Self-Monitoring

Element · All elements
Evidence · 19 claims (6 for, 13 mixed) · 17 studies (7 causal, 6 quant-synthesis, 2 associational, 1 review, 1 theoretical), q2–q4 · 6 of 17 report an effect size · 15 claims rest on one study

Description

Self-monitoring is the element in which learners track their own attention, behavior, progress, or accuracy during learning.

Design Implications

Affordances

• Self-Monitoring
• Self-Regulation

Claims

• Self Monitoring Improves On Task Behavior [+S]
• Self Assessment Accuracy Is Low Without Training [+M]
• Prior Knowledge Needed For Accurate Self Assessment [~M]
• Metacognitive strategy instruction, which includes comprehension monitoring, improves academic performance by a medium amount, and in one non-randomised study comprehension-monitoring training raised low achievers' reading scores [+M]
• Scaffolded drawing showed no significant advantage over drawing from scratch for absolute monitoring accuracy [~W]
• Self-scoring improves regulation accuracy for the whole sample, but not significantly for low- and high-performing students on division tasks [~W]
• Self-scoring improves primary students' monitoring accuracy on math problem-solving tasks to near-accurate levels [+W]
• Better calibration (lower Absolute Accuracy Index) is associated with higher Word Reading and Composite achievement scores [~W]
• Higher-achieving students tend to be more accurate but more underconfident in calibration than lower-achieving students [~W]
• Incentives significantly improved calibration accuracy only among lower-achieving students in a college-course quasi-experiment [~W]
• Little or no relation between absolute and relative accuracy in metacomprehension research [~W]
• Before self-scoring, the unskilled-and-unaware effect in regulation accuracy appears on multiplication but not on division tasks [~W]
• WMPT accuracy, confidence, Bias Index and Absolute Accuracy Index all change significantly with task difficulty [~W]
• Interventions to improve monitoring accuracy in problem-solving tasks have a small positive overall effect (g = 0.25) [+W]
• Solving an isomorphic practice problem after studying a worked example improves prospective monitoring accuracy, with mixed effects on regulation accuracy [~W]
• Secondary students tend to overestimate their text comprehension, though monitoring is relatively accurate in this sample [~W]
• Task performance does not affect primary school students' monitoring accuracy awareness [~W]
• Task performance does not affect primary school students' regulation accuracy awareness [~W]
• Monitoring activities and metacomprehension accuracy serially mediated the effect of in-between versus after-study explaining on conceptual learning (Experiment 1) [+W]

The evidence by question

• Does having learners record their own on-task behaviour at set intervals improve that behaviour, and for whom? Self Monitoring Improves On Task Behavior [+S]
• Does teaching learners to check their own work during a task improve their performance on it? Metacognitive strategy instruction, which includes comprehension monitoring, improves academic performance by a medium amount, and in one non-randomised study comprehension-monitoring training raised low achievers' reading scores [+M]
• Can learners' own monitoring be trusted, and can it be trained? Self Assessment Accuracy Is Low Without Training [~S]

Related Elements

• Progress Tracking
• Self-Assessment

Key Sources

• Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64-70. doi:10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	element
id	self-monitoring
title	Self-Monitoring
description	Self-monitoring is the element in which learners track their own attention, behavior, progress, or accuracy during learning.
status	review
canonical	True
generated	by codex/unspecified on 2026-04-08
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.