The quality of student teachers’ regulation of learning in a dual learning environment

University-based teacher education is more and more organized in dual learning programmes in which two types of learning environments are combined: studying at the university and learning from practice at schools. These innovative programmes often call upon a high degree of self-regulated learning in student teachers. However, it is unclear whether student teachers are willing and able enough to regulate their learning processes to this extent. Furthermore, most of the studies into self-regulation are focused on student learning in traditional instructional settings, much less is known about the nature of self-regulation a more informal learning context. Therefore, this study aims at processing the nature and quality student teachers’ self-regulated learning in a dual learning environment. Twenty-eight students of a post-graduate academic teacher education institute participated in this study. They were interviewed about their learning and regulation conceptions and asked to describe six times a self-chosen learning experience in an open question log. Homogeneity analysis showed the influence of the different learning contexts on student teachers’ regulation activities and distinctions in student teachers’ awareness of their learning process. Content analysis of the interviews revealed qualitative different learning and regulation conceptions. The combination of these results will show different qualities of student teachers’ self-regulated learning. The findings of this study demonstrate that the interpretation of the concept of self-regulated learning as used in traditional literature is too limited too describe the regulation of learning in a dual learning environment as teacher education.