Journaling to Elicit Self-Regulation and Academic Performance in a Preservice Teacher Technology Education Course

摘要

The study investigated the effect writing prompts designed to elicit reflective and reflexive thinking could have on participants' self-regulated learning strategies and academic performance. The reflection prompts asked the students to think about the way they were working for the class they were enrolled in and to identify important elements from the content, while the reflexive prompts asked the students to engage with an imagined future self, attempting to draw connections between that imagined future self and the class. Seventy-nine undergraduate students, all preservice teachers, in four sections of an educational technology course participated in the study by responding to journal prompts and completing the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Academic performance was measured with course assignments and the final grade for the course. Each of the four sections was assigned, intact, to one of four sets of journaling prompts: reflexive prompts only, reflective prompts only, both prompts, and no prompts. The results of the preplanned data analysis found no significant differences. The results are presented in support of the value of reporting findings that do not meet the traditional standards significance. It is recommended that future research investigate the role training learners in both reflection, reflexivity, and journal writing could have. A longer and more frequent intervention schedule would also be a worthwhile follow-up.