Behavioral self-regulation: a comparison of goal reminders and self-monitoring

Students with disabilities often have difficulty engaging in academic content in school, which can impact their academic achievement and life after graduation. Self-regulation interventions have a strong history of improving engagement for students with disabilities, however research on their adoption and use in high schools is limited. This could be due to several reasons, such as the complexity of self-regulation interventions, teachers feeling unprepared to implement self-regulation interventions, or time and resource constraints faced by many teachers. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation was to compare the effects of two self-regulation interventions: goal-setting and self-monitoring. Both interventions were designed to be simple to execute, require minimal teacher effort, and incorporate student input on all procedures. Although neither intervention was clearly superior to the other, students were able to use both interventions accurately, and teachers and students found the interventions helpful in improving their behavior. These results indicate both goal reminders and self-monitoring are viable intervention options for high school students with difficulty engaging in their classes.