Introduction to special issue mind the gap between research and practice in the area of teachers’ support of metacognition and SRL

This special issue includes four articles and two commentaries. The collection of contributions provides variety with respect to the sample (preservice and in-service teachers), research designs (e.g., path analyses, profile analyses, training studies), and the assessment of teachers’ promotion of SRL (e.g., teachers’ self-report, student-report, and classroom observations). All highlight the complexity of teachers’ support of SRL by carefully analyzing the effectiveness of different characteristics of teachers or their instruction on teachers’ SRL practice and on students’ learning progress.

In each article, the authors investigate a specific aspect of the teachers’ competencies (Vosniadou, Darmawan, Lawson, Van Deur, Jeffries, and Wyra: beliefs consistent and inconsistent with SRL theory; Dignath: beliefs, knowledge, and self-efficacy; Michalsky: professional vision focusing on teacher vs. focusing on students) or of the teachers’ instruction (Van Loon, Bayard, Steiner, and Roebers: child-directed vs. teacher-directed instruction) and relate these to students’ learning. While one article examines pre-service teachers in their dual role as learner and as future teacher (Vosniadou et al.), the other articles investigate pre-service or in-service teachers who are already teaching in the classroom. As an advancement to previous research, these studies all include additional student data to allow for assessing effects of teachers’ SRL practice on students’ learning and achievement.