Training Learning Strategies to Promote Self-Regulation and Transfer: The Knowledge, Belief, Commitment, and Planning Framework

Surveys indicate that at all educational levels students often use relatively ineffective study strategies. One potential remedy is to include learning-strategy training into students’ educational experiences. A major challenge, however, is that it has proven difficult to design training protocols that support students’ self-regulation and transfer of effective learning strategies across a range of content. In this article we propose a practical theoretical framework called the knowledge, belief, commitment, and planning (KBCP) framework for guiding strategy training to promote students’ successful self-regulation of effective learning strategies. The KBCP framework rests on the assumption that four essential components must be included in training to support sustained strategy self-regulation: (a) acquiring knowledge about strategies, (b) belief that the strategy works, (c) commitment to using the strategy, and (d) planning of strategy implementation. We develop these assumptions in the context of pertinent research and suggest that each component alone is not sufficient to promote sustained learning-strategy self-regulation. Our intent in developing this learning-strategy training framework is to stimulate renewed interest and effort in investigating how to effectively train learning strategies and their self-regulation and to guide systematic research and application in this area. We close by sketching an example of a concrete training protocol based on the KBCP framework.