How do we develop research-informed learning strategies for students?

When we propose a strategy on this site, such as “Checking progress to help the group adjust its approach” or “Finding learning value in working with others,” a reader searching the research literature may not find that exact name. These strategies are grounded in research, and developing them involves more than translating names already used in the literature. The starting point for our work is a difficulty that arises during learning. We look for the nearest obstacle that can explain it and specify what the student needs to become able to do. We then return to the research to understand the processes involved and put them together in a deliberate course of action a student can use in class. Where the literature has an established name for that strategy, we use it. Where there is no established name, we use one that describes the process the student is learning to regulate.

A Strategy Is a Deliberate Way to Pursue a Goal

Alexander, Graham, and Harris (1998) describe strategies as procedural knowledge that is purposeful, intentional, and effortful. A learner sees a gap between their current situation and what they want to achieve, then deliberately selects a course of action they expect to help close it. For Paris, Lipson, and Wixson (1983), an action is strategic when the learner deliberately chooses it from among alternatives in a given context and makes an effort to use it to reach a specific goal. Wolters (2003) applies this principle to motivation regulation, examining what learners deliberately do to influence their motivation.

On this site, a strategy is a deliberate course of related actions or processes that a learner uses to pursue a specific goal or overcome an obstacle, adapting how they use it to the situation.

The Same Action Can Be a Skill or a Strategy

Afflerbach, Pearson, and Paris (2008) point out that researchers have used skill and strategy in different ways. They distinguish strategic action by its deliberate control, purpose, and awareness. With experience, some actions can become quicker and more automatic and be performed as established skills. As Paris and colleagues (1983) explain, an action that initially requires conscious consideration and choice can become more automatic over time.

A tool or a list of steps can help students get started. The aim is for them to bring the approach to mind when it is useful, adapt it, and use it with increasing independence.

Strategy Names Vary Across the Research

Hattie and Donoghue (2016) found hundreds of names for learning strategies. Many were new labels for existing strategies or slight variations on them. The authors caution against treating strategies as fixed, separate entities and emphasize their fit with the demands of the task.

Macaro (2006) raises a related question about size and abstraction. Some strategies are described at a broad level and others in very fine detail, with terms such as process, procedure, technique, plan, and tactic sometimes overlapping. He suggests describing strategic action in terms of its purpose, situation, and mental activity. We first identify the process, how it works, and what it helps the student do. We then look for an established term for it.

A Strategy’s Value Depends on When and How It Is Used

In a review of 134 studies, Dinsmore (2017) found that how well students use strategies and whether students know under what conditions to use them were more consistently related to performance than how often they used them. Effectiveness depended on the learner, the context, and the task. Dinsmore therefore cautions against assuming that a particular strategy or set of strategies will always improve performance. Hattie and Donoghue (2016) likewise emphasize the fit between a strategy and the task. Afflerbach and colleagues (2008) note that a learner can deliberately select a means to achieve a goal and still choose one that proves ineffective.

Our articles therefore start by asking what is getting in a student’s way in a particular situation and which strategy could help them address that obstacle.

Strategies Are Part of Self-Regulated Learning

A learner chooses a strategy in light of how they interpret the task, what they want to achieve, and what they notice while working. Butler and Schnellert (2020) explain why studying strategy use on its own could account for only part of the flexibility learners need across tasks and contexts. They describe a broader cycle of strategic action that includes task interpretation, goal setting, strategy selection, monitoring, and adjustment.

Panadero (2017) reviews several models of self-regulated learning. They differ in important ways and share a cyclical view. Processes such as analyzing the task, planning, and setting goals can precede performance. Monitoring and adjustment accompany performance, and evaluation helps learners see afterward how far they reached their goals.

These models help us understand how the processes connect. Following Butler and Cartier (2004), we look beyond the visible difficulty and examine how the learner is engaging with and regulating the work. We call the factor that emerges as the most immediate focus of intervention the immediate obstacle. If the problem gives us no reason to focus on setting a personal goal, for example, we do not add an article on goal setting simply because it appears in a model. We use the model to help explain the obstacle and work out what the student needs to learn to do.

