Research on self-regulated academic learning has grown out of more general efforts to study human self-control or self-regulation. Promising investigations of children's use of self-regulation processes, like goal-setting, self-reinforcement, self-recording, and self-instruction, in such areas of personal control as eating and task completion have prompted educational researchers and reformers to consider their use by students during academic learning. In this initial chapter, I will discuss self-regulation theories as a distinctive approach to academic learning and instruction historically and will identify their common features. Finally, I will briefly introduce and compare six prominent theoretical perspectives on self-regulated learning—operant, phenomenological, social cognitive, volitional, Vygotskian, and cognitive constructivist approaches—in terms of a common set of issues. In the chapters that follow, each theoretical perspective will be discussed at length by prominent researchers who have used it in research and instruction.