Critical Review: Schunk's Goal Setting and Self-Efficacy Article

This document presents a critical review of Schunk's 1990 article, "Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning." The review analyzes the article's intention, argument, author's credentials, date of publication, and the strength of evidence used. The article, grounded in social cognitive learning theory, explores the impact of goal setting and self-efficacy on student learning, emphasizing self-observation, self-reaction, and self-judgment. The reviewer highlights the article's relevance to understanding self-regulated learning, discusses the author's background as a professor and dean, and acknowledges the study's strengths in promoting difficult but achievable goals. The review also points out a weakness in the emphasis on difficult targets over easily attainable ones. The review concludes by summarizing the research methodology which uses both primary and secondary data to study the behavior of students in goal setting and self learning.

University Research Critical Review

A critical review of “Schunk, DH 1990, Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-
regulated learning Educational Psychologist, vol. 25 no. 1, pp. 71–86.”
This review is based on the article studied importance of goal settlement and self-efficiency
in the duration of self-regulation in the life of the student based on the emphasis of the
importance of the goal settlement and development of the self-efficiency. There are literature
and theoretical review of the goal settlement and self-efficiency on the life of the students
(Schunk, 1990).
Author is appointed as the dean and professor at the school of education (The University of
North California, Greensboro) Offering six academic departments with the program offering
graduation and post-graduation programs for students. He had approximately 50 published
articles and author of many books as main author is “Learning Theories: an educational
perspective” and as co-author is “Motivation in education: Theory research and applications”
(Schunk, 2012).
This article was published in the year 1989 and it is now 30 years old but significant in the
present scenario of in the life of the student to measure the effects of the self-motivation and
goal settlement in self-learning. The concept is still relevant with the self-learning practices
of the student and their process to accomplish the goal settlement.
In his theoretical overview he has used social cognitive learning theory framework that is
useful for the observation of the psychology, education and the effects of the communication
on the learning concept of the students after settlement of goals in their life comprising three
sub-parts naming self-observation, self-reaction and self-judgement based on the personal
behavioural study of the students in the process of self-learning. Deliberate attention focuses
on the behaviour of an individual affected by the quality, reality and quantity helps to
measure progress in goal attainment (Elliot, 2017). Self-judgement is the process of

comparison of the present act with the decided goals. This act is affected with the varieties of
goal settlement and its properties. Self-reaction method use rewards to motivate the students
in measuring their performance to meet the desired target and satisfaction (Covington, 2017).
In the literature overview he conducted a research to support his studies on self-regulated
learning. Goal specificity and expectancy-values studies states that behaviour is linked with
the beliefs about the results. People used to perform with great energy if they are assure about
the success in return (Häkkinen, 2017).
Most positive and creditable point in this article is to study about the developing the self-
efficiency and setting the targets that are difficult to achieve but self-regulating and learning
skills are helpful to attain the targets (Zaleski, 2015). The lacking point in this study is that it
has given the value to the difficult task are more motivating compare to easily attaining
targets. But human nature that is he gets motivated by the short and easily attainable targets
because little earning and learning help to build the behaviour to face the pressure and
challenges to attain the difficult targets (Covington, 2017).
This article is based on primary as well secondary data of research. Author had studies in
details about the nature and the behaviour of the students to attain the goal and the studies
how it can help to develop the learning and the skills of the students. And in secondary
research he conducted tasks and surveys to study the behaviour of the students during the
struggle in building and developing self-learning process in goal settlement attainment of the
goals.

References
Covington, M.V., 2017. Motivated cognitions. Learning and motivation in the classroom.,
pp.139-64.
Elliot, A.J.a.H.C.S.., 2017. Achievement goals. Handbook of competence and motivation:
Theory and application, 2, pp.43-60.
Häkkinen, P..J.S..M.-S.K..A.A..N.P.a.V.T.., 2017. Preparing teacher-students for twenty-
first-century learning practices (PREP 21): a framework for enhancing collaborative problem-
solving and strategic learning skills. Teachers and Teaching, 23(1), pp.25-41.
Schunk, D.H., 1990. Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning.
Educational psychologist, 25(1), pp.71-86.
Schunk, D.H.., 2012. Learning theories an educational perspective. 6th ed. Pearson.
Zaleski, Z.a.P.A.., 2015. Goals need time perspective to be achieved. In F.N..v.B.W.
Stolarski M., ed. Time Perspective Theory; Review, Research and Application. Springer,
Cham. pp.323-35.