From a General Regulation Strategy to One Defined by Goal and Context

Once we identify the obstacle and what the student needs to be able to do, we look for a relevant regulation strategy. That might lead us to planning, monitoring, motivation regulation, or resource management. To adapt that general strategy to a particular situation, we specify the goal, what the student needs to regulate, and the context in which it matters.

Cognitive strategies work directly on the task content. They help learners understand, transform, remember, compare, solve, or draw conclusions from information. Regulation strategies help learners direct goal-oriented activity. They help students set a direction for the work, choose suitable means or strategies, monitor progress or their state, compare what is happening against a standard, and adjust the work or its conditions when needed. What students regulate can be cognitive, as when they change how they process information, or it can involve motivation, emotion, behavior, resources, or the setting. Both functions can involve cognition. The distinction is whether a strategy acts directly on the task content or regulates how work toward a goal proceeds.

Metacognition plays a central role when learners monitor and evaluate what they are doing and decide whether to change course. Dignath and Veenman (2021) distinguish the cognitive level at which task strategies are used from the metacognitive level at which learners monitor, select, and control those strategies. The distinction can be harder to draw in practice. Regulation can also involve motivation, emotion, behavior, resources, and the conditions of the work, as models of self-regulated and socially shared regulation of learning illustrate (Hadwin et al., 2017, and Panadero, 2017).

Dinsmore (2017) emphasizes the quality and conditions of strategy use, while Macaro (2006) connects a strategy to the purpose, setting, and learner’s action. Wolters (2003) gives an example in motivation regulation, distinguishing strategies according to what learners want to influence. For a particular difficulty in group work, for example, we formulate the monitoring strategy as “Checking progress to help the group adjust its approach.” The student checks progress against what the task requires so they can see when the work is going off course and help the group adjust. For that reason, it is not enough to say that the student needs to monitor. We specify what to monitor, for what purpose, and in which situation.

Level	What the research provides	How we use it on the site
Theoretical framework	Models of learning, regulation, motivation, and interaction	Identify a framework that helps explain the difficulty.
Regulation process	Planning, monitoring, adaptation, or motivation regulation	Identify the process most closely related to the obstacle.
Specific operations	Comparing, checking, interpreting, choosing, adjusting, or drawing on a resource	Specify what the student needs to do.
Strategy	The strategy may already have a name, or the research may describe its components without treating them as a single strategy.	Arrange the operations into a deliberate course of action the student can use.
Naming	The literature may provide an established term.	Use a name that clearly describes the approach.

A strategy on the site can therefore be an established concept with a recognized name, a known regulation process described in terms of what the student does, or a classroom approach that brings several research-supported processes together around a specific obstacle. For the latter two, we make no claim that researchers tested the strategy as a whole under the name we use. The processes it draws on can still be supported by research.

Learners Develop and Adapt Their Repertoire

Butler and Schnellert (2020) describe strategic processing as flexible, adaptive, and cyclical. Learners may select an existing strategy, adapt it, or devise an approach to fit a new context. Dinsmore’s (2017) findings on the conditions and quality of strategy use help explain why this flexibility matters.

What Does a Student Need in Order to Use a Strategy?

Several immediate obstacles may contribute to a difficulty. We prioritize the one that would continue to block progress even if other factors improved. Some members of a group may need a better grasp of the task. They can each understand it and still work from different interpretations. When that happens, building a shared understanding of the requirements, purpose, and criteria for success becomes the more pressing goal.

Knowing a strategy’s name or steps is insufficient. Students need to know how and when to use a strategy, see what it can do for them, and feel able to use it (Dignath & Veenman, 2021). Graham and Harris (2018) illustrate this in Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). Students discuss what the strategy is for, why it helps, and when, where, and how they can use it. Support moves gradually toward independent use.

In the classroom, we introduce a strategy, explain what it helps students do, and give them opportunities to use it when it serves a purpose. As they gain experience, they can decide when to draw on it and how to adapt it. It gradually becomes part of their repertoire of strategies.

