Autonomy in Language Education

Theory, Research and Practice

Manuel Jimenez Raya, Flavia Vieira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367204136
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429536922
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Autonomy in Language Education offers a holistic overview of and novel contribution to a complex and multifaceted, yet under-studied, field of inquiry that is transforming language pedagogy: It offers nineteen original chapters that critically analyze the impact of Henri Holec's seminal 1979 book Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning; unpack theoretical, empirical, conceptual, methodological, ethical, and political developments over the last forty years from many perspectives; explore practical implications for teaching, learning, and teacher education; and suggest future avenues and challenges for research and practice in this broad, diverse, essential field.

Part 1

Historical and Theoretical Avenues

1 The Discourse of Holec’s Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning

David M. Palfreyman

Introduction

Holec (2009) discusses how the concept of learner autonomy in language learning has been applied in different educational contexts and argues for a “‘more than one paradigm’ descriptive option” to clarify and describe “autonomy driven pedagogical endeavours” (p. 22). He suggests two paradigms: one, “co-directed learning” (p. 23), aims to gradually increase learner participation in the teacher’s decisions about learning objectives, methods, etc.; the other, “self-directed” (p. 27) approach treats the learner as the primary decision-maker and provides (gradually decreasing) support in fulfilling this role within the constraints of his/her situation. Holec states that

(…) these two sets of principles can be seen to be at work [in educational practice] either in succession, [co-directed] giving way to [self-directed] over time in the same place, or independently, [with] both at work, usually in different places or at different times.

(pp. 22–23)

In this chapter I consider such changes in paradigms or discourses of autonomy in language learning, focussing on scholarship rather than practice and using a data-driven, historical perspective on Holec’s highly cited Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning (Holec, 1981 – henceforth AFLL).

Historical Context

AFLL was first published in 1979 as a report by the Council of Europe and then in book form by Pergamon Press in 1981. Holec’s stated aim in the book is concerned with both theory and practice:

(…) to present a theoretical and practical description of the application of the concept of autonomy in the matter of language learning by adults by showing, in particular, what is meant by self-directed language learning, what implications such a type of learning has for the part played by the learners, teachers and teaching methods and what types of learning structures have been and might be devised for the purpose of introducing such a method of learning.

(Holec, 1981, p. 2)

Thus, as well as autonomy (a quality of the learner), the book focusses also on the related concept of self-direction (a characteristic of learning arrangements or processes), with the relationship between them explained as follows:

Although ‘self-directed learning’ implies an ‘autonomous learner’, the latter does not necessarily involve ‘self-directed learning’. In other words, a learner may have the ability to take charge of his learning without necessarily utilizing this ability to the full when he decides to learn. Different degrees of self-direction in learning may result either from different degrees of autonomy or from different degrees of exercise of autonomy.

(Holec, 1981, p. 4)

The aims outlined above are addressed in a slim volume of about 13,500 words (excluding appendices), which, despite the book’s title, discusses self-directed learning (SDL) at greater length than autonomy. The author explicitly aims at a level of detail sufficient to draw out some pedagogical implications, but general enough to be applied to a variety of learning situations. Chapter 1, titled Autonomy, begins by defining autonomy in language learning but soon moves to considering how learning can be self-directed; Chapter 2, Autonomy and self-directed learning, focusses mainly on the latter, with links made to autonomy. Chapter 3, Implications of self-directed learning, and Chapter 4, Experiments, continue the focus on SDL, and Chapter 5, General conclusions, notes some points related to autonomy and its relation with self-direction in learning.

Like any other written work, AFLL was partly a product of its time and of contemporary debates. It formed part of the Council of Europe’s work on adult education in the 1970s, influenced by

(…) the development in all so-called industrially advanced Western countries of a socio-political tendency characterized by a definition of social progress […] 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.

(Holec, 1981, p. 1)

In this dialectic between the individual and society, Holec cites earlier writers, such as Janne (1977), to justify autonomy as one element in the effort to

develop the individual’s freedom by developing those abilities which will enable him [sic] to act more responsibly in running the affairs of the society in which he lives (Holec, 1981, p. 1). Note that responsibility is seen as contributing to freedom, and this is framed in revolutionary terms, as “upsetting the structure of adult education and […] redefining the place and role in that structure of the person being educated.

(p. 1)

Just as AFLL was influenced by and responded to preceding writing and debates, it has in turn influenced later work on learner autonomy: at the time of writing this chapter, AFLL has been cited by over 7,000 scholarly publications in the 40 years since its publication and is still cited hundreds of times each year (Google, 2019). These public, formal citations are underpinned by many processes of individual consumption of academic literature. For example, the physical copy of Holec (1981) which I recently consulted in a UK university library shows evidence of being borrowed many times and of readers interacting with the text by underlining and annotating passages in the book which they considered significant. It seems that Holec’s book was part of a new way of talking about language learning, which continues to be immensely influential. Indeed, a general Google search for the phrase “the father of learner autonomy” offers over 2,000 page results which link this title with Holec’s name (many using the same sentence copied verbatim from each other). How can this influence be investigated over time?

