Self-Assessment and Self-Reflection to Measure and Improve Self-Regulated Learning in the Workplace

Abstract

People's self-monitoring of their learning has extensive impact on generating opportunities for professional development. Self-monitoring before, during, and after completing work-related tasks affects decision-making, learning behavior, strategy use, and learning motivation. When self-assessing, a person compares performance against some standard. When self-reflecting, a person makes in-depth judgments about the learning process, motivation, beliefs, plans, and outcomes. Engagement in self-monitoring is a prerequisite for professional development. However, in most work environments, there is only limited facilitation of self-monitoring activities. Opportunities for self-assessment and self-reflection may be scarce, because it is complex to define individualized competency standards that match the workplace reality. This chapter describes reasons why it is often challenging for workplace learners to self-monitor their professional development. Then, recommendations to implement and improve self-monitoring activities are described. Development of competencies and learning goals that clarify the needed knowledge, skills, and attitudes can improve self-assessment accuracy. Further, to self-monitor professional development, people should be trained to focus on predictive cues that give indications about actual progress. Because persons remain largely unaware of their biased self-monitoring, they need continued opportunities and repeated feedback. Moreover, to reflect on affective and motivational aspects of workplace-based learning, employees could use learning journals and questionnaires as support tools to evaluate practice and identify areas for development and feedback seeking. Importantly, to stay motivated to self-monitor learning, people need to be informed about the usefulness of metacognitive activities and obtain autonomy to design individual learning trajectories.