FOSTERING SELF-REGULATION AND MOTIVATION USING AN ASSESSMENT AS A LEARNING APPROACH: THE FRAVAL PROJECT

Students' motivation and use of learning strategies are strongly predictive factors of success in learning. Self-regulating learning literature states that students with a self-regulated approach tend to view learning tasks in a more interesting and engaging way. Self-regulation, according to Pintrich (2000), is “an active, constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognition, motivation, and behavior, guided and constrained by their goals and the contextual features in the environment” (p. 453). Starting from these premises, schools and teachers try to design learning and assessment strategies to foster self regulated learning processes. When engaged in authentic tasks, students generally display more adaptive behaviors: they monitor their progress through self-assessment, using tools as logbooks and rubrics. Teachers and peers' feedback provide spaces for dialogue and reflection. In the 2022/23 school year, the University of Macerata proposed an online training course on assessment with an action-research structure (Magnoler, 2012), called "FRAVAL”, in the Marche region, Italy. The course involved 125 preschool, primary and secondary school teachers, enrolled on a voluntary basis, with a prevalence of primary school teachers (64.8%). The FRAVAL pathway was delivered in online mode between September 2022 and June 2023 and had a total duration of 25 hours, divided as follows: 17 hours of synchronous activity (9 hours of plenary webinar and 8 hours of group workshop) and 8 hours of asynchronous activity for teachers' individual experimentation at their schools. The alternating phases of training and discussion in plenary and those in groups during the workshops aimed to support a recursiveness between theory and practice and to foster processes of feedback and alignment between teachers and researchers. The interaction between trainers and trainees was also facilitated by an online repository, set up on the University's website, in order to provide orientation and spaces for collaboration and collection of materials, accessible to all participants. To analyze the impact of the pathway on students’ self-regulated learning, we used the following instruments: "Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire" (MSLQ) (Pintrich et al., 1991); Logbook for self-assessment phases. The MSLQ questionnaire presents five macro-areas: intrinsic value (motivation); emotional sphere; self-efficacy; use of cognitive strategies, self-regulation. The questionnaire was administered in classrooms via Google Forms, using the two versions translated and validated in Italian: primary and lower secondary school and upper secondary school (Bonanomi et al., 2018; 2020). The questionnaire was filled out at the beginning and end of the pathway by a large number of students: primary school (259), lower secondary school (182), upper secondary school (70). The preliminary analysis of the MSLQ’s results provided numerous insights, confirming greater student awareness with respect to the five macro-areas investigated. Specifically, comparing the post values of the three school grades for each macro-area, we noted significant differences in motivation and self-efficacy and similarities related to the emotional and self-regulation areas. The contribution will explore the emerging data in more detail, focusing on intrinsic motivation, use of learning strategies, self-efficacy.