Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Reform in education must enable learners to be critical, imaginative, and independent, rather than being obedient, co-operative, and dependent. Self-regulated learning (SRL) is an alternative to spoon-feeding and herding in schools. In the past few decades, several attempts to change education, particularly those to individualize instruction and to develop skills of independent enquiry, have not been entirely successful because they did not include any mechanism for altering the ecological balance between traditional teaching and passive pupils in regular classrooms. Research affirms that the digital construct cannot be separated from SRL seeing that digital learning is increasingly replacing traditional textbook teaching methods. To be self-regulated, pupils are required to be metacognitively, motivationally, and creatively active participants in their own learning processes so that they are in a position to initiate and direct their efforts to acquire knowledge and skills instead of being entirely dependent on their teachers. Through self-regulation, pupils are expected to learn accountability by becoming totally involved in their own learning. Several theories are therefore analyzed in this paper. These theories highlight the significance of SRL to transform and redefine the mainstream of education. This theoretical perspective of reforming education through SRL injects a new approach to alter the trajectory of traditional schooling. As alluded in this paper, the spotlight must be on learners learning using SRL strategies rather than on their teachers teaching them using traditional teaching methods. Only then can learning and teaching be redefined to face the challenges of providing quality differentiated education to all learners.