Self-regulated Learning as a Resource and a Goal of Education

basically two main needs to be met by the educational system and the legislation that underpins it, and which the recent Spanish Education Act (Ley Orgánica de Education, LOE) attempts to address. Firstly, the provision of quality education at all levels of the system, which involves the substantial challenge of ensuring educational success for all young people. This essentially implies improving educational standards across the board and ensuring that students develop all their abilities to their highest potential. Secondly, education must today more than ever prepare students appropriately for living in the modern knowledge society and for coping with the challenges that involves. The fundamental principles underlying the LOE primarily address these demands. The main focus of this legislation is the need to understand education as a permanent process, thereby encouraging lifelong learning. This aspect is considered so central to the LOE as to merit a separate article in its introductory protocol. This perception of lifelong learning and the need to achieve it across all areas of education is held at every level. The Spanish university system, for example, is currently undergoing a process of structural convergence with other European countries in what has been called the “European Higher Education Area” (EHEA). This implies a series of modifications and profound changes at organizational, legal and administrative levels, and, above all, entails adopting a new educational paradigm (Michavila, 2001). This new focus will include not only the teachinglearning process, but also the assessment and maintenance of quality in higher education, and will involve a restructuring of universities at two closely linked levels. Firstly, at the legal and administrative levels, since the integration of Spain’s university system into the EHEA requires concrete proposals for putting into practice the different conceptual elements as defined in the European declarations and reflected in the latest legislation on universities (Ley Orgánica de Universidades, LOU, 2001). SELF-REGULATED LEARNING AS A RESOURCE AND A GOAL OF EDUCATION