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Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Matouš Hořínek

A closer look at learner autonomy –

a qualitative study

Master's Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Hana Smíšková

2007

I hereby swear that I wrote this thesis independently

and using the works cited.

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"I know I cannot teach anyone anything. I can only

provide an environment in which he can learn."

Carl Rogers

"Here we are now, entertain us."

Kurt Cobain

"Humming, all the way to Reno,

you've written your own directions

and whistled the rules of change."

Michael Stipe

to Mum, Dad and the angel on my shoulder

Acknowledgements

This work would never have been possible without the help of my kind supervisor, Hana Smíšková. My greatest thanks go to her – for her guidance, support, invaluable comments and for clipping my wings. In the course of my work on autonomy, she helped me become more autonomous than I had ever been. Also, I owe big thanks to Debora Zemenová, who provided me with expert guidance and lots of encouragement at the early stages of my work. Next, I need to thank all the fourteen students who participated in the research project; their sincere comments on teaching and learning have given me lots of inspiration and proved invaluable in my research. And last but not least, I would like to thank Agnieszka, for her unquestioning love and support. May the force be with you.

1. Introduction 5

2. Theoretical Background I. 8

2.1 Reasons for promoting autonomy 8

2.2 Attempts to define autonomy 8

2.2.1 An overview of definitions in the literature 8

2.2.2 Conflicting and complementing concepts 11

2.3 Attempts to describe an autonomous learner 15

2.4 A working definition of autonomy 20

2.5 A working description of an autonomous learner 22

2.6 A practical approach to autonomy 25

3. Theoretical Background II. Aspects of autonomous learning – an overview

of theory and research 28

3.1 Theories of motivation 28

3.1.1 Integrative/instrumental and intrinsic/extrinsic theories of motivation 28

3.1.2 Attribution theory 30

3.1.3 Relating motivation to success 31

3.1.4 Motivation and autonomy 32

3.2 The theory of personal constructs 33

3.3 Modern communicative approaches and the issue of learner/teacher roles 36

3.4 Research into learning strategies 40

3.5 Research into learner beliefs, preferences and attitudes 43

3.6 'Measuring autonomy' - an overview of research to date 44

4. Research 48

4.1 Research background 48

4.2 Aims of the research and research questions 50

4.3 Methods, materials, participants 51

4.3.1 Participants 51

4.3.2 Methods 51

4.3.3 Anticipated problems 52

4.3.4 The structure of the interview 54

4.4 Data analysis and interpretation 60

4.4.1 Factors explored in the study 60

4.4.2 Factors revealed by the study 70

4.4.3 Reactions to a more autonomous learning environment 71

4.5 Discussion 72

4.6 Conclusion 81

5. Ideas for further research and Epilogue 83

5.1 Ideas for further research 83

5.2 Epilogue 83

6. References 84

7. Appendix – a transcription of the interviews 87

1. Introduction

The phenomena of teaching and learning are older that the oldest profession; indeed, they reach much further than the history of humanity. Ever since evolution started, animals have been learning strategies and skills necessary for their survival, parents have been transferring knowledge to their sibling, one way or another, and social animals have been learning ways of communicating effectively with the rest of the community. It seems as if teaching and learning could well compete with the elementary, undefined concepts of scholastic philosophy (such as "number", "time" or "causality"). Curiously enough, although these processes seem to be our second nature, there have been numerous disputes as to the different approaches one can take and the methods one should use, and voluminous research has sprouted in the many different areas that we nowadays call pedagogy, educational philosophy or psychology of learning. As if humans were learning once again that which they had known and used for eternity. However, amazement lies at the roots of every science, and as we are about to undertake a journey into the realms of teaching and learning, this approach is fully justified.

