, self-regulation is also important in
social forms of learning in which the pupils seek help from peers, parents and teachers.
Vygotsky (2000) emphasised the use of language as a tool in learning. Using the
general genetic law of cultural development2 (Vygotsky, 1978) as his point of
departure, he claimed the use of language was a social medium between people and
thus a tool that is used in dialogues between the interlocutors. Next, he defined
language as egocentric talk, meaning that people are talking to themselves or, let us
say, instructing themselves. In the end, this language becomes part of their thoughts,
in inner dialogue or verbal thought, as Vygotsky (2000) phrased it. This means that
the process of regulating ourselves starts within the social community, a process that
gradually will be internalised by the learners, thus becoming one of the individual’s
skills. This means that self-instruction at first has to be learned in social settings.
According to Davis (2003), small groups provide an opportunity for explicit discus-
sions and reflections that promote metacognition and self-regulation. Furthermore,
Hogan (1999) developed the Thinking Aloud Together (TAT) programme as a tool to
promote metacognition and self-regulation in a small group, collaborative setting.
Pupils in this programme demonstrated greater metacognitive awareness of their learn-
ing than pupils in the control group. The teacher has a decisive role in this process.
The teacher is a key person, organising the teaching so that the pupils can help
each other when talking and working together. He or she can teach and guide the
pupils, both in groups and individually, in using various strategies that they can use
later on their own. A major criticism of strategy instruction has been that it does not
place enough emphasis on learners as active constructors of knowledge (Borkowski,
1992). Bearing Vygotsky’s thoughts and ideas in mind, or working within a socio-
cultural frame of reference, learners are seen as active during the learning processes.
Therefore, in absolute terms, we can say that the characteristics of constructivist
instruction can be consistent with principles of strategy instruction. It is within this
epistemological stance that the present study is undertaken.
In addition to being aware of how strategies are used, the pupils need to develop a
feeling and understanding of where and when these strategies can be used (Flavell,
1979). This means that pupils must regulate and control their own learning. Being
aware of one’s own learning is defined as the metacognitive process.

2.3. The metacognitive process

In addition to cognitive learning strategies, self-regulated learning includes
metacognitive strategies and metacognitive knowledge (Flavell, 1979, 1987), where
494 M.B. Postholm

metacognition is a collective term for both. Metacognitive strategies are on a higher

level of reflection than cognitive strategies, according to Bråten (2005). When using
metacognitive strategies, the purpose is not to attain specific goals but to assess how
the goals are reached (Flavell, 1987). The main meaning of the concept of metacog-
nitive strategies is to have thoughts about thoughts (Hacker, 1998a), or knowledge or
cognition about cognitive phenomena, as Flavell (1979) puts it. Weinert (1987) adds
that these strategies are also knowledge about knowledge and reflections on actions.
Using metacognitive strategies, the pupils can plan, monitor, regulate and control
their own learning (Boekaerts, Pintrich, & Zeidner, 2000; Flavell, 1976; Winne,
2001; Zimmerman, 2001, 2006). In addition to governing their own learning
processes by using metacognitive strategies, metacognitive knowledge is of major
importance for understanding which strategies can be used in various situations and
contexts.
Flavell (1979, 1987) divides metacognitive knowledge into three components:
knowledge about persons, tasks and strategies. Knowledge about persons refers to the
understanding of oneself as a learning and thinking person. Knowledge about tasks
means knowing about various cognitive tasks and how they require different
solutions. The pupils need to solve many exercises to familiarise themselves with,
analyse and understand various procedures or methods. Knowledge about strategies
includes the learner’s knowledge on various methods that can be used to carry out and
solve tasks.
Borkowski (1992) states that teachers’ understanding of self-regulated processes
and strategy use is fundamental to how they arrange and teach strategy-oriented
instruction. Furthermore, he maintains that teachers have to develop their own models,
or understanding from experiences in practice, for how teaching within this area
should be conducted. In the following section, I will describe the development
processes in which the teachers reflect on observed teaching lessons and exchange
experiences from practice and, furthermore, how these processes were researched.