Bringing Research into Classroom Practice

Rycroft-Smith (2022) describes why publishing research alone has been insufficient to bring it into educational practice. Knowledge brokering can involve moving and transforming knowledge across communities and requires an understanding of both research and practice. Farley-Ripple and colleagues (2018) similarly argue for understanding what research produces and what practice needs. On this site we organize what research can tell us around a practical question. What does the learner need to become able to do?

McKenney and Reeves (2021) explain the importance of understanding a problem in its setting before designing a solution. In educational design research, that includes distinguishing the underlying problem from its visible symptoms. We apply this principle when we develop the articles.

Observable behavior → immediate obstacle → immediate learning goal → processes explained in the research → strategy

When a student does not participate in a group, we first ask what is keeping them from taking part before looking for a participation strategy. They may have no opening to contribute, see little value in joining in, misunderstand the task, or fear making an error. Each obstacle points to a different learning goal and may call for a different strategy.

What the Student Can Take into the Classroom

Starting from a difficulty, we identify what is getting in the way and what the student needs to learn to do. Research helps explain the relevant processes and the relationships between them. A classroom formulation makes them usable. It gives learners a way to understand why an approach might help, decide when it fits, and use it for a purpose. We identify which terms come from the literature and which formulations bring research findings together for a specific classroom situation.

References

Afflerbach, P., Pearson, P. D., & Paris, S. G. (2008). Clarifying differences between reading skills and reading strategies. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 364–373.

Alexander, P. A., Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (1998). A perspective on strategy research: Progress and prospects. Educational Psychology Review, 10(2), 129–154.

Butler, D. L., & Cartier, S. C. (2004). Promoting effective task interpretation as an important work habit: A key to successful teaching and learning. Teachers College Record, 106(9), 1729–1758.

Butler, D. L., & Schnellert, L. (2020). Negotiating meaning and engagement: Socially shared strategic processing. In D. L. Dinsmore, L. K. Fryer, & M. M. Parkinson (Eds.), Handbook of strategies and strategic processing: Conceptualization, intervention, measurement, and analysis. Routledge.

Dignath, C., & Veenman, M. V. J. (2021). The role of direct strategy instruction and indirect activation of self-regulated learning: Evidence from classroom observation studies. Educational Psychology Review, 33, 489–533.

Dinsmore, D. L. (2017). Toward a dynamic, multidimensional research framework for strategic processing. Educational Psychology Review, 29, 235–268.

Farley-Ripple, E., May, H., Karpyn, A., Tilley, K., & McDonough, K. (2018). Rethinking connections between research and practice in education: A conceptual framework. Educational Researcher, 47(4), 235–245.

Graham, S., & Harris, K. R. (2018). An examination of the design principles underlying a self-regulated strategy development study. Journal of Writing Research, 10(2), 139–187.

Hadwin, A. F., Järvelä, S., & Miller, M. (2017). Self-regulation, co-regulation and shared regulation in collaborative learning environments. In D. H. Schunk & J. A. Greene (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation of learning and performance (2nd ed., pp. 83–106). Routledge.

Hattie, J. A. C., & Donoghue, G. M. (2016). Learning strategies: A synthesis and conceptual model. npj Science of Learning, 1, 16013.

Macaro, E. (2006). Strategies for language learning and for language use: Revising the theoretical framework. The Modern Language Journal, 90(3), 320–337.

McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2021). Educational design research: Portraying, conducting, and enhancing productive scholarship. Medical Education, 55(1), 82–92.

Panadero, E. (2017). A review of self-regulated learning: Six models and four directions for research. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 422.

Paris, S. G., Lipson, M. Y., & Wixson, K. K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 293–316.

Rycroft-Smith, L. (2022). Knowledge brokering to bridge the research-practice gap in education: Where are we now? Review of Education, 10, e3341.

Wolters, C. A. (2003). Regulation of motivation: Evaluating an underemphasized aspect of self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(4), 189–205.