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Three essential components of college teaching: achievement calibration, self-efficacy, and self-regulation.

Article Excerpt
This paper introduces the concept of calibration under the umbrella of metacognition. It examines the current theoretical and empirical issues related to self-efficacy beliefs and traces the pathways through which self-efficacy is related to calibration. This paper concludes by outlining three essential components of college teaching of achievement calibration and the educational implications for teachers and learners under the framework of self-efficacy and calibration as two important indices of learning and self-regulation. The importance of this paper is its focuses on how teachers can improve student learning, its practical ideas, and strategies for successful teaching.

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A key issue for recent educational research is understanding how students become self-regulated learners (Pintrich & Zusho, 2007; Schunk & Zimmerman, 2006; Zimmerman, 2008). According to Zimmerman (2002), self-regulation of learning refers to "the self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills" (p. 65). In other words, self-regulation involves the ways by which learners actively use cognitive, motivational, and volitional resources in school (Zimmerman, 1990). Researchers posit that learners' metacognitive skills play a central role in self-regulation (Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; Pintrich et al., 1993). Flavell (1976) defines metacognition as "one's knowledge concerning one's own cognitive processes or anything related to them" (p. 232). According to Pajares (2008), "self-regulation is a metacognitive process that requires students to explore their thought process to understand and evaluate the results of their actions and to plan alternative pathways to success" (p. 118).

The metacognitive processes involved in self-regulation include a comparison between one's judgment of learning and one's actual performance. In other words, learners' calibration between confidence of knowing and actual performance is an essential feature of successful self-regulation. This in turn suggests that a key component in understanding the development of self-regulation involves understanding motivation and the factors that contribute to its establishment and maintenance (Bandura, 1986). One of the key factors related to motivation, calibration, and self-regulation is self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to "personal beliefs about one's capability to learn or perform at certain designed levels" (Zimmerman, 1998, p. 3). It is one's belief of the capability to learn or perform that links self-efficacy beliefs to calibration in learning and self-regulation.

Objectives of the Paper

The first objective of this paper is to examine the concept of calibration as an essential cognitive and metacognitive process that influences learners' academic success and task completion. The second objective of this paper deals with the relationship and interaction between calibration and self-regulation of learning. The third objective is to address the association between calibration of learning and self-efficacy beliefs in securing academic success and performance. The final objective of this paper is to provide educational implications that could prove useful to teachers as they help their students engage in achievement calibration and self-efficacy. Educational implications for the learners themselves are also evident in the discussion of achievement calibration, which serves as the basis by which they examine successful task completion. The importance of this paper rests on the assertion that, although self-efficacy and calibration are contributors to success, these constructs have not been fully integrated together in the orchestra of psychological processes that affect academic performance. This integration would enhance the understanding of learners' academic achievement and motivation for learning.

I have organized this paper into three sections. In the first section, I will introduce the concept of calibration under the umbrella of metacognition. I will place attention to the literature related to achievement calibration. In the second section, I will examine the current issues related to self-efficacy beliefs and will trace the pathways by which it is related to calibration. In the third section, I will outline three essential components of college teaching of achievement calibration and the educational implications for teachers and learners under the framework of self-efficacy and calibration as two important indices of learning and self-regulation.

Calibration and Metacognition

Metacognition is knowing about knowing (Flavell, 1979). Derived from the classical work of Flavell (1979), initially, metacognition focuses on the different types of memory and cognitive strategies that learners have at their disposal in order to acquire and process information and knowledge (Pintrich, Wolters, & Baxter, 2000). From this...

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