UNIVERSITY TEACHERS' PERCEPTION OF THE APPLICATION CAPABILITY OF PRACTICES LEARNED IN A SELF-REGULATED LEARNING TRAINING PROGRAM

Self- regulated learning has appeared as an important ability to promote in students. Several arguments support this idea. For example, it is one of the variables that best explains academic results and adjustment in higher education. This evidence has lead to an important research area, all around the world, related to the enhancement of self- regulated learning in students of all academic levels. In higher education there have been great efforts to understand what characterizes self- regulated learners in order to train all students to achieve this aim. Nevertheless, the importance of the teachers in this process has been neglected, and there is a lack in research that looks for understanding classroom teachers' practices, which help to develop this ability. Teachers can act as a role model of self- regulated learning for students. The way they plan their lessons, analyze each class learning outcomes, and its accomplishment, use teaching strategies, beyond contents, and use assessment for learning, giving feedback about student's performance, has great effect in their learning experience. In fact, all of these practices can help students to prepare themselves for learning activities, monitor their performance and self- asses their results. In this context, a teacher's training program for the enhancement of self- regulated learning in the university was designed, applied and evaluated, in a teachers', and a students' level. This programs focus on planning, teaching and learning assessment practices which can be applied by teachers in their classrooms. 20 teachers, of all knowledge areas, participated, in a program that lasted 21 hours, distributed in 4 sessions. This oral presentation shows the results of the follow up phase, done with the first group of trained teachers (N=5). The design was qualitative and phenomenographic. The aim was to understand the perceptions of the participant teachers related to the application of the trained practices in the classroom. To achieve this aim, individual focal interviews where applied, 8 weeks after the end of program, to the all the teachers which participated in the intervention. All the information was literally transcribed, and then analyzed using deductive content analysis. The results showed that the teachers found that the training program was useful and applicable to their reality. Also, they describe how they used the planning, teaching, and learning assessment practices which they learned in the intervention.