Intertextuality and AFLL

Citation analysis offers one way to trace the intertextual impact of a published text: the number and placement of citations of a work such as AFLL can be analyzed using public data. Leydesdorff, Bornmann, Comins, and Milojevic (2016) distinguish between citations of a publication within a shorter timeframe, indicating “transitory knowledge claims” (p. 7) at the leading edge of research in a particular field, and citations of a publication in the longer term, indicating “‘sticky’ knowledge claims [which] grow into a codified citation that can function as a concept symbol” (p. 7). In the latter case, citation of a particular source becomes ‘shorthand’ for a concept/position which is understood and to some degree accepted by those working in this field, without the need for explanation. Indeed, such ‘sticky’ knowledge claims may eventually be associated with a vestigial passing reference or even no citation at all, when the origins of a certain term/concept become ‘common knowledge’ within a field of study.

It should be noted that citing a work involves taking a stance towards it; a work may be cited in order to point out a lack in it which the citing author can fill. In the text of AFLL, Holec uses markers such as “so-called” (see quotation above from AFLL, p. 1) or scare quotes (e.g., “teachers who ‘have the knowledge’”, p. 12) to problematize informal discourses of development and education, respectively. In terms of formal citation, Little (2017) contrasts the ideas in AFLL, which he sees as narrowly focussed on the individual learner and the institution/teacher, with the more dialogic, peer-oriented views of autonomy espoused by Janne (1977) and Dam (1995). Little considers Holec’s work (a) to have been associated with the use of individualized and isolating language laboratories – now “replaced by computer networks” (p. 148); (b) to make “no mention of the knowledge, skills and experience that any adult learner brings to the language learning process” (p. 147); (c) to have led later researchers to (unwisely) “follow [Holec] in assuming that language learning and becoming an autonomous learner are separate, or at least separable, processes” (p. 149).

AFLL does indeed focus on the individual learner, although in relation to society more broadly; it also (contradicting (b) above) includes now-topical ideas such as plurilingualism and skill transfer, for example encouraging the learner

(…) to free himself [sic] from the notion that there is one ideal method, that teachers possess that method, that his knowledge of his mother tongue is of no use to him for learning a second language, that his experience as a learner or other subjects, other know-how, cannot be transferred even partially (…)

(p. 22)

Which of these varied ideas in AFLL have dominated in work citing it and in research more generally in the last 50 years? Gee (1999) offers some useful concepts for analyzing how a field of study such as education or applied linguistics uses language and discourse to shape itself. One such concept is that of a Discourse (Gee uses a capital ‘D’), which is the ‘code’ of a particular community of practice:

(…) all the words, symbols, deeds, objects, clothes and tools you need to coordinate in the right way at the right time and place to “pull off” (or recognize someone as) being a cutting-edge particle physicist or a Los Angeles Latino street gang member…

(p. 18)

… or, indeed, a researcher of language learning or an ESOL teacher (Yazan, 2017). These Discourses both persist and evolve over time in cultural Conversations: “long-running and important themes or motifs that have been the focus of a variety of different texts and interactions […] through a significant stretch of time and across an array of institutions” (p. 13).

One way to analyze such ongoing Discourses and Conversations is to take a lexicological approach, tracing the use of key terms across a range of texts. Findings by Halavais (2002) suggest that discourse (especially in mass media) may influence people’s choice of words even when not intentionally quoting nor even discussing the same topic. A lexicological approach is applied for example by Bakker, Ohlsson, Hond, Tengblad, and Turcotte (2007) to trace how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is referenced in company annual reports from 1981 to 2001. These researchers analyzed the frequency and co-occurrence of words used in their corpus, together with their background knowledge of ‘buzz words’ used in writing on CSR, to assess how concepts related to CSR discourse have been referenced by companies in changing ways across time.

In this chapter I will analyze how discourses about learning used in AFLL spread and developed before and after its publication, looking at key terms used in the book; patterns of citation of it; and the uptake of key terms used in it. The chapter will evaluate the contributions of this seminal book to research and practice in foreign language education.

Methodology

My approach to analyzing the discourse of AFLL consisted of the following stages:

1. Rereading the book, making qualitative observations of the overall messages of the book and how it used citations and other types of intertextuality.
2. Quantitative analysis of frequency and co-occurrence of words in AFLL using #LancsBox (Brezina, Timperley, & McEnery, 2018). Qualitative analysis of significance of frequently (and less frequently) used terms and their relations to each other.
3. Analysis of citations of AFLL since its publication; and of the use of key terms identified above over the 30 years preceding the publication of AFLL and the 40 years since, using Google Scholar (Google, 2019). The overall volume of scholarly publication has increased enormously over this period, and some older publications may not be indexed in Google Scholar; I controlled for this by loo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Historical and Theoretical Avenues
• Part 2 Research and Practical Avenues
• Avenues for Autonomy: Concluding Remarks
• Index