Typologies of teaching strategies in classrooms and students’ metacognition and motivation: a latent profile analysis of the Greek PISA 2018 data

Classical conceptualisations of self-regulated learning typically ignore the role of teaching strategies in real-world classrooms. Therefore, the present exploratory study aimed to examine the different clusters of perceived teaching strategies and students’ metacognitive knowledge and experiences, and motivation. The data came from 6365 (49.63% female) Greek secondary school students who participated in PISA 2018. Latent profile analyses revealed four patterns of perceived teachers’ strategies and students’ self-regulated learning, namely ‘struggling learners’ (18.60%), ‘resilient autonomous learners’ (19.79%), ‘average learners’ (32.73%), and ‘self-regulated thriving learners’ (28.86%). Comparisons with reading achievement competencies revealed that ‘struggling learners’ were the worst off followed by the ‘average learners’, whereas ‘self-regulated thriving learners’ and ‘resilient autonomous learners’ had the best reading scores. Good metacognitive knowledge and lower feelings of difficulty along with a higher self-concept could compensate for a reduced perceived student-centric instruction and lead to notable achievement gains. Perceived teacher-directed instruction complemented enthusiastic, student-centric instruction, and a good disciplinary climate were associated with higher metacognition and motivation, and optimal learning. In conclusion, the findings suggest that high metacognition and motivation can overcome perceived instructional barriers and, when combined with a perceived academically supportive teaching environment, can lead to maximum success in reading achievement.