Teaching and Researching: Autonomy in Language Learning

Phil Benson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781408205013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317862840
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Autonomy has become a keyword of language policy in education systems around the world, as the importance of independent learning and new technologies has grown.

Now in a fully revised and updated second edition, Teaching and Researching Autonomy provides an accessible and comprehensive critical account of the theory and practice of autonomy. Examining the history of the concept, it addresses important questions of how we can identify autonomy in language learning behaviours and how we can evaluate the wide variety of educational practices that have been designed to foster autonomy in learning.

Topics new to this edition include:

- Autonomy and new technologies

- Teacher autonomy

- The sociocultural implications of autonomy

With over three hundred new references and five new case studies of research on autonomy providing practical advice on research methods and topics in the field, Teaching and Researching Autonomy will be an essential introduction for teachers and students to a subject at the cutting edge of language teaching and research.

Section

I What is autonomy?

This section will:

• outline the history of autonomy in language learning and identify its sources in the fields of language pedagogy, educational reform, adult education, the psychology of learning and political philosophy;

• discuss definitions of autonomy and key issues in research;

• explain why autonomy is a key issue in language education today.

Chapter 1

The history of autonomy in language learning

1.1 Origins of the concept

Second language acquisition predates institutionalised language learning by many centuries. Even in the modern world millions of individuals continue to learn languages without the aid of formal instruction. Although there is much that we can learn from their efforts, the theory of autonomy in language learning has been essentially concerned with the organisation of formal education. As such, it has a history of approximately four decades.

Concept 1.1 The origins of autonomy in language learning

The concept of autonomy first entered the field of language teaching through the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Project, established in 1971. One of the outcomes of this project was the establishment of the Centre de Recherches et d’Applications en Langues (CRAPEL) at the University of Nancy, France, which rapidly became a focal point for research and practice in the field. Yves Châlon, the founder of CRAPEL, is considered by many to be the father of autonomy in language learning. Châlon died at an early age in 1972 and the leadership of CRAPEL was passed to Henri Holec, who remains a prominent figure within the field of autonomy today. A seminar on self-directed learning and autonomy at the University of Cambridge in December 1976, which included contributions from Philip Riley and Caroline Stanchina of CRAPEL, was also an important foundational event in the field (Harding-Esch, 1977). Holec’s (1981) project report to the Council of Europe is a key early document on autonomy in language learning. The journal Mélanges Pédagogiques, published at CRAPEL, has also played an important role in the dissemination of research on autonomy from 1970 to the present day. Important early papers on autonomy from Mélanges Pédagogiques were distributed internationally in Riley’s (1985) collection on Discourse and learning.

According to Gremmo and Riley (1995), interest in the concept of autonomy within the field of language education was in part a response to ideals and expectations aroused by the political turmoil in Europe in the late 1960s. Holec (1981: 1) began his report to the Council of Europe (Concept 1.1) with a description of the social and ideological context within which ideas of autonomy in learning emerged:

The end of the 1960s saw the development in all so-called industrially advanced Western countries of a socio-political tendency characterized by a definition of social progress, no longer in terms of increasing material well-being through an increase in consumer goods and services, but in terms of an improvement in the ‘quality of life’ – an expression that did not become a slogan until some years later – based on the development of a respect for the individual in society.

The Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Project aimed to provide adults with opportunities for lifelong learning and the approach developed at CRAPEL was influenced by proposals from the emerging field of adult self-directed learning (Chapter 2.2), which insisted ‘on the need to develop the individual’s freedom by developing those abilities which will enable him to act more responsibly in running the affairs of the society in which he lives’. This connection between education, individual freedom and social responsibility also reflected prevailing views of personal autonomy in European and North American political philosophy at the time.

Autonomy, or the capacity to take charge of one’s own learning, was seen as a natural product of the practice of self-directed learning, or learning in which the objectives, progress and evaluation of learning are determined by the learners themselves. Among the key innovations in the CRAPEL approach to the provision of opportunities and support for self-directed language learning were the self-access resource centre and the idea of learner training. In its early days, the theory and practice of autonomy in language learning also enjoyed an uneasy association with ideas of ‘individualisation’ in language instruction.

