It’s all metacognitive: The relationship between informal learning and self-regulated learning in the workplace.

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Abstract

Informal workplace learning accounts for a large extent of employees’ learning. Informal learning activities such as reflection or keeping up-to-date resemble self-regulated learning strategies that indicate the ability to plan, monitor, and regulate one’s learning. However, little is known about the relationship between informal learning behaviors and self-regulated learning strategies. Structural equation modeling with data from 248 employees revealed that the informal learning behaviors of reflection, keeping up-to-date, feedback-seeking, and knowledge-sharing are strongly related to the metacognitive self-regulated learning strategies of monitoring and regulation. However, informal learning behaviors lack the deep-processing strategies of elaboration and organization, and the resource strategies of help-seeking and effort regulation. Only innovative behavior is strongly related to effort regulation. These results suggest a potential deficit in employees’ strategy use. Employees should consider further resources to increase their learning effectiveness in the workplace. The results are discussed, and practical implications are outlined.Copyright: © 2023 Kittel, Seufert. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.