A Systematic Review of Self-Regulation Strategies to Improve Academic Outcomes of Students with EBD

Self-regulatory interventions have demonstrated numerous benefits for helping improve the academic performance of students. The purpose of this review was to report on the effectiveness and focus of academic self-regulation interventions for children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural disorders. Thirty-six studies published in 35 papers and involving 189 participants met inclusionary criteria. Overall, self-regulation interventions showed moderate/medium effect size gains [percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) 75%; standard mean difference (SMD) 2.27; Tau-U 0.81] across academic subject areas. When assessing the effectiveness of self-regulation interventions for addressing specific academic content areas, the largest ES gains were observed in reading (PND 93%; SMD 2.13; Tau-U 0.94), although medium/moderate ES gains were observed in math (PND 71%; SMD 2.08; Tau-U 0.70) and writing (PND 83%; SMD 2.57; Tau-U 0.91). Self-regulated strategy development, self-monitoring interventions and strategy instruction were the predominant types of self-regulation techniques implemented by researchers. There was evidence to support a claim of the generalisation and maintenance of findings. Implications, limitations and areas for future research are discussed.