Effectiveness of a Collaborative Intervention in Self-Regulation and Self-Efficacy of Higher Education Students

Abstract

Contemporary research indicates that the effective regulation of learning is beneficial to performance, but that its use by college students has been shown to be limited. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a collaborative intervention with a female professor on self-regulatory processes and self-efficacy beliefs of her higher education students. The sample consisted of 20 students from a Pedagogy class at a public Brazilian university and applied an almost experimental design containing pre-test, intervention and post-test. The collaborative intervention took place during a school semester, with individual sessions between professor and researcher, in addition to participating in classroom. In the pre-test and post-test, all students answered the learning and study strategies inventory and the self-efficacy belief scale for academic training. Overall, the results showed an improvement in the perception of academic self-efficacy, decreased anxiety, greater attitude towards studies, use of strategies to perform tests and selection of the main ideas, which showed a positive effect through the collaborative intervention. Therefore, there is evidence regarding the need of teacher training and curriculum revisions with a view to promoting the self-regulation of student learning.