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Self- and Social Regulation in Learning Contexts: An Integrative

Perspective

SIMONE VOLETa; MARJA VAURASb; PEKKA SALONENb

a
School of Education, Murdoch University, Australia b Department of Teacher Education and Centre
for Learning Research, University of Turku, Finland

To cite this Article VOLET, SIMONE , VAURAS, MARJA and SALONEN, PEKKA(2009) 'Self- and Social Regulation in

Learning Contexts: An Integrative Perspective', Educational Psychologist, 44: 4, 215 226

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EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 44(4), 215226, 2009

C Division 15, American Psychological Association
Copyright

ISSN: 0046-1520 print / 1532-6985 online
DOI: 10.1080/00461520903213584

Self- and Social Regulation in Learning

Contexts: An Integrative Perspective
Simone Volet

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School of Education
Murdoch University, Australia

Marja Vauras and Pekka Salonen

Department of Teacher Education and Centre for Learning Research
University of Turku, Finland

This article outlines the rationale for an integrative perspective of self- and social regulation
in learning contexts. The role of regulatory mechanisms in self- and social regulation models
is examined, leading to the view that in real time collaborative learning, individuals and social
entities should be conceptualized as self-regulating and coregulated systems at the same time.
Living systems theory provides support for the claim that although all forms of regulation have
an adaptive function, the distinct, regulatory processes occurring at different systemic levels
(e.g. individual, social) are concurrent and interdependent. Challenges for future research from
an integrative perspective are discussed.

In this article we argue that current concepts and models

of regulation, both individual (self-regulation) and social
(coregulation), need added conceptual and empirical scrutiny
to allow us to better understand learning in real-life, timeframed collaborative activities among peers. Our claim is that
although the necessity to account for the inherently social nature of learning and motivation is widely accepted in the sociocultural, sociocognitive, and situative literature, it remains
unclear how self- and social regulatory mechanisms interrelate and might cocontribute to explain individual and group
engagement in collaborative activities as these unfold in real
time. We outline our rationale for an integrative perspective and more holistic analyses of the dynamic psychological
and social nature of self- and coregulation, and examine the
critical question of reductionism in the pursuit of building
models of regulation that have strong exploratory and predictive power. Our argument for an integrative perspective is
based on the view that different regulatory constructs share
a common adaptive function, yet each with a distinct applied
focus. This justifies the proposal for a concurrency principle that stresses the interdependent nature of all regulatory
mechanisms.
The article is divided into four sections. The first examines the role of regulatory mechanisms in self-regulation and
Correspondence should be addressed to Simone Volet, School of Education, Murdoch University, South Street, Murdoch 6150, Australia. E-mail:
S.Volet@murdoch.edu.au

social regulation models. Accordingly, we take a systemic,

cross-level approach to review, in turn, the role of social
regulatory mechanisms in self-regulation models and reciprocally, the place of self-regulation in social regulation models. The second section reconsiders the notion of regulation
in learning contexts, pointing out the danger of reductionism and presenting our case for an integrative perspective.
After referring to living systems theory, which treats selfand coregulatory mechanisms as interdependent, fundamental adaptive mechanisms of any self-organizing system, we
discuss the common function and distinct foci of regulatory
constructs, concluding with an examination of the critical
role of agency. The third section briefly comments on the
conceptual value of an integrative perspective in regard to
regulation of motivation and emotion in learning. We conclude by discussing some challenges for future research from
an integrative perspective.

THE ROLE OF REGULATORY MECHANISMS

IN SELF-REGULATION AND SOCIAL
REGULATION MODELS
The significance of regulation (self-, other- and coregulation) for effective cognitive performance, identified in the
developmental literature and stressed both in sociocognitive

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VOLET, VAURAS, SALONEN

psychology and sociocultural perspectives, has had a major

impact on recent research related to learning and instruction.
The seminal work of John Flavell and Ann Brown in the
1970s and 1980s (Brown, 1978; Flavell, 1976) on metacognition and self-regulation stimulated a rethinking of the
components of effective learning and how it is best promoted through instruction. This led to an explosion of intervention studies theoretically grounded in the Vygotskian
(1930/1978) notions of Zone of Proximal Development and
scaffolded guidance from other-regulation to self-regulation.
These interventions, which contributed to the development
of the individual-in-context perspective for understanding
learning in real-life situations within sociocognitive theory
(Pintrich, 2000), occurred concurrently with the emergence
of the situated and distributed cognition movements (Collins,
Brown, & Newman, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Salomon,
1993), as well as sociocultural and situative perspectives
on learning and development (Greeno, 1998; 2006; Hickey,
2003; McCaslin & Hickey, 2001; McCaslin, 2009; Nolen &
Ward, 2008; Rogoff, 2003).
Across perspectives, regulatory constructs have been used
to explain individual and social processes of adaptation, engagement, participation, learning, and development. Selfregulation focuses on the cognitive and metacognitive regulatory processes used by individuals to plan, enact, and
sustain their desired courses of action, whereas social regulation captures how individuals reciprocally regulate each
others cognitive and metacognitive processes and sometimes
engage in genuinely shared modes of cognitive and metacognitive regulation. The power of regulatory constructs lie in
their capacity to highlight two often overlooked aspects of
human adaptive behavior, dynamics (i.e., the continuous situational and developmental adjustments of an individuals
behavior to environmental changes) and relationality (i.e.,
the functional relatedness of an individuals behavior to the
behavior of others and to the characteristics of environmental objects; Fogel, 1993; Hinde & Stevenson-Hinde, 1987).
On the one hand, scholars interested in the development of
self-regulation have stressed the significance of individuals
metacognitive and scaffolded experiences in naturalistic or
instructional learning environments, occasionally using the
term coregulation to represent the transitional process in the
development of self-regulation. On the other hand, scholars interested in the importance of coregulatory mechanisms
have stressed the significance of the social systems that individuals are an integral part of, and which stretch beyond
teacherlearner interactions. This latter perspective, thus,
considers individual adaptation as the outcome of enabling
coregulatory processes.
Overall, while both perspectives recognize the other entity, self or social, their relation to the unstressed entity is not always adequately defined. According to Bailey
(2006, p. 293), cross-level analyses (in this case, analyses
that combine individual and social levels) are very important but not often undertaken since intimidating and re-

