A Brief History of Self-Regulated Learning Theory

Miles A. Tinker - Reading Hall of Fame

1939

Tinker examines reading comprehension and observes readers self-adjusting their reading speed based on content difficulty in the Journal of Educational Psychology,

Skinner's Behaviorism

1950

B.F. Skinner is credited with creating adaptive learning method by constructing a teaching machine that provided students opportunities for practice, feedback, and positive reinforcement.
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Bandura and Kupers study patterns of self-enforcement

1964

Bandura becomes known for his social learning theory (SLT) which recognizes how reinforcement, observation, and modeling behaviors contributes to learning.

Bandura and Perloff

1967

Research illustrated self-reward could sustain performance better than external reward and demonstrated that once a performance standard is set, achieving less than the standard has consequences for esteem and self-critical reactions.

Bandura publishes Social Learning Theory

1977

Bandura summarizes that behaviors are learned through imitation of observations occurring in the environment accompanied by reinforcement.

Social learning theory changes to social cognitive theory

1986

Bandura describes social cognitive theory components applied in education as self-efficacy, self-regulation, observational learning and reciprocal determinism.

B. Zimmerman: Self-regulated learning theory

1986

Describes in a special issue of Contemporary Educational Psychology that self-regulated learning theory focuses on how students personally start and sustain learning practices and assume no environment ensures learning - advantaged or disadvantaged.

L. Corno: Learner's capacity to apply self-control and work through obstacles.

1986

Corno's research contributes an additional psychological construct - the ability to persevere - to the self-regulated learning foundation.