3. Studied processes in the R&D work

3.1. Development processes creating data
The R&D project at the selected school is being conducted over a two-year period,
commencing in September 2006. After the first semester, what we considered the
start-up phase (Postholm, 2008), the teachers stated that they wanted to observe each
other’s teaching and reflect in class team meetings, in plenary sessions in which all the
teachers were together and in teams made up of teachers teaching the same subject.
My role as a researcher was to facilitate the development processes, finding a balance
between supporting and pushing the teachers, always keeping in mind that this was
the teachers’ development project. Bearing the teachers’ requests for cooperation in
mind, I made a plan for the cooperation between the teachers. This plan is presented
in Figure 1.
Figure 1 shows that the teachers teaching the same subject are to observe each
Figure 1. Formalized plan.

other and afterwards reflect together on the observed activity. For instance, when the
mathematics teacher in the eighth grade teaches the pupils, the mathematics teachers
in the ninth and tenth grades observe the class (visualised by arrows from math in the
ninth and tenth grades). Before teaching the class, the teacher sent a plan (visualised
by the black squares) to the observing teachers and to me, the researcher, who was also
taking part in the observation and reflection processes. The plan described the topic
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 495

Figure 1. Formalized plan.

and the aims of the lesson, and the teacher wrote questions about his own planned
practice and what he or she wanted feedback on. As we can see, the intention was that
the teachers would reflect together in each, their own class team after each observation
(visualised by the vertical arrows combining the various subjects in the same grade)
and in the team with all the teachers when one third of the process was completed
(visualised by the horizontal arrows that pass through the three subjects observed and
reflected on in the three grades). Moreover, the teachers teaching the same subject
reflected on the observed activity the same day as their meeting (visualised by black
circles in the figure). It is necessary to add that the point of departure for both the
observations and the subsequent reflections was learning strategies and the teachers’
experiences.

3.2. The collection of data material

The aim of the thesis statement in the R&D work that emerged from the process
during the first semester was to ascertain how the teachers arranged for strategy use
and how the pupils experienced this strategy use during their learning work, as seen
from the teachers’ perspective. I was interested in finding out what was taking place
during the teaching processes, the ‘what’ and wanted to obtain an understanding of
how this ‘what’ was experienced by the teachers. I used a phenomenological approach
(Moustakas, 1994) within the R&D work to collect information about the teachers’
experiences. To answer the research question, I observed the teachers during their
teaching of nine lessons each semester for three semesters; thus, 27 lessons all
together. I also observed and reflected together with the teachers during reflection
dialogues in the subject team meetings after each observed teaching lesson. Moreover,
496 M.B. Postholm

I had six group interviews with the teachers in class team meetings and 12 meeting
with all the teachers in Team 3. During the entire R&D project, I thus collected data
by both observing and interviewing. The research question guided the observations
that focused on how the teachers facilitated strategy use. The observations helped me
to form themes and questions for the interviews with the teachers. In these interviews,
my aim was to obtain information about and an understanding of how the teachers
experienced the pupils’ strategy use. I attended three assemblies in which all the teach-
ers in the school exchanged experiences from the development work. I made notes on
my classroom observations and on the meetings and tape-recorded interviews and the
plenary presentations. All the tape recordings have been transcribed. This data
material represents information on how the teachers introduced and included learning
strategies in their teaching and how the pupils experienced the use of strategies, as
seen from the teachers’ perspective.

3.3. Data analyses

According to Atkinson and Heritage (1984), the production and use of transcripts are
‘research activities’ because they involve close, repeated listening to recordings that
often reveal previously unnoticed features of the conversation. Therefore, I produced
and analysed the transcripts myself. The notes and transcriptions were analysed
according to the constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1998). The
coding and categorising process structured and reduced the data so that particular
characteristics could be analysed, understood and made reportable (Garfinkel, 1967;
Sachs, 1992).
When I structured the data material during the analysis process, I arrived at the
following four main categories based on the teachers’ perspectives: (1) the introduc-
tion of strategies, (2) learning strategies and adapted teaching, (3) various tasks and
strategies; and (4) learning. Member checking (Creswell, 1998; Lincoln & Guba,
1985; Merriam, 1998; Postholm, 2005; Stake, 1995) was used to ensure the quality of
the research project. This means that all the teachers in Team 3 have read the text both
for accuracy and to check the ethical dimension.

