The intersection between depth and the regulation of strategy use

Abstract

The focus of most educational research is to address how learners move towards more effective problem-solving or how learning during a task can be more facilitative to help those learners effectively solve future problems. The multitude of processes that individuals engage in during problem-solving or learning has been at the heart of empirical and theoretical inquiry designed to uncover how learners’ processing can best be facilitated to maximize educational and problem-solving outcomes. Lines of inquiry that are bound by type of process (e.g., self-regulatory processing versus metacognitive processing) or bound by a certain theoretical frame or model (e.g., Approaches to Learning versus Self-regulation) have led to mixed findings with regard to how different types of processing influence learning outcomes both across (e.g., Dinsmore & Alexander, 2012) and within certain theoretical frameworks or models (e.g., Asikainen & Gijbels, 2017). Among others, one possible explanation for these mixed findings may be that types of processing and frameworks or models of processing are necessarily incomplete or have been misspecified (Dinsmore & Alexander, 2012). Misspecification could have its roots in the theoretical and geographical heritages, which have contributed to artificial divisions between overlapping areas of research with established models such as self-regulation and cognitive processing (e.g., model of domain learning and approaches to learning). Attempts to integrate these different types of processing – cognitive and metacognitive – have become more numerous with many recent attempts at reconciling epistemic and metacognitive or self-regulatory processes (e.g., Hofer & Sinatra, 2010; Mason, Boldrin, & Ariasi, 2010; Muis, 2007; Zusho, 2017). However, less has been done to address the relations between metacognitive or self-regulatory processes and cognitive processing, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Berthold, Nu€ckles, & Renkl, 2007; Garner, 1988). Thus, the purpose of this special issue is to address the interplay between metacognitive or self-regulatory processing with cognitive processing.