quiring intellectual courage. In our view, the challenge

may be because of the difficulty of theoretically integrating
the self-regulatory mechanisms, assumed to explain individual adaptation from the persons subjective perspective,
with the coregulatory mechanisms, assumed to explain individual adaptation from a social system perspective. As a
consequence, the concurrent and interdependent nature of
self-regulatory and coregulatory processes has been overlooked. We argue that this presents major limitations for understanding the complex regulatory processes operating in
real-time collaborative learning activities, such as inquirybased projects or problem-based learning.
To provide a basis to our argument for an integrative perspective, we take a systemic, cross-level approach to consider
the ways in which self-regulation models and social coregulation models have conceptualized the interdependency of
self- and coregulatory processes. This is done first through
reviewing the role of social regulatory mechanisms in selfregulation models and second through examining the place
of self-regulation in social models of regulation. The purpose of taking a systemic, cross-level approach is intended
to avoid dichotomizing the regulatory constructs and instead
highlighting the diverse ways in which they have been related
to each other in various bodies of literature.
The Role of Social Regulatory Mechanisms
in Self-Regulation Models
Self-regulation models can be found in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and research on learning and
instruction. The self-regulation models found in developmental psychology have been used to explain how young
children gradually develop autonomy and control of their actions (i.e., self-regulation) in interaction with others. From
a developmental perspective, the roots of self-regulation can
be found in the intentional actions of infants (Bandura, 1986;
Borkowski, 1996; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997) as they interact with significant others. This position contrasts somewhat with the Piagetian view (DeVries, 2000; Inhelder &
Piaget, 1958) of loosely age-related cognitive progressions
toward greater independence from immediate sensory stimuli
and concrete situational objects to abstract formal reasoning.
The significance of reciprocal interactions between individuals aiming at self- and social regulation provided by the
environment is common in developmental research, where,
if not coregulation then other-regulation is seen to play an
essential role in the growth of self-regulation capacities and
skills.
A significant body of research focusing on infant
parent transactions has suggested that describing person
environment relationships in infancy as more otherregulated or bound to immediate stimuli does not
adequately reflect early development (cf., e.g., Beebe &
Lachmann, 1998). This research has revealed that the social is already present in the early stage of the development

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SELF- AND SOCIAL REGULATION

of self-regulation. At around 6 to 12 months of age, infants

begin to increasingly show participation in coregulation with
both caregivers and shared external objects (Bakeman &
Adamson, 1984; Fogel & Thelen, 1987). Through such social
mediation, the infant becomes distanced from the immediacy of sensory stimuli, first through dyadic coordinations, and
then through triadic coordinations, as the infant embeds his
or her object-focused attention into social contexts (Bakeman
& Adamson, 1984). Along with the growing understanding
of others as intentional agents like themselves, infants not
only begin to accommodate to other-regulations but also participate and actively initiate cocoordinated actions related
to caregivers and to shared objects (Fogel & Thelen, 1987;
Tomasello & Haberl, 2003). In these self-regulation models,
therefore, elementary forms of other-, self-, and coregulatory
functions seem to work in concert even in such early coordinations, and as such, developmental causal primacy cannot
be assigned to any of them (Fogel & Thelen, 1987).
In contrast, the self-regulation models that emerged
from cognitive psychology in the 1970s have tendeduntil
recentlyto focus on individuals unique capacity to regulate their own endeavors. Since Flavells (1976) pioneering work, metacognition, that is, cognition about cognition
and regulation of cognition, has been recognized as a crucial concept in understanding the human mind. In general,
metacognition has referred to the awareness that individual learners have about their general cognitive strengths and
weaknesses, and of the cognitive resources they apply to meet
the demands of particular tasks, as well as their knowledge
and skills about how to regulate engagement in tasks, to adapt
to situational demands, or to optimize learning processes and
outcomes (cf., e.g., Winne & Perry, 2000).
Once applied to the field of learning and instruction, the concept of self-regulation has been transformed
into self-regulated learning (SRL; Boekaerts, Pintrich, &
Zeidner, 2000; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997, 2008; Zimmerman, 2000), with a suggestion that SRL may be a special case
of self-regulation applied to academic endeavors (Dinsmore,
Alexander, & Loughlin, 2008). SRL refers to the skill or
executive aspect of metacognition, understood as individual
dynamic awareness, monitoring and regulation of cognitive
processes during engagement in academic tasks, that is, any
cognitive activities endorsed in learning environments (e.g.,
writing, reading comprehension, problem solving; Brown,
1987; Flavell, Miller, & Miller, 1993). Self-regulated learners are viewed as capable of generating internal feedback
from their cognitive processing (Butler & Winne, 1995) as
well as being adept at modifying their learning behaviors
in response to shifting situational demands or conditions
(Zimmerman, 1989), thus possessing agency of their own
actions. An important aspect of the self-regulation models
grounded in cognitive psychology is, therefore, the adjustment of ones ongoing action to perceived (current) or anticipated (future) changes in the affordances and constraints
of the environment. This, according to Fogel (1992), may

