Abstract: Considers the issues that P. H. Winne found troubling about student failures to self-regulate effectively from a social cognitive perspective. From this viewpoint, self-regulation (SRG) involves more than metacognitive knowledge and skill; it involves an underlying sense of self-efficacy and personal agency and the motivational and behavioral processes to put these self beliefs into effect. Views of self-regulated learning that do not include this core self-referential system have difficulty explaining human failures to self-regulate. To explain students' SRG failures and their successes in naturalistic settings, educational psychologists need to expand their views of SRG beyond metacognitive trait, ability, or stage formulations and begin treating it as a complex interactive process involving social, motivational, and behavioral components.
