A Professional Development Program That Combines Direct with Indirect Promotion of Self-Regulated Learning for Secondary School Teachers

A professional development program (PDP) combining direct and indirect promotion of self-regulated learning (SRL) was conducted with secondary school teachers in two parts. In the first part, the teachers were encouraged to promote student cognitive engagement through the inclusion of more interactive and constructive compared to passive and active lesson tasks in their teaching. In the second part, the teachers were provided with information which emphasized the importance of the direct promotion of SRL knowledge and strategies. The teachers were provided with excerpts from videos of classroom instruction to analyze and reflect upon. The results were based on an analysis of the talk and action of the teachers from videoed observations of their own classrooms before the PDP (Round 1), after the first part (Round 2), and after the second part (Round 3). The PDP influenced the teachers’ indirect promotion of SRL through the inclusion of more interactive and constructive and fewer passive and active lesson tasks in their teaching. Direct SRL promotion was also influenced although to a lesser extent, through the teachers’ inclusion of more motivational, metacognitive support statements to students to encourage them to keep on trying, as well as more explicit strategy promotion and reference to the benefits of SRL strategies.