Can a self-regulated strategy intervention close the achievement gap? Exploring a classroom-based intervention in 9th grade earth science

The purpose of this paper was to examine the value of teaching self-regulated strategy use to Minority 9th grade students in earth science. Our conceptual framework drew from Zimmerman's (2000) theory of self-regulated learning and Darling-Hammond's concept of “opportunity gap” (2010). We designed an intervention for the classes of two of four 9th grade science teachers in one high school and examined the utility of the intervention for improving the performance of both Majority (White and middle class) and Minority students (non-White and/or economically disadvantaged). Our guiding questions were: Does making strategic learning explicit in the classroom promote learning and performance as measured by classroom and standardized achievement? Can SRL interventions close the achievement gap between Minority and Majority students? Findings suggest the SRL intervention had differential effects depending on 1) the teacher's fidelity to the intervention (Capella et al., 2009) and 2) the social status of the student in the school. Specifically, Minority students appeared to benefit more from the strategy intervention than their Majority peers. In the discussion we make explicit connections to Bourdieu's (Swartz, 1997) theory of cultural capital and argue self-regulated learning strategies are a type of internalized habitus that can be developed in academic settings.