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Self-regulation, gender, and ethnicity.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This study examined whether college students' motivational beliefs, use of cognitive and self-regulatory strategies, willingness to delay gratification, and academic achievement vary as a function of their gender and ethnicity. Participants were 364 college students. In this study, self-regulation is influenced by the students' gender and ethnicity. Male Caucasian reported a higher tendency to delay gratification and self-efficacy beliefs than female minority students. Academic delay of gratification is associated with motivation, use of cognition, and self-regulation. Overall, minority students tended to report lower delay of gratification and obtained lower final course grade than Caucasian students.

Since the 1980's students' self-regulation of learning has been a continual concern for researchers and educators (Bandura, 1986; Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1986). To achieve academic excellence, learners must learn how to self-regulate their actions and maintain academic goals in spite of difficult tasks. Skilled learners engage in self-generated thoughts, actions, and feelings while pursuing academic goals (Zimmerman, 2000). Successful learners are those who use appropriate learning strategies and who maintain high level of motivation. However, two important individual characteristics associated with learning that deserve attention from the point of view of self-regulation are students' gender and ethnicity.

To date, only a few studies examining self-regulation of learning have been conducted to examine individual differences such as gender and ethnicity among learners. Specifically, little work has been done to examine whether gender and ethnic differences exist with respect to students' motivational beliefs, use of cognitive and learning strategies, and willingness to delay gratification. For the most part, the field of self-regulation has left the consideration of individual differences such as gender and ethnicity to other fields such as developmental and personality psychology. One primary reason for this oversight is because the area of self-regulation did not have initially a cohesive theoretical approach that could effectively explain these aforementioned individual differences. In addition, this omission from the research on this field may also indicate that the area of self-regulation did not have an effective self-regulatory instructional program that could be effectively applied to students regardless of their gender and ethnicity (Boekaerts, Pintrich, & Zeidner, 2000; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002).

Theoretical Foundations

Self-regulation during skills acquisition could explain individual differences among learners. In the classroom, some students exhibit adaptive self-regulatory strategies and motivational patterns while engaging in academic tasks, such as exerting appropriate effort for success, enjoying the challenge, using appropriate learning strategies, setting specific goals, and displaying high self-efficacy levels. In contrast, other students cease trying, lose interest in the activity, are unable to set specific goals and strategies, and have low self-efficacy. Students exhibiting low skills to self-regulate their behavior rarely achieve high...

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