The concept of learner autonomy has intrigued researchers, teachers (and, possibly, learners) for almost three decades now¹, ever since Henri Holec's report to the Council of Europe in 1981, or maybe since the Centre de Recherches et d'Applications en Langues was founded by Yves Châlon in 1971. Or maybe it was since the 1960s, an age of unrest, a time marked by the temporary liberation of human thought and unsurpassable works of educational philosophy, such as Carl Rogers's Freedom to Learn. However, the origins of the idea reach much further into the past; certainly into the Sung dynasty, as Benson, quoting Lu Tung-lai, suggests: "The youth who is bright and memorizes large amounts of information is not to be admired; but he who thinks carefully and searches for truth diligently is to be admired" (Benson 2001: 56).

Learner autonomy is, in its broadest sense, a liberal, or even anarchist, notion. It puts the learner at the focus of all attention, it endows him with responsibility for his actions, it makes him free to learn whatever he chooses, it makes all institutional hierarchy crumble like chalk. Again, amazement is in place – to a layman, it appears that learning has always been this way; after all, learning can never be anybody else's, only yours. No-one can learn for you, and whatever you learn is necessarily self-appropriated, self-chosen, self-constructed, understood in a unique way.

However, the dinosaur of formal instruction has more often than not provided for the sad fact that learning has not always been this way. It seems enough to remember poor Immanuel Kant, who had to memorize – word for word – the whole of the Metaphysics to get through university. If he had the slightest choice in the matter, we assume he would prefer not to.

Sadly enough, examples from the recent past or even the present lead us to similar conclusions. We may all remember the time at grammar school when memorizing dates was the way to go through a history class, when grades and reports were the only significant evidence of our progress and when we learnt tons of facts we would never choose to use. Or maybe we remember the first "language schools" in our country, where Učebnice pro samouky facilitated the learning of a group of ten or twenty students, doing tiny exercises equaled learning to communicate and memorizing vocabulary lists was the order of the day. Even though some of these schools have managed to sustain this practice until today, it seems clear that this type of learning is hardly self-appropriated, self-managed or self-constructed.

It appears that the work of the people who stood at the origin of such ideas should not be critically assessed; rather than that, it should be clinically diagnosed. These thought patterns are reminiscent of the notorious "jug-and-mug" story, where learning is facilitated by pouring crushed books into a learner's head. We readily imagine Neo in his famous scene from The Matrix, stretched on a chair, data pouring into his head, then waking up suddenly and saying: "I know kung-fu". "Show me," Morpheus retorts, inviting him thus to practice his knowledge. However, the learning has already taken place. When this way of acquiring knowledge really gets invented, learning, as we know it, will become obsolete. In the meantime, however, we have to put up with it.

As we have observed, in certain learning contexts, learner autonomy is still a fairly revolutionary notion. Therefore, it seems reasonable to carry out a research into the concept in learning environments where the students still seem to be struggling with it, where it has not been accepted as a prevalent learning ideology, where the people might hold a great variety of views of what learning and teaching look like. The Masaryk University Internationalization Program seemed to be a perfect milieu for such research.

In the following chapter (that is, Chapter 2), we are going to expand on the various attempts to define the concept and describe an autonomous learner. Also, we are going to produce our own definition of autonomy, and our own description of an autonomous learner. In the final part of the chapter, we are going to appropriate our general findings to a specific learning context, to discourage the reader from thinking that our approach is way too philosophical.

Chapter 3 is going to focus on a number of aspects of learner autonomy that seem extremely important to our research and to the concept itself. We are going to touch upon the ideas of motivation, personal constructs and teacher/learner roles; also, we are going to conduct a brief survey of research into learning strategies, learner beliefs and measuring autonomy.

In Chapter 4, we are going to describe our research. It follows from interviews with fourteen students who took part in the Masaryk University Internationalization Program, and our aim was to explore their reactions to the program, find out whether learner autonomy plays a major part in their responses and determine to what extent their reports problematize the issues we have sketched out in the preceding two chapters. Our research was qualitative and its major characteristic lay in giving the students freedom to express any beliefs they may hold.

The final chapter gives a number of ideas for further research. As well as that, it presents our personal attitudes towards the concept of autonomy.