4. The teaching and learning processes seen from the teachers’ perspectives:
description and analyses
The teachers had various thoughts on how they should introduce strategies to the
pupils. They reflected on whether and how strategies could be adapted to various
pupils and tested their ideas in practice. Furthermore, they discussed how various
strategies could be connected to different tasks and how the pupils should be aware of
the learning process. During their teaching, the teachers formed an impression of how
the pupils perceived the use of strategies. In the following section, I will illuminate
these issues included in the four categories that were developed from the data material.
The chosen illustrations from practice and the teachers’ utterances presented within
each category give a picture of how the teachers developed their teaching and their
understanding of the accomplished processes. Thus, the presentation is true to how the
teachers introduce and include learning strategies in their teaching and to how the
teachers experience the pupils’ use of strategies in their learning. The presentation of
the studied practice was, as mentioned previously, approved by the teachers through
member checking.
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 497

4.1. The introduction of strategies

The teachers introduced many of the strategies described by Santa, Havens, and
Maycumber (1996), but they had also developed some of the strategies and introduced
them in original settings and tasks. Over the two years, the pupils used keywords, key
sentences, mind maps, structured mind maps, two-column logs and content frames,
power notes and spool papers.3 The teachers discussed whether or not they should
introduce the same strategy in all the subjects at the same time. They were obviously
uncertain about this and saw the danger of their pupils becoming bored from overus-
ing the same strategies. They came to the conclusion that they could use the same
strategy if they found it useful for the content they were teaching. This means that the
pupils could encounter the same strategy when working in various subjects during the
same period of time, but the teachers did not stipulate that the strategy had to be intro-
duced just because the pupils were to learn one specific strategy. They felt that the
content should be the deciding factor, not the strategy. During a meeting in Team 3 in
November 2006, one of the teachers said: ‘It’s important that the pupils don’t feel that
we’re forcing this on them, but that they experience the strategies as help for their
learning’.
The teachers attended a two-day course on learning strategies when the 2007
spring semester commenced. They were told that the pupils had to be introduced to a
number of strategies. At this time, they had already started to introduce some strate-
gies to the pupils. During this course, they reviewed strategies integrated in their
teaching and were presented with new strategies and the contexts they could be used
in. Whereas most of the teachers introduced one strategy at a time connected to
specific tasks, the teachers in the tenth grade held a two-period study techniques
course for the pupils after they themselves had looked into this.
During this course, the pupils were introduced to a number of strategies and were
also given a booklet on them. After this introductory course, the teachers reminded the
pupils of the strategies when they were working on various tasks, but felt it was impor-
tant that the pupils had the opportunity to choose which strategies they used themselves.
According to Flavell (1987), no strategy will function the same way from one person
to the next. This means that teachers have to present various strategies to the pupils to
give them a repertoire to choose from. As we can see, the teachers decided to introduce
strategies differently, some introducing them one by one in connection with various
tasks, while others giving the pupils a course in learning strategies. Research shows
that presenting a strategy in context (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996), meaning together
with a concrete task, has the most positive effect on the use of strategies in learning.
When introducing strategies, teachers have to be aware of this, at least when presenting
a strategy, and should use examples when teaching a course to the pupils, as this will
put the strategy in a context. This was also part of the practice used by the teachers in
this study when they started by setting up a course for their pupils.
In the meeting in which all the teachers in Team 3 were gathered in November
2006, they stated that in addition to encouraging the pupils to use strategies, it was
important that they used them during their teaching so that they could be models for
the pupils. The teachers decided during the same meeting to put pictures of strategies
on the walls of their offices and the classrooms so that they and the pupils could be
reminded of them in their work.
The teachers found that strategies are dependent on the tasks they ask the pupils
to undertake and that it was important that the pupils felt that the strategies were
498 M.B. Postholm

meaningful for their learning. Furthermore, the teachers found that the pupils could
have various ideas of what was a good strategy for them. The teachers saw that some
pupils liked to use mind maps, but others found them more of a mess than a learning
strategy. Some of them seemed to prefer power notes. Utterances supporting this were
heard during all the group meetings in spring 2007 and throughout the following
school year. That the pupils liked to use various strategies concurs with Flavell’s
theory (1987) that the learning of strategies is dependent on the persons involved and
the specific tasks.

