Hungarian English language teachers’ roles in the development of self-regulation: A pilot study

Abstract

In today’s teacher-oriented and teacher-directed traditional school setting, students tend to depend on their teachers. Students expect their teachers to motivate them and to tell them what and how to learn and to what extent, which leads to the fact that students do not know how to organize and regulate their own learning. Therefore, it is important to study how teachers construct knowledge related to various aspects of the learning process, in this case self-regulation. The main aim of this article was to identify the roles teachers play in the development of self-regulation. In order to fulfill this aim, the article examined how the interviewees view the notion itself. For this purpose, four interviews were conducted with primary and secondary English language teachers in Hungary. As all these teachers come from the public education sphere, their understanding of self-regulation was compared to the Hungarian National Core Curriculum’s concept of self-regulation. The results of the study showed that teachers are fully aware of the importance of self-regulation and directly, indirectly, consciously, and even unconsciously can foster its development not just during the English lessons, but also while preparing for and reflecting on their lessons. Continuous professional development and lifelong learning from the teachers’ side turned out to be of essential importance. However, there is a considerable disagreement not only as to how teachers define the term self-regulation, but also when to start its development.