1.2 Autonomy and self-access

The first self-access language learning centres, at CRAPEL (Riley and Zoppis, 1985) and the University of Cambridge (Harding-Esch, 1982), were based on the idea that access to a rich collection of second language materials would offer learners the best opportunity for experimentation with self-directed learning (Quote 1.1). The provision of counselling services and an emphasis on authentic materials were also important elements in the CRAPEL approach.

Quote 1.1 Riley and Zoppis on the Sound and Video Library at CRAPEL

If one of our initial aims was to make sure that the Sound and Video Library would actually be able to take in all its potential users for as long as possible each week, we also wanted it to be a place where we would apply some of the pedagogical principles and strategies we firmly believe in. Foremost among these was the principle of autonomous learning for advanced and fairly advanced students. In our view, students who have reached a certain level in English can improve their listening comprehension, their oral expression or their written comprehension by regularly working in semi-autonomy with adequately prepared teaching material or in complete autonomy using ‘raw’ authentic material.

Riley and Zoppis (1985: 287)

At CRAPEL, self-access was seen as a means of facilitating self-directed learning. In recent years, however, self-access language learning centres have proliferated to the point where ‘self-access language learning’ is often treated as a synonym for self-directed or autonomous learning. In many institutions, self-access centres have been established without any strong pedagogical rationale and it is often assumed, without any strong justification, for the assumption that self-access work will automatically lead to autonomy. To a lesser extent, the producers of self-instructional and distance learning materials have assumed that autonomy will be one outcome of these modes of learning. One of the important lessons of the spread of self-access over the past three decades, however, is that there is no necessary relationship between self-instruction and the development of autonomy and that, under certain conditions, self-instructional modes of learning may even inhibit autonomy (Chapter 8).

Because self-access centres have been enthusiastic consumers of educational technologies, self-access learning has also tended to become synonymous with technology-based learning. Within the field of computer-assisted language learning, especially, autonomy has become an important issue. As in the case of self-access, however, researchers on autonomy emphasise that learners who engage in technology-based learning do not necessarily become more autonomous as a result of their efforts. A great deal depends on the nature of the technology and the use that is made of it (Chapter 9).

1.3 Autonomy and learner training

Like self-access, learner training began life as a mechanism to support self-directed learning (Dickinson and Carver, 1980; Holec, 1980). At CRAPEL, it was argued that in order to carry out effective self-directed learning, adult learners would need to develop skills related to self-management, self-monitoring and self-assessment. Learners who were accustomed to teacher-centred education would also need to be psychologically prepared for more learner-centred modes of learning. According to Holec, teaching learners how to carry out self-directed learning would be counterproductive, since the learning would by definition no longer be self-directed. Instead, learners needed to train themselves (Quote 1.2). Although learners might draw on the support of counsellors, teachers or other learners, the important thing about learner training was that it should be based on the practice of self-directed learning itself. Self-direction was understood as the key to learning languages and to learning how to learn languages.

Quote 1.2 Holec on learner training

The basic methodology for learner training should be that of discovery; the learner should discover, with or without the help of other learners or teachers, the knowledge and the techniques which he needs as he tries to find the answers to the problems with which he is faced. By proceeding largely by trial and error he trains himself progressively.

Holec (1980: 42)

As the practice of learner training became more widespread in the 1980s and 1990s it increasingly drew upon insights from research on learning strategies, which aimed to identify the behaviours and strategies used by successful learners and train less successful learners in their use. Although the idea of autonomy did not initially have a strong influence on learner strategies research, Wenden (1991) made the link explicit in the title of her book, Learner Strategies for Learner Autonomy. Like self-access, learner training has also taken on a life of its own in recent years. While most practitioners in the field see learner training as leading to greater autonomy, learner training is no longer confined to self-directed learning. Dickinson (1992), for example, views learner training as a resource to help learners to engage more actively in classroom learning, and some of the best learner training materials have been developed for classroom use (Chapter 10).

1.4 Autonomy and individualisation

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, autonomy was closely associated with individualisation, an association evident in the titles of collections that linked the two fields (Altman and James, 1980; Brookes and Grundy, 1988; Geddes and Sturtridge, 1982). Brookes and Grundy (1988: 1), for example, suggested in the introduction to their collection of papers on individualisation and autonomy that the two were linked to each other through the idea of learner-centredness:

One corollary of learner-centredness is that individualization will assume greater importance, as will the recognition of the autonomy of the learner as the ultimate goal.