217

involve counteracting inertia, the natural tendency to continue the existing direction and intensity of behavior. Recognizing that the environment creates affordances and constraints for individual self-regulation, however, explicitly
points to external coregulatory elements in the self-regulation
process. The significance of others in the development of selfregulation is explicit in the seminal work of both Piaget and
Vygotsky (Fox & Risconscente, 2008).
Research on SRL in the classroom has highlighted
these phenomena, with findings that young childrens efforts to self-regulate during task performance is not merely
determined by personal processes but rather influenced
by environmental and behavioral variables in a reciprocal
way (Meyer & Turner, 2002; Patrick & Middleton, 2002;
Zimmerman, 2000). Over the years, many interventions
aimed at fostering the development of self-regulation have
therefore incorporated reciprocal regulatory processes in
their instructional design (Bearison, Dorval, & LeBlanc,
2001; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pressley, 1995). Most of
this research is theoretically grounded in the Vygotskyan
(1930/1978) view of a gradual shift from other- to selfregulation of the mediational processes. Individual appropriation of the regulatory control processes is viewed as taking
place through structured interactions with a more able other
(e.g., Palincsar & Brown, 1984) or through joint problem
solving with peers (e.g., Artzt & Armour-Thomas, 1997).
Hadwin, Wozney, and Pontins (2005) recent work labeled
the gradual shift in regulatory control from teacher regulation
to learner self-regulation as a temporary process of coregulation, which was operationalized in their study as evidence
of teacher indirect and learner indirect regulation. Hadwin
et al.s approach can be treated as hybrid in nature because
it recognizes explicitly the contribution of social regulatory
processes in individuals development of self-regulation.
Overall, the cognitive models of self-regulation have
tended to privilege the self as a rational, thinking agent with
goals and strategies at the expense of reciprocal regulatory
processes in social activities. Matusov (1998) criticized this
approach, however, arguing that such models are ethnocentric because of their limited power for analyzing development in diverse socio-cultural practices where participants
solo activities are not necessarily privileged and emphasized
(p. 326). Others, like the developmental and the learning and
instruction models of self-regulation, have incorporated social regulatory elements as instrumental to the development
of self-regulation. Many of the criticisms expressed by sociocultural theorists, like Valsiner (1991, 2002), Matusov
(1998), Wenger (1998), Rogoff (2003), and Hickey (2003),
have therefore been directed at models of self-regulation in
the strict cognitive tradition, which are perceived as overemphasizing individual agency and treating individuals and collectivities as separate entities instead of mutually constituted.
In sum, and consistent with their grounding in developmental and cognitive psychology, self-regulation models have been conceptualized mainly with a focus on

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VOLET, VAURAS, SALONEN

individuals (conscious or unconscious) processes of adaptation to personal and contextual aspects. None of these models, however, have totally ignored the cocontribution of social
regulatory processes in enabling the development of selfregulation. Although the idea that self-regulation takes place
in social systems where self-regulating individuals inevitably
influence each other would not be contested, an integration
of self- and social regulatory processes as interdependent
and concurrent to understand real-life time-framed collaborative learning activities has not yet emerged within the
self-regulation literature. Furthermore, the idea that individuals may be conceived as self-regulating systems like any
other living systems, but with added metacognitive capacity, has not yet been put forward. The idea, based on living
systems theory (Miller, 1978), that individuals represent one
type of living systems among others is elaborated further as
part of our theoretical argument for an integrative perspective
of self and social regulation. We now turn to social regulation
models, which have taken as their focus social entities and
stressed coregulatory processes.
The Place of Self-Regulation in Social
Regulation Models
The identification of social regulation models is not easy
because the field is still emerging, messy, and in constant
flux. Most models tend to be underdeveloped with limited
empirical validation, which is reflected in the diverse ways
in which social regulation has been conceptualized. The picture is further complicated by various appropriations of the
term sociocultural in the literature (cf. Nolen & Ward, 2008),
a perspective commonly claimed as theoretical grounding
for social regulation. In this section, we nevertheless attempt
to present several models of social regulation, as they have
emerged from three theoretical perspectivessociocultural,
sociocognitive, and situativeremaining fully aware that researchers interpretations of these perspectives do not always converge. Following Nolen and Ward, we distinguish
them by the ways in which each of them has construed the
relationship of individual and context, namely, individuals
internalization process of social and cultural influences (sociocultural), individuals cognitions and interpretations of
contexts that afford or constrain engagement and participation (sociocognitive), or whole activity systems that allow
coconstruction and negotiation of meaning (situative). Common across most social regulation models is the focus on
social entities as the object of analysis, the key role given to
the notion of coregulation, and the limited articulation with
the concept of self-regulation. Consistent with the distinct
theoretical groundings, the conceptualization and use of the
term coregulation varies, which provided a useful focus for
our analysis of the various models of social regulation.
Within the sociocultural perspective represented by
Hickey and McCaslin (Hickey, 2003; McCaslin, 2004, 2009;
McCaslin & Hickey, 2001), coregulation refers to the overall

