Preservice Teachers’ Online Self-Regulated Learning: Does Digital Readiness Matter?

Abstract

(1) Background: Teaching in today’s schools asks teachers to foster self-regulated learning and digital competences in children and young people. In order to do so, teachers first need to acquire and use these competences themselves. (2) Methods: Based on a mixed-methods approach, the study investigates self-regulated learning in online courses of N = 129 preservice teachers at a German university. (3) Results and conclusions: Perceiving their digital readiness as generally high, preservice teachers appear to not overly self-regulate their learning in the online environment. Finally, preservice teachers’ digital readiness was related only weakly to their online self-regulated learning. A discussion is offered which shows teacher education as a broader phenomenon and implies the need for professional development for teacher educators. Additionally, it is argued to link research on self-regulated learning more closely to research on online learning environments in teacher education.

Keywords

• self-regulated learning
• online learning
• preservice teachers
• mixed methods