Shyam Barr

Blog

 

PREFACE

This blog discusses topics that exist between the fields cognitive psychology and leadership, teaching and learning. Although I make connections between research and personal experience (my attempt at bridging the age-old ‘theory-practice’ gap), I write for a general audience. It is as Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi stated in the preface of his book FLOW:

“To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylised constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic” (p. xi)

To avoid carelessness, I will endeavour to include references to journal articles, books and alike (as commonly expected in academic writing), but not at the expense of accessibility and ease of reading. This will be a delicate balance and one I will endeavour to achieve.

To end, I chose the word ‘discusses’ in the first sentence of this preface, to highlight that although the blog articles themselves are very much a dialogue between myself and what I read, I encourage you to share your comments and questions, so that we may start a more authentic discussion. 

 
 

The Intriguing Psychology Behind Decision Making in Self Regulated Learning

I’ve recently become very interested in the role of decision-making in the self-regulated learning process, so much so that I recently made a short YouTube video exploring the concept of decision fatigue.

From my perspective, self-regulated learning is a series of micro-decisions throughout a learning process. For example:

  • What is my goal?

  • What strategies will I select?

  • How will I monitor my learning?

  • What is the outcome of my efforts?

  • What should I do now?

All the above questions are a decision-making moment, whereby a learner has to choose a path forward. For example, when faced with the question “what is my goal”, a learner needs to analyse the task at hand, process the information available, and then CHOOSE what they wish to achieve and what they will focus on. 

There are two broad categories of decision making, easily distinguished by the problems they solve - 

(1) well-defined problems and

(2) ill-defined problems. 

Decision-making that relates to well-defined problems involves knowing all the available outcomes and the likelihood of each happening. It is a case of the known unknowns.

Decision making that relates to ill-defined problems involves a level of uncertainty, in that “the exhaustive set of all possible future outcomes is not known for certain, nor are their probabilities, and surprises may happen” (Gigerenzer, 2020, p. 580). It is a case of the unknown unknowns.

So… are the problems associated with self-regulated learning well-defined or ill-defined?

It is a combination of both and really depends on context (e.g., the complexity of the task, environmental factors).

A self-regulated learner might be able to easily decide a way forward in a well-defined situation. However, in an ill-defined situation, they may need to rely on psychological tools such as heuristics, experience and intuition to self-regulate.   

Interested to know what the most common heuristics are?

Keep an eye for Part II of this blog!

References:

Gigerenzer, G (2020), Intelligence and Decision-Making. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed), The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (pp. 580-601). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108770422.025


Shyam Barr