Self-regulation has received considerable attention in educational research (e.g. Neber & Schommer-Aikins, 2002; VanderStoep, Pintrich, & Fagerlin, 1996; Sungur, 2007; Meece, Blumenfeld, & Hoyle, 1988; Wolters & Pintrich, 1998). Broadly defined, self-regulation refers to the process whereby students activate and sustain cognitions, behaviors, and affects, which are oriented toward the attainment of their goals, and involves cognitive processing, motivational beliefs, and metacognitive thinking (Pintrich & Linnenbrink, 2000; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997; Zimmerman, 1989). Therefore, academic self-regulation is more than metacognition, it involves motivational and behavioral components as well as cognitive and metacognitive components (Zimmerman, 2000). In other words, recent models of self-regulation based on the social-cognitive theory suggest that use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies are of little value if individuals cannot motivate themselves to use them.  Relevant studies have shown that self-regulation is very important predictors of future behaviors including academic performance (Corno, 1986, 1989; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990; Yumusak, Sungur, & Cakiroglu, 2007; Zimmerman, 1990). For example, the study of Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1986) displayed that students who used self-regulation strategies effectively were high achievers. Additionally, many studies have indicated that self-regulation is related to gender (e.g. Bidjerano 2005; Hargittai & Shafer, 2006; Lee, 2002; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990) and generally females use self-regulation strategies more than males.

Although there is significant research on student self-regulation at different grade levels, there has been little research focusing on pre-service or in-service teachers’ use of self-regulatory strategies in their own learning. The studies of pre-service or in-service teachers have demonstrated that they often do not use self-regulatory strategies as effectively as students and it was suggested that if teachers become self-regulated in their own learning, their experience in self-regulatory processes can help them to develop strategies for teaching self-regulation to their students (Gordon, Dembo, & Hocevar, 2007). In addition, it was proposed that pre-service teachers who value self-regulatory skills and teach them to their students are likely to create learning environments supporting student autonomy. In fact, according to Dembo (2001), learning how to teach is not sufficient; rather teachers should learn how to learn to improve their classroom practices.

The aim of the present study was twofold. First, it examined the relationship between academic performance and use of self-regulation strategiesusing correlational analysis. Second, this study investigated whether there is a gender difference in pre-service science teachers’ use of self-regulation strategies using multivariate analyses of variance.

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