Abstract:

This study is to reveal the relationship between Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and socio-economic background of university students. The strategies of SRL are getting attention today in Japan because the learner-centered approach is officially recommended by the government to all national and private universities. However, such learner-centered approach is new for students from the families of classic Asian Confucianism culture, which young people are used to following whatever older says. As sociologist Bernsteine (1996) has figured out, specific learning style has its language style and some students from socio-linguistically different culture, usually of lower social class, faces difficulties to be acclimatized to the new school systems. In this situation, there is a concern that taking a learner-centered approach and expecting in higher education in contemporary Japan causes adoption problem for some students. Thus this study aims to calculate Japanese university students’ ability for SRL and compare the result between socio-economic differences.

To protect participants’ privacy and not to harm them, the survey does not ask the direct socio-economic status. After the discussion with research ethics committee, the survey asks about their schooling history; private school, local public school, national public school (separated because of special aid), oversea, and others, to predict participants’ socio-economic differences. The ability to SRL is measured by the scale from Fujita’s work (2012) SRL strategies scale, referring original work of Zimmerman (2010). Participants were selected from five private universities and five national universities in the metropolitan area of Japan. The valid response number was 300, and gender and age ratio was balanced compared to the population.

As a result, there is no statistically significant difference on SRL between students from private school and public school. Private high schools tend to cost much money than local public school and provide a new way of teaching in Japan while local public schools tend to maintain traditional styles of teaching without household expenses. However, in respect of SRL strategies, students from different social background have an equal possibility to gain the SRL strategies. Besides, a small number of participants answered that they could not complete high school and took high school equivalency examination. Their SRL point average was lower than other participants, though statistical t-test is not possible because of small sample size. These particular students passed the examination without schooling, which shows their SRL possibility and lower socio-economic status of the family. Thus this result indicates that students who failed to follow popular schooling custom can have SRL skill that cannot be evaluated from existing definition. Existing SRL scale and SRL expectation sometimes assume schooling history as a matter of course. However, this assumption should be reconsidered for learners from socio-economic difference, typically from outside schooling culture, based on the result of this study.

Keywords:

Self-regulated learning, higher education, diversity, cultural difference, socio-economic difference.