Introduction

When learners have trouble understanding text material, solving problems or completing assignments, they often rely on such strategies as rereading a text more slowly, organizing class notes, reviewing previous work, or searching for information available online. If these efforts are ineffective they may also turn to teachers, classmates, friends, or parents for assistance. Examples can range from very young children who ask adults for help placing letters into simple alphabet cutout puzzles to high school students’ appeals to classmates for the correct solutions to quadratic equations. Until recently, such reliance on others was considered of little value and even stigmatized, with the admonition that truly independent learners are not supposed to need others to succeed. This pejorative view has changed, however. Recent theoretical developments and research indicate instead that help seeking can be an important self-regulated learning strategy, an essential implement in mature learners’ “tool kits,” and an activity engaged in by more motivated and better performing students (e.g., Butler, 1998; Karabenick, 1998, 2004; Karabenick & Knapp, 1991; Nelson-Le Gall & Resnick, 1998; Newman, 2000; Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990).