Chapter 9: Enhancing Students’ Academic Responsibility and Achievement: A Social-Cognitive Self-Regulatory Account

John W. Gardner (1963), a former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, once noted that the ultimate goal of the American educational system is to shift to the individual the responsibility for pursuing his or her own education. Responsibility has been defined lexically as “accountability for actions and their consequences” (English & English, 1958, p. 463), and academic responsibility refers to students’ acceptance of accountability for their successes and failures in school. There is widespread agreement that students should be taught academic responsibility and encouraged to demonstrate this desirable personal quality both in and out of the classroom. Most current “responsibility” education programs focus mainly on character and deportment rather than on academic independence and personal shouldering of the responsibility for learning. However, there have been important discoveries in recent years regarding the nature and role of key processes and beliefs underlying students’ development of personal responsibility, such as attributions of personal causality, self-efficacy beliefs, and the development of self-regulation. This chapter considers theory and available research on the causes and effects of academic responsibility.