The self-regulated learner will have:

Concept: Self-regulated learning is learning that the learner themselves plans, monitors and evaluates. Its foundation is metacognitive knowledge — what a learner knows about learning itself. Flavell classifies this knowledge into three interacting kinds: person knowledge (what I know about myself as a learner), task knowledge (what this subject and this particular task demand), and strategy knowledge (which learning strategies exist and when each one works).

Application: The stem asks what such a learner possesses. Mapping the three kinds of metacognitive knowledge onto the descriptions offered:

1. Person knowledge becomes knowledge about themselves — awareness of one's own strengths, gaps, pace and study habits as a learner.

2. Task and subject knowledge becomes knowledge about the subject and the task — what the material is like and what this particular demand actually requires.

3. Strategy knowledge becomes knowledge of the strategies of learning — rehearsal, elaboration, organisation and self-testing, together with a sense of when to switch between them.

These four together are what drive Zimmerman's self-regulation cycle: forethought (goal-setting and planning), performance (monitoring and strategy use), and self-reflection (self-evaluation and adjustment). Without knowing oneself, the demand and the available strategies, the learner has nothing to regulate with.

Contrast: How the other descriptions differ:

• Good technical knowledge and availability of devices to access knowledge describes access to resources — an external enabling condition studied under ICT integration, not knowledge about one's own learning.

• Good attention, memory and reflection names cognitive processes — the mental operations a learner runs; self-regulation is the knowledge that decides which operation to run and when.

• Proper plans for the future and the skills to execute them describes general goal-setting and volition, which applies to a career or a project as readily as to study; it is not knowledge about the learning process itself.

Result: The self-regulated learner is characterised by knowledge about themselves, the subject, the task and the strategies of learning.