4.2. Learning strategies and adapted teaching

Two of the teachers working together had some common experiences of working with
adapted teaching and using learning strategies. In the middle of November 2007, the
pupils in the ninth grade had been through a chapter in social studies and were about
to have a summarising session. Before this plenary discussion, one of the teachers had
worked together with the slower pupils and helped them to summarise the content
using keywords. The teachers stated during the reflection dialogue in the subject team
afterwards that they had a positive experience because the pupils were more active
than usual during the summarising dialogue. The same teachers also stated that they
had had similar experiences from the Norwegian subject when analysing a short story
in the same semester. When they gave the pupils the keywords ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’
and ‘when’, they saw that these terms were of great help to the slower pupils, not
surprisingly, the teachers added, as they were the ones who encountered the most
problems in structuring such a text. During a meeting in Team 3 at the end of the
autumn semester in 2007, the teachers shared these experiences. They also shared
them with the other teachers at the school during the plenary presentation at the end
of the semester.
During a meeting in Team 3 in February 2008, one of the teachers said that she
helped the slower pupils to choose a strategy when working on tasks, as she did not
believe they were capable of choosing on their own. But she added that it was possible
that she underestimated them. Another teacher found that the smart, lazy pupils were
the most challenging. According to the teachers, boys tended to respond to the use of
strategies more negatively than girls because using them was more work intensive.
The teachers added that one of the boys commented: ‘I see the benefit of it, but it’s
boring and takes so much time’. The teachers said the new trend was that the pupils
wanted good results without putting any effort into their work. But the picture was not
as simple as that. One teacher said that the slower boys asked whether they could use
mind maps when reading to help them remember things; they, in fact, wanted to use
a learning strategy and had obviously experienced that this strategy helped them in
their work. They were motivated to begin with the next task and obviously had the
feeling of regulating their own learning, which then encouraged them to use strategies
and work further (Mooij, 2008; Pintrich, 2000).
In the same meeting, some of the teachers stated that they had found it necessary
to differentiate the introduction of strategies for various pupils. Many of the pupils
managed to quickly understand how to use the strategies and were then ready to
learn more, but others needed more training. One teacher recalled that the pupils in
her class were supposed to write a spool paper based on a power note. Some of them
had not yet really understood the use of power notes and therefore had trouble with
the task and were making little or no progress. During this teaching process, the
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 499

teachers let some of the pupils write a two-column log instead of a power note and
spool paper.
As we can see, both the slower and the quicker pupils challenged the teachers
when they were using strategies. It also appears that the teachers had to make allow-
ances for differences between boys and girls and that they especially had to encourage
boys to use strategies to learn and get them over their reluctance to spend extra time
on a strategy. Flavell (1987) says that no learning strategy will function the same way
from one pupil to the next, which tells us that teachers have to adapt the way they
present strategies, the help they provide in learning how to use them and the motiva-
tional support they have to give some of the pupils.

4.3. Various tasks and strategies

The pupils used mind maps, for example, when brainstorming before writing a text.
They wrote down ideas as they popped up in their heads without thinking of the order
in which they should be presented. A structured mind map helped them to organise the
themes into a logical order in the text. Then, they either wrote numbers in the bubbles
or they painted them in various colours to visualise what theme the various keywords
belonged to. The pupils also used this structured mind map to obtain an overview of
the material they were going to learn, for instance, in social studies. They used it to
find out what they knew beforehand about a topic they were going to work on, to
summarise what they had learned when the work on a topic was finished, to repeat
what they had learned and to prepare for writing a text or making an oral presentation.
They could also start by writing a power note or writing such a note with the mind
map or the structured mind map as their starting point.
When making tests, the teachers organised a situation in which the pupils asked
each other questions. This was introduced by a teacher late in the autumn semester of
2006 and the practice was shared with other teachers both in a class team meeting and
during a meeting in which all the teachers in Team 3 were gathered. Before they
started on this, the pupils were given the task of making questions to ask each other in
groups established by the teachers. The teacher’s role was, first of all, to observe the
dialogue between the pupils and to ask follow-up questions if he or she thought more
questions were needed to ascertain what the pupils had actually learned. In this way,
the setting laid the foundation for learning, as it was a situation in which the pupils
could show what they had learned. During these dialogues, they asked each other
questions, which also required some background knowledge, they presented informa-
tion to each other and discussed with and challenged each other. In this way, this
social setting functioned as a learning context (Davis, 2003; Hogan, 1999; Vygotsky,
1978, 2000).
The pupils in the English subject were asked to read, retell and translate the text
for each other. Furthermore, they were allowed to use cards the teacher had made to
help them learn irregular verbs. They were given a bunch of cards containing the vari-
ous verbs they needed to conjugate and were allowed to take these cards home with
them. Many of the pupils decided to learn the verbs as part of their homework. In the
math subject, the pupils were taught to use content frames to obtain a structured over-
view of geometrical figures. In the first column, they drew the figure, in the next, they
wrote a description of it and in the third column, they wrote down formulas for acres
and volume. They wrote this content frame in their formula book, which they were
also allowed to have with them during tests. In the Norwegian subject, one of the
500 M.B. Postholm