dynamic regulatory process by which the social environment

supports individuals internalization of social and cultural
influences. Within this perspective, coregulation is not directed at the achievement of explicit individual or collective
goals (which would provide a direct link to self-regulation)
but aimed at productive coparticipation in a social activity,
with impact on individual development in the broad sense
(e.g., identity development in McCaslin, 2009).
The place given to the individual within these sociocultural models of regulation varies, the emphasis being
on coregulated social activities that provide opportunities
and constraints for individuals to participate and develop
(which includes side references to the development of selfregulation; e.g. McCaslin & Good, 1996). Hickeys (2003)
most socially focused model of coregulation stresses the
mutual constitution (cf. Wenger, 1998) of individuals and
collectivities and pays little attention to individual psychological processes, and in particular the personal agency underlying self-regulatory processes. According to McCaslin
(2009), however, it is through engagement in activities and
emergent interactions that individuals come to internalize or
alternatively resist social and cultural influences, and thus develop as individuals. Her model gives personal dispositions
and readiness a mediating role in the process but the notion
of personal choice, a key feature of self-regulation, is also
played down. For McCaslin, opportunity supports personal
strivings or, alternatively, leads individuals to reconsider their
goals, struggle through conflict and eventually settle for an
outcome that accommodates the multiple coregulatory pressures.
Furthermore, and in contrast to Hickey (2003), the idea
that participation ultimately leaves some cognitive residue
(Salomon, 1993, p. 133) for subsequent improved individual participation is given some recognition in McCaslins (in
press) model. Consistent with the sociocultural grounding,
however, this learning is not conceptualized as metacognitive knowledge that could be accessed in abstraction for selfregulatory purposes. Instead, it represents a form of knowing
which gets embedded in the individuals personal dispositions
that may mediate subsequent opportunity. How learning environments as social systems create opportunity and coregulate
participants is no doubt a powerful explanatory perspective
at the macro level of development. But the extent to which
sociocultural models of social regulation can contribute to
explaining development and learning at the more microlevel
remains to be established. This might depend on how models, such as McCaslins (2009), will be able to address and
integrate the dynamics of real-time regulatory processes that
take place in actual social learning activities. It may be at
that level that an explicit articulation with individual selfregulatory processes becomes critical.
Other references to coregulation from a sociocultural perspective can be found in Hadwin et al.s (2005) research.
Their hybrid approach was, however, reviewed in the previous section as a self-regulation model due to the authors own

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SELF- AND SOCIAL REGULATION

framing of their work within a sociocultural perspective of

self-regulated learning (p. 413). Hadwin et al.s work represents an interesting example of overlapping perspectives, as it
considers self-regulation along a gradual process of appropriation where social regulation (coregulation) plays a key role
while it maintains the ultimate focus on the self-regulating
individual.
In contrast to sociocultural views, coregulation from a sociocognitive perspective (Beebe & Lachmann, 1998; Iiskala,
Vauras, & Lehtinen, 2004; Jarvela & Jarvenoja, in press;
Vauras, Iiskala, Kajamies, Kinnunen & Lehtinen, 2003) has
been used to understand how individuals interact with others in a joint activity. From this perspective, coregulation
refers to the dynamic processes of coconstructed knowledge,
shared problem solving or other forms of collaborative learning. The emphasis on individual learning and development
as the outcome of participation in coregulated learning processes highlights that this perspective has emerged out of the
cognitive, person-in-context perspective (Pintrich, 2000) and
repeated calls for a conceptual shift toward understanding
learning, motivation, and development within social activities and real time.
A number of empirical studies of coregulation from a sociocognitive perspective have been carried out at microlevels
(e.g., Iiskala et al., 2004; Jarvenoja & Jarvela, 2005; Salonen,
Vauras, & Efklides, 2005; Vauras et al., 2003) and mesolevels
(e.g., Nolen et al., 2009) levels of learning and development,
and with a focus on social activities that take place in real
time. These studies have shown how peers play a mediating role in the participation and learning of others, through
bidirectional, reciprocal, or mutual modes of coregulation.
These concepts are used to distinguish between strength
of reciprocity, where mutual characterizes the strongest
degree of sharing and symmetry between participants. The
term shared regulation has also emerged from the analysis
of highly able peers consensual monitoring and regulating
joint cognitive processes in demanding joint problem-solving
situations (Iiskala et al., 2004; Vauras et al., 2003). This phenomenon is considered the most profoundly social mode of
regulation, because it refers to individuals metacognitive
processes that operate as a genuine social entity, aimed at a
single direction, that is, the fully shared goal for the activity.
In this mode, regulation is not reducible to individual activity
but is explained by the activity of the social entity. This is reflective of Salomon and Globersons (1987) notion that a team
is a social system, a qualitatively different entity than a group
of individuals working side-by-side. The metacognitive nature of such productive coregulation processes (in contrast
to the pragmatic nature of other coregulatory processes, cf.
Salonen et al., 2005) brings metacognitive coregulation of
learning close to the notion of effective self-regulated learning, but at the level of the social entity (cf. thus the notion of
coordinated self-regulations) rather than the individual entity.
Consistent with the cognitive theoretical underpinning,
participants in the aforementioned studies are implicitly con-

219

ceptualized as multiple self-regulating agents who coregulate

each others engagement and learning, and at times operate as a social entity or system that is not reducible to aggregated individual metacognitions. Sociocognitive perspectives of coregulation thus acknowledge the mediating role
of individuals metacognitive experiences and subsequent
actions in time-framed coregulated activities, an aspect underdeveloped in sociocultural perspectives of coregulation
(e.g., Hickey, 2003; McCaslin, 2004, 2009). But the extent to
which aggregate measures of group members self- or otherregulated learning processes lead and contribute to effective
metacognitive coregulation of the group as a whole remains
speculative, as it has not yet been scrutinized analytically on
the basis of empirical evidence.
Finally, the concept of coregulation is also found in research from a situative perspective. This perspective, articulated by Greeno (1998, 2006) and Nolen and colleagues
(e.g., Nolen & Ward, 2008) calls for whole activity systems
as the prime units of analysis on the ground that systems
need to be understood before claims can be made about the
individuals who constitute them (Greeno, 2006). According to Nolen and Ward (2008), studying the joint activity
of individuals, materials, and anything else that is imbued
with meaning in a social and physical space using multiple
methodologies (e.g., cognitive tools, ethnographic analyses)
has the potential to provide insight into the on-going development of individuals, classroom communities and schools
as they engage in meaningful socially organized work
(p. 16). Although the term coregulation is not commonly
used in empirical work from a situative perspective (one
exception is Volet, Summers, & Thurman, 2009), the notion of social regulation is omnipresent through references
to discourse practices co-constructed by the communitys
participants (Nolen & Ward, 2008, p. 450) or ways of interacting being co-constructed by the individual and others in
the group (Greeno, 2006, p. 88).
Like the sociocultural perspective, the situative perspective appears to pay limited attention to the development of
mental representations of knowledge and instead stresses
the processes of negotiation and coconstruction of meaning that individuals cocontribute to developing in interaction
(Greeno, 1998). Similarly, the relation between coregulatory
and self-regulatory processes has not been elaborated upon
within the situative perspective.
In sum, and across sociocultural, sociocognitive, and situative perspectives, the notion of coregulation is conceptually
attractive, because it stresses the mutuality and sharing embedded in social regulation within group and collaborative
learning settings. Coregulation highlights the significance
of affordances and constraints for individual participation
that are created in social learning environments, and where
individuals sociohistorical and current processes, artifacts
and other environmental aspects cocontribute to engagement
and participation. Yet, despite recognition of the mediating
role of individuals in the overall process of coregulation

