STUDENT DIFFERENCES IN SELF-REGULATED LEARNING - RELATING GRADE, SEX, AND GIFTEDNESS TO SELF-EFFICACY AND STRATEGY USE

Forty-five boys and 45 girls of the 5th, 8th, and 11th grades from a school for the academically gifted and an identical number from regular schools were asked to describe their use of 14 self-regulated learning strategies and to estimate their verbal and mathematical efficacy. The groups of students from both schools included Whites, Blacks. Hispanics, and Asians. Students came from middle-class homes. Gifted students displayed significantly higher verbal efficacy, mathematical efficacy, and strategy use than regular students. In general, 11th-grade students surpassed 8th graders, who in turn surpassed 5th graders on the three measures of self-regulated learning. Students' perceptions of both verbal and mathematical efficacy were related to their use of self-regulated strategies. Evidence of relations between students' strategic efforts to learn and perceptions of academic self-efficacy is concordant with a triadic view of self-regulated learning.