The Who, what, where, when and why of self-monitoring of student behaviour

This article provides a thorough review of research studies on self- monitoring by students with disabilities. It analyses 44 studies between 1991 and 2003 which report on the effectiveness of self- monitoring in improving academic, behavioural and social skills of students with a range of disabilities. Using prior reviews as a model, study variables are tabulated and analysed. Strengths, weaknesses, and factors which increased the effectiveness of self-monitoring are discussed. Analysis of study variables found self-monitoring of attention, productivity or accuracy effectively increased a range of dependent variables, with productivity producing the greatest reactivity under certain circumstances. However, reactivity was idiosyncratic to participant, setting, and task variables, and teachers should consider student preferences and class pragmatics when choosing monitoring conditions.