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VOLET, VAURAS, SALONEN

(sociocultural perspective), of reciprocal and mutual processes of regulation (sociocognitive perspective), and of individual regulation within the group (situative perspective),
there still appears to be limited integration of self- and social regulatory processes as interdependent and concurrent
within the social regulation literature.

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REGULATION IN LEARNING CONTEXTS

RECONSIDERED: THE CASE FOR AN
INTEGRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Our understanding of how self-regulation and coregulation
cross-fertilize each other in real-life collaborative learning
situations to create adaptive learning and development is
still in its infancy. There is, however, growing conceptual
agreement in the literature from both sociocultural and sociocognitive perspectives that both self and social forms
of regulation are needed to understand regulation in actual
learning activities. For example, sociocultural theorists, like
Wertsch (1994), Matusov (1998), and Valsiner (2001) have
argued that both solo and joint activities are inherently social.
McCaslins (2009) model of coregulation also acknowledges
the potentially mediating role of personal dispositions, in interaction with social and cultural sources of influences, on
emerging identity and adaptive learning. From a sociocognitive perspective, effective coregulation of learning is assumed
to be goal directed and aimed at participants coconstruction
of knowledge and cognitive growth for all partners. However, the role of the self and the social is given different
weight and lucidity depending on the perspective. Moving
from the macrolevel and cultural and social angle, sociocultural theorists have not yet elaborated the self in relation to the
social. One exception is Martins (2007) compelling case that
selfhood had to be conceptualized as social and intersubjective in nature but also displaying a socially engendered
reactivity that displays an always present agentic quality
(p. 87). Vice versa, moving from the individual, psychological angle, sociocognitive theorists have not yet well conceptualized the social in relation to the self. We have argued
(Vauras, Salonen, & Kinnunen, 2008) that a group is a social
system, a qualitatively different entity from individuals working side by side (Hinde & Stevenson-Hinde, 1987; Salomon
& Globerson, 1987), and therefore conceptualizations, which
avoid reducing the groups motivational and interrelational
characteristics and functioning to its individuals characteristics, are needed to understand group dynamics as a complex situational interplay across different systemic levels.
The latest developments of sociocognitive and situative perspectives, where the focus is on interpersonal systems with
flexible shifting of agency (e.g., Vauras, Salonen, Lehtinen &
Kinnunen, 2009), cognitive-interactional synthesis (Greeno,
2006; Volet et al., 2009) or continual coconstruction and negotiation of meaning (Nolen & Ward, 2008), may lead in this
direction.

An integrative model, therefore, which could accommodate the unique capacity of individuals to reflect upon, feel
about, and act on their experience as they actually participate in coregulated social activities would have significant
potential to further advance our understanding of learning
and development. We argue that by treating both individuals
and social entities as self-regulating and coregulated living
systems at the same time, one can avoid the danger of reductionism of regulatory functions to either the individual or the
social level of analysis. Conceptualizations of regulation that
ignore the interdependence of self and social levels of analysis are faced with a number of neglected aspects. These can
be addressed through avoiding reductionism of regulatory
functions and adopting a concurrency principle.

Danger of Reductionism and Need

for a Concurrency Principle
One of the main grounds obscuring current conceptualizations of regulatory constructs has been the tendency toward
reducing the complex interplay of regulations at different
systemic levels to the impact of one single systemic level.
The danger of reductionism can be in two opposite directions: reduction to the individual or reduction to the social.
Reduction to the individual, on one hand, can be seen in most
cognitive self-regulation models that have been formulated
merely in individualistic terms, with little consideration of
the vertical infiltrations from higher systemic levels (i.e.,
interpersonal interactions, relationships, social structure, sociocultural structure), a point made by Hinde and StevensonHinde (1987). Reduction to the social, on the other hand, is
exemplified in some models grounded in a sociocultural perspective. Although conceptualizing participants and their dispositions through sociocultural participation structures and
social mediation, these models underestimate the simultaneous effects arising from the interactions and regulations displayed at other systemic levels (e.g., genetic, physiological,
intrapsychological, interpersonal; cf. Hinde & StevensonHinde, 1987, p. 17).
Systemic approaches, as exemplified by living systems
(Bailey, 2006; Miller, 1978; Weiss, 1969) and dynamic systems (Lewis, 2000) that are widely applying regulation concepts, avoid the danger of reductionism through considering
the unique contribution and relative independence of each
systemic level but also the interdependence of systemic levels (Hinde & Stevenson-Hinde, 1987). The systemic view is
elaborated, for example, in infant research. Beebe and Lachmann (1998) discussed systems thinking in this research area
(Fogel, 1992; Sander, 1995; Tronick, 1989), and bring forth
the argument of self- and interactive regulation as concurrent
and reciprocal processes, which are viewed as simultaneous,
complementary, and optimally in dynamic balance. The selfregulation process and the relational process therefore simultaneously affect the success of the other, with the possibility

