Teacher support for metacognition and self-regulated learning: a compelling story and a prototypical model

Despite strong evidence that students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) capacity and performance predict important academic and lifelong learning outcomes, SRL remains largely absent from educational standards and curricula. That absence has implications for students, surely, but it also affects what pre-service teachers learn and how in-service teachers interact with students, resulting in inconsistent at best, and non-existent at worst, instruction and support for SRL. A better understanding of how teachers support metacognition and SRL is needed to enhance teachers’ competence for these vital aspects of education and also to advocate for the inclusion of SRL in educational reform. The articles in this special issue make significant advances toward understanding teachers’ support of SRL and how to bolster it, in turn affording more and better arguments for advocacy. My goal in this article is to synthesize the ideas in these articles to tell a story of teachers’ support for metacognition and SRL, which in turn implies a prototypical model with implications for future research on teacher competence for supporting SRL and future professional development that enhances teachers’ professional vision and performance. Future scholarship can be enhanced via modern methodologies and analytic techniques, which the articles in this special issue also illustrate. The story told in this special issue is an important step toward a future where SRL takes its rightful place as a key component of educational reform.