Introduction: Today one of the main objectives of education is to help students to become autonomous and efficient learners. This is only possible to the extent that students self-regulate their own learning. Hence, the purpose of this study was to study some contextual and personal factors that facilitate this process. Method: Participants were 604 high-school students from a northwestern city in Spain. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was utilized to determine how well the proposed theoretical model fit the research data. Results: Analyses of the relationships between the model variables reveal the following results: students' perception of the classroom structure is an important condition for the development of his or her personal goal orientation. Goal orientation appears to lead students to take responsibility (or not) with the persistence and perseverance required to achieve the goals defined by their motivational orientation, by controlling motivation and emotion. This effort and persistence for goal achievement has in turn a positive effect on the use of strategies to control and direct his or her mental processes for the self-regulation of learning. Discussion and conclusions: This study showed the importance of students' perception of the classroom goal structure to get involved in their own learning, and the possibility to increase the use of metacognitive strategies, for the self-regulation of learning, through the use of volitional strategies. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)