An investigation into the capacity of student motivation and emotion regulation strategies to predict engagement and resilience in the middle school classroom

Although most of the initial research on self-regulated learning focused on cognitive and meta-cognitive aspects, there has been a growing interest in the emotion and motivation domains of self-regulation. This article reports on research undertaken to investigate specific motivation and emotion regulation strategies used by middle school students and the relationship between the use of such strategies and student engagement and resilience. A government district high school in Western Australia, with an established middle school, participated in this research. A total of 212 students completed a survey, read to them by the researcher, to ascertain the motivation and emotion regulation strategies they used in the classroom and their levels of resilience. The surveyed student population consisted of 100 boys and 112 girls between the ages of 11 and 15. A survey approach was used to access a range of strategy usage across the middle school population. The research targeted one type of motivation regulation - goal-oriented strategies - and two types of emotion regulation: antecedent and stress release strategies, together with avoidance strategies. Students who used goal-oriented motivation regulation strategies were more likely than others to be resilient. Contrasting results were obtained when investigating the ability of each emotion regulation strategy type to predict engagement and resilience. As expected, students who used avoidant strategies were less likely than others to develop resilience. This article discusses the implications of the research for the classroom, including the teaching of particular motivation and emotion regulation strategies to students and providing the right classroom environment for strategy development. [Author abstract, ed]