Individualisation and autonomy overlapped in as much as both were concerned with meeting the needs of individual learners. Self-directed learning as it was practised at CRAPEL was thus in a sense a form of individualisation, in which learners determined their own needs and acted upon them. As the practice of self-access spread, self-access resource centres were also seen as performing important functions in the individualisation of learning.

Individualisation also took the form of programmed learning – a mode of instruction in which learners were expected to work their way, at their own pace, through materials prepared by teachers. From the outset, researchers at CRAPEL took pains to distinguish self-directed learning from programmed individualised learning on the grounds that the latter left the most important decisions in learning to the teacher rather than to the learner. Holec (1981: 6) also made a distinction between teaching that takes the learner into consideration and learning that is directed by the learners themselves:

In a general way the extent to which the learner is taken into consideration forms no criterion for judging the extent to which learning is self-directed: individualization effected by taking into account the learner’s needs, his favourite methods of learning, his level, and so on, leave the learner in the traditional position of dependency and do not allow him to control his learning for himself.

Riley (1986) also argued that programmed learning deprived learners of the freedom of choice essential to the development of autonomy (Quote 1.3).

Quote 1.3 Riley on autonomy and individualisation

Individualisation (‘individualised learning’, ‘individualised instruction’) is, historically at least, linked with programmed learning and based on a thoroughly behaviouristic psychology. As it is generally practised, it leaves very little freedom of choice to the individual learner. Rather it is the teacher who tries to adapt his methodology and materials to the learner, like a doctor writing out a prescription. That is, the majority of the relevant decisions are made for the learner, not by him. It is in fact individualised TEACHING: it aims at the most efficient use of the teacher and at the most effective result, but in terms of what the teacher wants the learner to achieve.

Riley (1986: 32)

The early association of autonomy with individualisation may also be largely responsible for the widespread criticism that autonomy implies learners studying languages in isolation from teachers and from each other. This criticism was more difficult to counter since it must be acknowledged that, although collaborative programmes for self-directed groups of learners have been designed at CRAPEL and elsewhere, much of the early work in the field of autonomy focused on the learner as an individual with distinct characteristics and needs. In recent years, however, researchers on autonomy have emphasised that the development of autonomy necessarily implies collaboration and interdependence.

1.5 Autonomy and interdependence

It is evident in retrospect that the concept of autonomy in language learning had, by the late 1980s, begun to suffer something of a crisis of identity. Holec (1985a) continued to emphasise that autonomy should be used to describe a capacity of the learner, but others began to use it to refer to situations in which learners worked under their own direction outside the conventional language-teaching classroom. Riley and Zoppis (1985: 287), for example, described learners working in a self-access centre as working in ‘semi-autonomy’ or ‘complete autonomy’. Dickinson (1987: 11) defined autonomy as ‘the situation in which the learner is totally responsible for all of the decisions concerned with his learning and the implementation of those decisions’. He also used the term ‘full autonomy’ to describe the situation in which the learner is entirely independent of teachers, institutions or specially prepared materials. Although there is now consensus within the field that autonomy best refers to the capacity to control or take charge of one’s learning, the term ‘autonomous learning’ is still used to refer to the situation of studying without the direct presence of a teacher, especially in the literature on learning beyond the classroom.

Researchers on autonomy were aware that in order to develop a capacity to take control of their learning, learners needed to be freed from the direction and control of others. At the same time, they were well aware that learners who chose, or were forced by circumstances, to study languages in isolation from teachers and other learners, would not necessarily develop this capacity. However, the argument that the opportunity to exercise autonomy through self-directed learning was a necessary precondition for the development of autonomy was interpreted by critics as an argument that it was a sufficient condition. Moreover, the theory and practice of autonomy had, in a sense, become framed within the practice ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• General editors' preface
• Author's acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Introduction to the second edition
• Section I: What is autonomy?
• Section II: Autonomy in practice
• Section III: Researching autonomy
• Section IV: Resources
• References
• Index