The Effectiveness of Teaching Self-regulatory Learning Strategies on Cognitive Flexibility and Reflective Thinking in Students

The present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of teaching self-regulation learning strategies on students’ cognitive flexibility and reflective thinking.

The research method was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with a control group. The statistical population included all male students in the second year of secondary school in Zabol city during 2021-2022, 50 of whom were selected through purposive sampling method and then divided equally into two groups of 25, the experimental group and the control group that the teaching of self-regulation learning strategies was carried out on the experimental group during 10 meetings of 90 minutes. The research tools were a reflective thinking questionnaire (Kamber and Leung, 2000), cognitive flexibility questionnaire (Dennis and Vander Wal, 2010), and self-regulation learning strategies training package (Karami et al., 2013). The collected data were analyzed through SPSS software version 26 and univariate and multivariate covariance analysis.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the post-test scores of the experimental and control group. This means that teaching self-regulatory learning strategies increased the cognitive flexibility and reflective thinking of experimental group (P<0.01).                            

The teaching of self-regulation learning strategies is effective on students' cognitive flexibility and reflective thinking, and improves the cognitive flexibility and reflective thinking of students.