teachers arranged for role play and discussions for which the pupils had to prepare
speech lines and arguments based on the syllabus. Furthermore, the pupils often sat
together in work sessions that they governed themselves, retelling what they had read
and asking each other questions. This shows that the pupils found it useful to talk
about the material together with other pupils and the teachers stated during several
meetings that they experienced these dialogues as useful for the pupils’ learning.
According to Vygotsky (1978, 2000) such dialogues can help the pupils internalise the
content they are to learn and make it their own knowledge or verbal thought. This is
also supported by related research (Davis, 2003; Hogan, 1999).
In the Norwegian subject, they were presented with an outline of a written analysis
of a novel. They were taught what an introduction, the body and the conclusion of the
text should contain. Thus, they were given a model or a structured plan for how to
write a literary analysis of a novel. In this way, the pupils were given a strategy and a
standard to help them in the writing process, making their learning more self-regulated
(Pintrich, 2000; Siegler & Jenkins, 1989; Zimmerman, 2000). The teachers stated
during a subject team meeting that they experienced that this model really helped the
pupils to regulate their learning work. They had managed to provide activities that
foster self-regulation (Borkowski, 1992).
During observations at the end of the spring semester of 2007, I saw that the pupils
also found ways to learn the content and prepare for presentations by using strategies
without being told to do so by the teachers. One of the pupils read through the manu-
script a couple of times, but the most effective tool he used for remembering the
content was his mobile phone; he recorded his presentation and listened to it over and
over again. Another pupil used a video camera to review her recorded presentation in
English. In this way, she could learn more about the content and improve the way it
was presented. The pupil said that she made several recordings before she was
satisfied.

4.4. Learning
The teachers introduced learning strategies to assist the pupils in their learning. Both
in the weekly plans and for specific teaching lessons, they wrote down concrete
goals and targets they were trying to reach during the learning work. When starting
up a lesson, the teachers usually wrote down the targets on the blackboard, making
them concrete for the pupils. The teachers’ intention was to ask the pupils at the end
of lessons what they had learned in connection with the targets and goals. Every
teaching lesson has a start-up section and, during discussions, the teachers agreed
that every lesson should close with reflection on learning. But, all the same, they
sometimes ran out of time and had to end a lesson without the pupils reflecting on
their learning. When they did have time to let the pupils think about their learning,
they did this in a number of ways. Sometimes they discussed it with the whole class,
but many of the teachers experienced that only a few of the pupils were active partic-
ipants. At other times, they let the pupils talk to each other in pairs before they
moved on to a plenary discussion. This preparation in pairs ensured that more pupils
were active. Another way of activating the pupils was to let them write brief logs
reflecting on their own learning. This writing activity also made the pupils more
active if the teacher opened for a plenary discussion in the class afterwards. The
teachers reflected on this during class team meetings, during subject team meetings
and in meetings gathering all the teachers throughout the whole project. This
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 501

