Self-regulated learning strategies and academic achievement in South Korean 6th-graders: A two-level hierarchical linear modeling analysis

The aim of the study was to explain the relationships between self-regulated learning strategy use and academic achievement of 6(th)-grade students in South Korea. An existing database (i.e., the Korean Educational Longitudinal Study; KELS) with 6(th)-grade students (n = 7,065) from 446 schools was used to run a series of 2-level hierarchical linear models (HLM). This large dataset enabled us to consider how the relationship between learners’ self-regulated learning strategy use and academic achievement may differ at individual and school levels. We found that students’ metacognition and effort regulation positively predicted their literacy and math achievement both within and across schools. The average literacy and math achievement were significantly higher in private schools than in public schools. Also, the math achievement of urban schools was significantly higher than in non-urban schools when controlling other cognitive and behavioral learning strategies. This study on 6th-grade learners’ self-regulated learning (SRL) on academic achievement explores how their SRL strategies may be different from the features of successful adult learners from the previous findings, offering new insights into the development of SRL in elementary education.