Self-instruction refers to a variety of self-regulation strategies that students can use to manage themselves as learners and direct their own behavior, including their attention (Graham, Harris, & Reid, 1992). Learning is essentially broken down into elements that contribute to success:
- setting goals
- keeping on task
- checking your work as you go
- remembering to use a specific strategy
- monitoring your own progress
- being alert to confusion or distraction and taking corrective action
- checking your answer to make sure it makes sense and that the math calculations were correctly done.
When students discuss the nature of learning in this way, they develop both a detailed picture of themselves as learners (known as metacognitive awareness) and the self-regulation skills that good learners use to manage and take charge of the learning process. Some examples of self-instruction statements are shown on the next page.
To teach students to “talk to themselves” while learning new information, solving a math problem, or completing a task, teachers first model self-instruction aloud. They take a task and think aloud while working through it, crafting a monologue that overtly includes the mental behaviors associated with effective learning: goal-setting, self-monitoring, self-questioning, and self-checking. Montague (2004) suggests that both correct and incorrect problem-solving behaviors be modeled.
Modeling of correct behaviors helps students understand how good problem solvers use the processes and strategies appropriately. Modeling of incorrect behaviors allows students to learn how to use self-regulation strategies to monitor their performance and locate and correct errors. Self-regulation strategies are learned and practiced in the actual context of problem solving. When students learn the modeling routine, they then can exchange places with the teacher and become models for their peers. (p. 5)
The self-statements that students use to talk themselves through the problem-solving process are actually prompting students to use a range of strategies and to recognize that certain strategies need to be deployed at certain times (e.g., self-evaluation when you’re done, to check your work). Because learning is a very personal experience, it’s important that teachers and students work together to generate self-statements that are not only appropriate to the math tasks at hand but also to individual students. Instruction also needs to include frequent opportunities to practice their use, with feedback (Graham et al., 1992) until students have internalized the process.