Individual differences in self-regulated learning among Education Degree students: gender, teaching specialty, grades and academic performance

摘要

Introduction: Identifying differences in self-regulatory processes among current students is key to improve training in our universities. The aim of this study is to analyze the variability in the aforementioned processes according to gender, teaching specialty, grades (admission grade and grade point average, GPA) and other variables related to academic performance. Method: 456 Primary Education and Early Childhood Education students participated in the study (335 women and 119 men) by completing the Spanish version of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Ramirez, Canto, Bueno & Echezarreta, 2013). Results: Differences were found in self-regulated learning based on gender, but not on specialty or on the interaction between gender*specialty. It was also shown that female students had greater self-regulatory skills than male students in both motivational variables and learning strategies. Besides, differences were found in self-regulated learning according to admission grade, grade point average and the interaction gender*grade point average. Although, overall, the data obtained confirm that "the higher the admission grade, the better self-regulatory skills", results revealed a decline among students with better grades in several subscales except for peer learning. Finally, it was shown that female students have a higher awareness of the degree's difficulty, dedicate more hours and present a better academic performance than expected. Discussion: These differences between students should be considered in order to promote self-regulation in the classroom.