teaching activity was planned to help the pupils become more aware of their own
learning and thus able to develop their metacognitive strategies (Boekaerts et al.,
2000; Flavell, 1976; Winne, 2001; Zimmerman, 2001, 2006) and their reflections on
actions (Weinert, 1987).
The teachers stated throughout the second year of the R&D project that the pupils
asked whether they could use various strategies when working on different tasks
without the teachers telling them to use these strategies. The teachers found that the
pupils had learned the strategies and also developed a metacognitive knowledge about
the tasks they were going to work on and which strategies were suitable for the task
at hand. Learning to use strategies is part of the pupils’ metacognitive processes and
research shows that these processes can sustain the pupils’ learning (Davidson &
Sternberg, 1998; Dominowski, 1998; Hacker, 1998b; Pintrich, 2000; Schraw et al.,
2006; Zimmerman, 2000). The following example shows how the use of learning
strategies can impact the result of a test and thus the pupils’ learning.
Two teachers were cooperating by combining the subjects Norwegian and geogra-
phy in the same teaching sequence. In November 2007, the pupils were to repeat two
chapters in their geography book. For this work, they were told by the teachers to first
write a power note. With this note as their point of departure, they were going to
write a spool paper in one of the two official Norwegian languages (‘nynorsk’).
Before they started working, the teachers reviewed the two strategies together with
the pupils one more time. The writing work was connected to the Norwegian subject
and the content of the text to geography. At the end of this work, they were tested on
their knowledge in geography. When making the power note, one of the pupils asked
the teachers for an explanation of the content he was working on. The teachers had
the impression that the pupils worked more actively with the content and tried to
understand it when using strategies to structure the text. This was commented on
afterwards during the observation and reflection meetings in the subject team. The
teachers found that the average test results at the end of the work were higher than the
earlier results in the class.
The teachers stated that they found that the pupils had managed to use strategies
and that this had positively affected their learning of content knowledge. They were
convinced that the use of strategies and their facilitation of the use of them had helped
the pupils to improve their test results. But the improved results could also be
explained in other ways. It could be that the pupils were exceptionally motivated for
the theme they had been working on and therefore had learned more than usual about
this special topic. Or, perhaps, the teachers’ enthusiasm in planning their teaching and
facilitating the use of strategies had an influence on the pupils’ motivation for learn-
ing. On the other hand, the pupils were required to process the material they were
going to learn by using strategies and the teachers believed that the pupils’ learning
could be connected to strategy use.
In a class team meeting and in a session gathering all the teachers in the school at
the end of the autumn semester of 2007, the teachers claimed that on all achievement
levels, the pupils showed better results on this test than usual, including the slower
pupils. They added that they adapted the text, the test and the strategies used for this
pupil group. These pupils just wrote two-column logs, while the other pupils also used
power notes and spool papers. As we can see, all the pupils did better, but the premise
for this in this setting and for these pupils was that the teachers adapted their teaching
both with regard to the text and test given and with regard to the strategies used during
the processing of the content to be learned.
502 M.B. Postholm