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SELF- AND SOCIAL REGULATION

of imbalance and lack of symmetry in participants respective

engagement in bidirectional coregulatory processes.
To date, the advantage of systemic theories and their implications have not yet been taken up in educational research.
Most empirical work on regulatory processes in educational
contexts tends to focus on level-specific (horizontal) regulations and ignores the simultaneous, cross-level (vertical)
interactions that may contribute to the developmental and
contextual-processual (dis)continuities (Hinde & Bateson,
1984; Miller & Miller, 1995). In our view, the tendency to
reduce to either the individual or the social leads to levelspecific systemic conceptualizations that are characterized
by the neglect of the following four important aspects of
actual learning settings:
1. The real time multimodal and multilevel processes (e.g.,
the situational interplay of concurrent physiological, psychological and interpersonal processes, i.e. concurrency
principle).
2. The context (e.g., situational cues triggering differential
appraisals and regulatory patterns in persons with different response tendencies).
3. The developmental history and individual psychological
organization (e.g., differential cognitive-developmental
structures, cognitive-metacognitive skills, motivational
belief-systems).
4. The developmental history of interpersonal organization
(e.g., participants differential sociocognitive response
tendencies in different dyadic or group settings).
These points, we believe, contribute to making a strong
case for the adoption of an integrative perspective on self- and
social regulation that recognizes that distinct regulatory processes occur concurrently at different systemic levels (e.g.,
individual, social) and that these levels are interdependent
and continually effecting each other.

Argument for an Integrative Perspective

In this section, we outline our argument for an integrative
and concurrent conceptualization of regulatory constructs to
explain adaptive learning in actual, time-framed collaborative learning contexts. First, we examine the interdependent
role of regulatory mechanisms in living systems more generally. We consider that this is necessary to provide broader
theoretical support for the need to integrate self- and coregulatory constructs. Second, we argue that in regard to learning
and development, both self- and coregulation processes play a
common adaptive function, each with a distinct applied focus,
which highlights their complementary explanatory capacity.
Third, we briefly discuss the relationship between self- and
coregulatory functions to understand learning and development in real-life learning contexts and tease out the critical,
dynamic role of agency.

221

Interdependent role of regulatory mechanisms

in living systems. Our theoretical case for an integrative
perspective of self- and coregulation constructs is supported
by living systems theory. Living systems are defined as selforganizing systems that have the characteristics of life and
that experience interactions and exchange with their environment to adapt and self-maintain (Bailey, 2006; Miller, 1978).
Living systems can be individual systems, but also biological
or social systems, thus representing a range of disciplines,
for example, genetics, biology, medicine, psychology, management, sociology, social policy, and political science, to
name just a few.
Although Millers (1978) living systems theory does not
explicitly use the terms self- and coregulation to describe how
living systems maintain themselves and adapt in interaction
with the environment, these terms are widely used across
disciplines dealing with living systems. Self-regulatory processes are mentioned consistently as fundamental adaptive
mechanisms of living systems, regardless of whether the system is a simple cell or organ like in biology or a large and
complex social organization like in social policy or political
science. Through interactions with their environment, selforganizing systems are described as experiencing stress and
pressures that threaten their operations. In response, spontaneous regulatory mechanisms are activated to self-adjust and
maintain functioning.
In turn, coregulatory processes are used to describe the
pullpush mechanisms that force living systems to adapt as
they interact and reciprocally influence each other. Coregulatory processes refer to the distributed, uncoordinated,
and reciprocal influences of interacting systems that are located at similar or different hierarchical levels in relation
to each other. Although references to both self-regulatory
and coregulatory mechanisms are common across disciplines
to explain adaptation of living systems, we were unable to
locate any theoretical integration of these two regulatory constructs. Across disciplines, self-regulatory and coregulatory
processes tend to be called upon separately to explain a particular regulatory phenomenon, even though the overarching
function of both forms of regulation is adaptation.
This brief examination of regulatory mechanisms in living
systems more generally, provides a broader theoretical perspective for an integrative and concurrent conceptualization
of regulatory constructs. Most important, it puts a stronger
emphasis on the regulatory component of self-regulation,
at the expense of the self, which loses some of its individual emphasis once it is treated as any living system, aiming
at self-maintenance and adaptation.
Common function and distinct foci of regulatory constructs. To further strengthen our case for an integrative
perspective of self- and coregulation processes, we argue
that in regard to learning and development, both regulatory
processes play an adaptive function but each with a distinct applied focus, which highlights their complementary

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VOLET, VAURAS, SALONEN

explanatory capacity. Our analysis of the concurrent psychological and social nature of self- and coregulation points to
the view that the essence of regulatory activity is a (individual, group, or community) systems adaptive adjustment.
Regardless of whether that system represents an individual
or a collectivity, adaptive adjustment includes corrective maneuvers, with the goal of maintaining or re-establishing the
dynamic system-environment fit. Taking as point of reference the person(s) in actual contexts of learning, the value
of theoretical constructs, such as self- and coregulation, is
based in part on their capacity to tap into the essential phenomena, relationships and transactions displayed in actual
self-governed, guided and joint learning.
Derived from this general definition, a distinction is made
between self-, other- and coregulation, based on the different
foci of the regulatory activity. In the case of self-regulation,
the actors corrective perception-action loops are based on
internal reference values or norms and tend to change the
state or direction taken by the actors own self-system (i.e.,
self-focused metacognitive awareness metacognitive control; see Fogel, 1992). In other-regulation, a participants
perceptions and corrective efforts are also based on internal reference values or norms, but focus on another participants activity (i.e., other-focused metacognitive awareness
metacognitive control). In coregulation, conceptualized from
a sociocognitive perspective, several participants, relating to
a joint task and goal of an activity, use shared reference values
and norms to maintain a joint space of activity and mutually
correct deviations at the dyadic or group level (i.e., wefocused metacognitive awareness metacognitive control).
Although coregulation from a sociocultural perspective (McCaslin, 2009) is taking a more macrolevel perspective, it also
stressed the coregulating influences of sociocultural structures, activities, and expectations on individual participation
and adaptive learning. Although all forms of regulation have
the common function of maintaining or restoring adaptive
learning, each form is directed at a distinct social learning
system (self, other, group) and therefore has its unique role
and characteristics. As argued in our section on the danger of
reductionism and need for a concurrency principle, research
that limits itself to horizontal or level-specific regulations
(i.e., individual or social level) would be neglecting the significance of multimodal and multilevel processes, the importance of context, and the criticality of individual as well as
interpersonal developmental history.

