Success for students with learning disabilities: What does self-regulation have to do with it? (original) (raw)

2015, In T. Cleary (Ed.), Self-regulated learning interventions with at-risk youth: Enhancing adaptability, performance, and well- being. Washington, DC: APA Press.

Laura is an 8 th grade student with a learning disability (LD). Her assignment today is to read a section from her Science textbook and then answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Laura has always struggled with reading so she feels anxious as she faces this task. To make matters worse, most of her past experience is with reading stories, so she's unfamiliar with this kind of "learning through reading" activity. For this kind of assignment, her approach has been to look at the end-of-chapter questions, find bold words in the text related to the topic, and copy definitions verbatim. When she turns in her assignments, she receives 100% every time. But she realizes she must be doing something wrong, because she fails almost every quiz. And, deep down, she knows she doesn't understand the material. So, as she sits staring at her book, she feels lost and demoralized. She sighs, turns to the back of the chapter, and finds what looks like the first key word.