5. Concluding comments
One of the aims of the work on learning in the Norwegian school (Læreplanverket for
Kunnskapsløftet, 2006) is that the pupils develop their competence in regulating their
own learning. Self-regulated learning includes both the use of learning strategies and
a metacognitive approach (Pintrich, 2000, 2004; Zimmerman, 2000). As we have
seen, the pupils have been introduced to strategies and have practised using them in
concrete tasks. Furthermore, the teachers have tried to enhance this in their teaching,
first by presenting targets and goals to the pupils at the start of the lesson and then by
reflecting on these goals and goal achievement at the end of each lesson. In this way,
the teachers have managed to create situations that can help pupils develop compe-
tence in regulating their own learning.
Some pupils have begun to use strategies when working on tasks without the
teachers telling them to. This shows that these pupils are already prepared to
decide which strategy to use when working on a task, indicating that they have
developed metacognitive knowledge on strategies and tasks (Flavell, 1979, 1987).
The teachers have created a social context that can enable the pupils to develop
their metacognitive strategies (Borkowski, 1992; Flavell, 1979, 1987; Winne,
2001; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2007). Using Vygotsky’s concept (1978, 2000), we
can say that the pupils have every opportunity to internalise the reflection dialogue
on learning, transforming it into verbal thought or inner dialogue. Thus, these
social dialogues on learning can help the pupils to be more self-aware of their own
learning.
The study shows that the introduction of strategies, the help given to the pupils
when using them and the motivational support teachers give some pupils have to be
adapted to each and every pupil. Such a practice is dependent on good cooperation
between the teachers. They have to discuss whether the same strategy should be intro-
duced intensively in every subject at the same time or whether it should be used in
those subjects in which it could be most suitable. The aim is that the pupils should not
be overexposed to the same strategy. As described previously, the teachers in this
R&D project collaborate by observing and reflecting on each other’s teaching lessons.
The focus, both in the lessons themselves and in the following reflections, is on
various work methods and the use of learning strategies. The teachers find it very
useful to have the same focus in their teaching and to have the opportunity to talk
things over afterwards. During these processes, they give each other tips and insights
they can adapt to their own teaching and they think that the reflections on the teaching
practices of others is useful because it leads them to think more about their own
teaching.
The teachers in the study have experienced that both the quicker and the slower
pupils challenge them with regard to the use of strategies. The teachers have to
introduce the strategies to the weak achievers who work at a slower pace and they also
have to be guided in choosing to use other strategies. On the other hand, some of the
quicker pupils have to be motivated to use strategies in their learning work because
they find strategy use to be time-consuming and boring. Some of the slower pupils ask
whether they can use strategies, showing that they have had positive experiences of
using them. The test also shows that the results are above the earlier average achieve-
ments, indicating that the use of strategies has enabled the pupils to learn more.
Research shows that young children at the age of six can perform metacognitive
processes if they know about strategies (Hacker, 1998a) and that metacognitive
 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 503

processes can support the pupils in their learning (Davidson & Sternberg, 1998;
Dominowski, 1998; Hacker, 1998b; Pintrich, 2000; Zimmerman, 2000). Flavell
(1987) states that younger children may encounter some difficulties in understanding
the consequences of experienced metacognitive processes. This study shows that
although self-regulated learning is one of the aims of the teaching practice, this does
not mean that the pupils are left on their own to totally direct their own learning. Even
though the pupils are from 13 to 16 years of age, they all need help from their teachers,
both to learn and control their own learning processes.
This study was conducted in one setting involving 12 teachers and 160 pupils in
the eight, ninth and tenth grades. Even though this study is limited to one team in one
school, it can have importance for other teachers and researchers working on the same
topic. I have presented a thick description (Geertz, 1973) of the ongoing processes and
furthermore outlined the teachers’ experiences of their own teaching so that other
teachers can use the article as a thinking tool (Gudmundsdottir, 1997, 2001) to
improve their own practice. This does not mean that the described processes and the
presented thoughts should be copied or are to be transformed into other teaching
settings, but the intention is that teachers shall perceive the described processes as
parallel experiences and adapt them to their own similar settings in a naturalistic
generalisation process (Stake & Trumbull, 1982).
This article provides information on how the studied teachers experienced the use
of strategies in the pupils’ learning. Hopefully, this article will contribute to further
research on how teachers in specific teaching settings experience the use of learning
strategies. More research will give additional knowledge about strategy use in various
contexts. The study has focused on the teachers’ experiences. Future research could
also take the pupils’ perspective and develop contextual knowledge about their
experiences with regard to self-regulation, including strategy use and metacognition.

Notes
1. The study this article is based on is part of a lager research project funded by the Norwe-
gian Research Council. The title of the research project is ‘“The Lade Project”: A learning
organization for the pupils’ learning’ and was started on 1 August 2006. The project, which
is chaired by May Britt Postholm, got completed in the summer of 2009. Seven researchers
are connected to this research and development (R&D) work project that includes the
whole school. The teachers and pupils in the eighth, ninth and tenth grades, Team 3, are in
focus in this article, because Ms. Postholm, in her position as researcher, led the project
connected to this team.
2. An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the
child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the indi-
vidual level; first, between people (intermental), and then inside the child (intramental)
(Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57).
3. Spool papers are good help when writing a text. In the introduction, various statements,
arguments and utterances are presented. These aspects are discussed in the main part of the
text, one paragraph for each statement and for each argument or utterance. In the conclu-
sion, the statements and the arguments or utterances that were presented in the introduction
are summarised. The other strategies are exemplified later in the text under the heading
‘Various tasks and strategies’.

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