Dynamic role of agency. Finally, our integrative perspective also posits that self-, other-, and coregulatory processes need to be considered concurrently, on the ground
that these regulatory processes can take place simultaneously,
may fluctuate during an activity, or can even be part of an
activity that explicitly induces shifts in regulation based on
agency. Although we agree that self-governed solo learning is
socially mediated in part through internalized reference values and norms, its perception-action loops are purely internal

to the self-system and represent self-regulatory activity. On

the other hand, however, there is no reason why naturally
occurring episodes of dyadic and polyadic learning (teacher/parent-guided learning, joint learning, collaborative smallgroup learning) could not display different configurations of,
and fluctuations between, self-, other-, and coregulation. We
argue that, for example, participants changing relative level
of agency may relate to situationally triggered task- or nontask-focused coping tendencies. This would affect fluctuations between self-, other-, and coregulatory activities within
dyads and small-groups.

Summary of Our Case for an Integrative

Perspective
Our case for an integrative perspective is based on the proposal to combine self-regulation as a fundamental concept
to understanding human adaptation (Labouvie-Vief, 1980;
Piaget, 1977) with coregulation as a fundamental concept
to understanding social instructional environments (Hickey,
2003). We have pointed out how, from a developmental perspective, other-, self-, and coregulation seem to work in concert from very early in infancy, and that causal primacy cannot be attributed to any of them (Fogel & Thelen, 1987).
This orchestration of simultaneous regulations at different
systemic levels is characteristic of any living organism. Although current theories of regulation recognize both entities,
self and social, the other entity often remains insufficiently
addressed and analyzed either at the conceptual or empirical
level. This has lead to an overlook of the concurrent and interdependent nature of the self and the social in the regulatory
processes that take place in real-time collaborative learning
activities. We argue that an integrative model, which could
accommodate the unique capacity of individuals to reflect
upon, feel about, and act on their experiences, as they participate in learning activities, which are also socially regulated
by all the participants, would significantly advance our understanding of development and learning as it takes place in
real time.
The core idea is that in all real-time learning activities,
from solo to collaborative, the opportunities and constraints
created in social interactions have to be recognized alongside
the role of agency, and reductionism to either the individual or
the social avoided. This has led to our conclusion that more
powerful explanatory and predictive models of regulation
in real-life learning activities could be developed through a
balance and integration of self- and coregulatory processes.
Before examining the challenges for future research on
regulation in learning contexts, we briefly touch on one important aspect related to the proposed integrative perspective,
namely, regulation of motivation and emotions in learning.
Regulation of motivation and emotions is briefly discussed
here, with a view to opening our perspective to the pragmatic,

SELF- AND SOCIAL REGULATION

off-task types of regulation that are frequently observed in

interpersonal interactions during real-life learning.

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THE INTEGRATIVE PERSPECTIVE IN

REGARD TO REGULATION OF MOTIVATION
AND EMOTIONS IN LEARNING
Conceptualizing regulation in learning contexts as interactive and dynamic, and involving concurrent self and social processes naturally brings the construct and its empirical validation into the field of motivation and emotions.
Task-processing regulation carried out as a collaborative
or group learning activity can be challenging because several self-regulatory systems must cooperate to generate and
achieve shared learning objectives. The dynamic interplay
of multiple sociocultural worlds can create socioemotional
challenges that interfere with task-processing regulation.
Negative affectivity can emerge from conflicting personal
goals, significant discrepancies in understanding of the task,
dysfunctional relational control among participants, perceived unfairness due to imbalance in participation, or incompatible interpersonal differences in styles of communication and external constraints. The pragmatic process of
regulation of emotions and motivation in collaborative and
group learning activities has received increased attention in
recent years. This research has built upon earlier work on
volitional control (Corno, 1989; for a review see Pintrich,
1999) and more recent attempts to examine the significance
of the regulation of motivation and emotions within a selfregulation perspective (e.g., Boekaerts & Niemivirta, 2000;
McCann & Garcia, 1999; Wolters, 1999).
Once applied to collaborative learning activities and socially shared learning environments, conceptual and methodological challenges have emerged. By nature, the process of
regulation of emotions and motivation within a group cannot
be examined as dissociated from the actual social activity (as
in inventories of regulation process), as it forms an integral
part of the overall situated and dynamic regulation process.
Within an individualistic perspective focusing on the experiential and psychological processes, the social context can
be perceived as the source of emotions and fluctuations in
individual motivated engagement. One person and the group
are expected to cope via self-regulation, and via attempts
to regulate or even scaffold other members motivation and
behaviors. In contrast, an integrated perspective of regulation makes it possible to conceptualize the social context
from a process-oriented approach in which the social represents an (inter)active element that contributes to affording
or constraining members participation (Jarvela, Volet, &
Jarvenoja, in press). From this perspective, both self- and
social regulation play a unique, concurrent role.
Consequently, regulation of emotions, like regulation of
cognitions, can be conceptualized and investigated as a single process that also integrates self-, other- and coregula-

223

tion (Jarvenoja & Jarvela, 2005; Jarvenoja, Volet, & Jarvela,

2009). There is growing empirical evidence that in real-life,
collaborative and group learning activity, regulation of emotions and motivation takes a pragmatic, instrumental role in
trying to sustain shared regulation of task-related processing
(Jarvenoja & Jarvela, 2005; Salonen et al., 2005; Vauras et
al., 2003; Volet & Mansfield, 2006).
The extended conceptual value of an integrative perspective on the regulation of motivation and emotion in learning
contexts may lead to an overarching, integrative and multidimensional view of the regulation of learning. This would
be consistent with McCaslins (2004) general idea that regulation of affect and cognitive processes cannot be separated. Bringing together all regulatory processes, including
metacognitive regulation and regulation of motivation and
emotions, as well as self- and social regulation, would provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding
adaptive learning in real-life, socially challenging learning
environments.

CONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTIONS

FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Our case for an integrative perspective of self- and social
regulation in learning contexts suggests a number of directions for future research. First, we briefly discuss two areas
that will require research attention but have not been elaborated in our argumentation, namely, the unique challenges
created by virtual learning environments for social regulation and the significance of culture, conceptualized in multiple ways, on regulatory processes. Then we examine in turn
some of the most important challenges emerging from our
integrative proposal, in the context of research on learning
in real-life, time-framed collaborative activities, namely, the
interdependence and independence of regulations at different systemic levels, the dynamic role of (multi)agency in
collaborative learning settings, and the phenomena and conditions of shared regulation, from both the situational and
developmental aspects.
The challenges for regulatory activities generated in virtual collaborative learning environments will need special research attention. Virtual learning environments create unique
challenges for individual and social regulation. These can
be triggered through the limited social and emotional cues
available or through insufficient human scaffolding, sometimes partly delegated to peers or technology. In any case,
collaboration between participants is expected, and it is not
well understood how learners actually regulate each others
contribution in the absence of visible emotional cues and a
limited sense of social presence. Furthermore, little is known
about the extent to which metacognitive regulation is facilitated, maintained, or alternatively inhibited in such contexts.
We also need to extend our understanding of the significance of culture, conceptualized in multiple ways, on

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VOLET, VAURAS, SALONEN

regulatory processes in adaptive learning. It would be particularly useful to investigate the regulatory patterns of teachers
and students, as well as students and students, in cultural
contexts that give more or less importance to autonomy and
collaboration in particular activities. One would also expect
that metacognitive scaffolding and guiding processes might
be conceptualized differently depending on beliefs about development, and the respective role of teachers and learners.
Multicultural environments generate their own challenges
and this may lead to fruitful questions for research on adaptive learning and regulatory processes that relate to the diversity of student populations.
To deepen our understanding of processes of individual
and social regulation in real-life, time-framed collaborative
activities, one of the most urgent tasks will be to clarify
the unique contribution and relative independence of each
systemic level (individual, social) in relation to their simultaneous interdependence, and in particular, how to conceptualize top-down and bottom-up interactions and regulations
at each level. There is a need to pay attention to the fluctuation patterns between forms of regulation that can be
observed in actual real-life learning patterns, with a view
to identifying adaptive pathways that could form the basis
of design experiments. This calls for a search for research
designs, methodologies, data sources, and methods of analyses that would be best suited to examining the complex
relationships between social elements, such as relationships
and sociocultural structures, and individual elements, such as
physiological and intrapsychological processes. Illustrations
of empirical work combining different systemic levels can
be found in developmental research grounded in dynamic
systems theories (e.g., Fogel, 1992; Thelen & Smith, 2006).
For example, Fogels work on the coordination of perception
and action during the early formation of infant movement
stresses the coregulations across physiological, psychological, and social levels, even with regard to these most elementary movements. Similarly Thelen and Smiths research on
understanding learning to reach and grasp objects in infants
provides supportive evidence of the need to combine multiple
levels of the developing system in research designs and analyses. How overall conceptual coherence can be maintained,
if the underlying theoretical assumptions at each level differ,
presents particular challenges in such research.
Another important and promising area for future research
will be to scrutinize further the dynamic role of agency, in particular the dynamic and coregulatory role of multiple agents
in time-framed collaborative learning settings. Individuals
have a unique capacity to reflect on their experience as it
relates to their engagement in coregulated activities, but to
date, the actual nature of this reflection is not well understood. How perceptions of self-efficacy and collective efficacy interrelate in collaborative learning activities and lead
to specific patterns of regulation needs to be examined. These
issues are consistent with Martins (2007) call for considering more communal conceptualizations of self and agency in

self-regulation research, and educational psychology more

generally.
The phenomena and conditions of shared regulation will
also need further investigation. There is a dearth of empirical
research on how metacognitive and other forms of regulation
interface in constantly evolving socially challenging real-life
situations. Such understanding is required to investigate how
adaptive learning could be enhanced through metacognitive
instruction that simultaneously addresses regulation of motivation and emotions. Rare instances of genuine forms of
shared regulation have been observed when individuals engage, as a single mind, in mutual, productive coconstruction
of knowledge. What brings about such episodes of shared
regulation, how do these emerge, and what seems to inhibit
their occurrence are all unanswered questions. If situational,
instructional, or developmental patterns could be identified,
these might guide the design of activities that promote these
productive forms of learning. The emotional and motivational processes inevitably play a significant role, and these
will need to be included in research designs and analyses.
To conclude, we wish to stress the importance of empirically scrutinizing the fluctuation patterns between individual
and social forms of regulation, the dynamic role of multiple
agents in the coregulation of collaborative learning, and the
critical events at the microlevel of time-framed learning that
trigger particular cognitive, affective, and motivational processes. This calls for multimethod research designs, which
provide a theoretically driven approach for a more coherent
study of the complex, situational, and culturally embedded
processes at both individual and social levels.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by grants No. DP0666993
and No. DP0986867 from the Australian Research Council,
awarded to the first author, and grants No. 201782 and No.
114048 from the Council for Cultural and Social Science
Research, the Academy of Finland, awarded to the second
author.

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