A brief analysis of the relationship between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy in ESL/EFL education

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This paper aims to analyze the relationship between TA and LA. Through the examination and analysis of the concept of TA and LA, definitions, characteristics and relationships, some insight to TA and LA is offered; and recommendations for ESL/EFL teachers to foster LA are provided in the hope that EFL teachers have more understanding about their roles and responsibilities in promoting LA in their language classes.

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Nội dung Text: A brief analysis of the relationship between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy in ESL/EFL education

A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHER AUTONOMY AND LEARNER AUTONOMY IN ESL/EFL EDUCATION Le Van Tuyen Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) ABSTRACT Learner autonomy (LA) has increasingly become an important element in second language acquisition. Meanwhile, teacher autonomy (TA) is considered as a new concept which needs to be paid more attention to. This paper aims to analyze the relationship between TA and LA. Through the examination and analysis of the concept of TA and LA, definitions, characteristics and relationships, some insight to TA and LA is offered; and recommendations for ESL/EFL teachers to foster LA are provided in the hope that EFL teachers have more understanding about their roles and responsibilities in promoting LA in their language classes. Keywords: Teacher autonomy, learner autonomy, analysis, definitions, relationship. 1. INTRODUCTION There is an assumption that traditional teacher education programs in the past which were mostly based on lecturing and transmitting knowledge from educators to pre-service teachers might fail to prepare prospective teachers for new demands of the classroom [8]. Recently, the idea of autonomy in language learning has developed. This idea is represented as a learner-centered idea [3]. It has increasingly impacted the field of language education, especially foreign language education in contexts where traditional methods and teacher-centered paradigm had been the focus for long, and where it is assumed that now TA and LA play the most important role in the process of teaching and learning. The shift from teacher-centered paradigm to student-centered one has put much pressure on both teachers and students. To promote LA, it is required that teachers and students change their role in the teaching and learning process. No longer do teachers only play the role of a knowledge conveyer. Instead, autonomous teaching requires language teachers to employ different strategies and play different roles to facilitate the students‘ process of learning. They should train their students how to learn to become autonomous learners. They have to shift their roles to facilitators, counselors, gap-fillers or co-learners. Especially, teachers should act as promoters of autonomous learning among students. Doing so will certainly make great contributions to the development of LA. Similarly, students no longer act as passive knowledge receivers. Language knowledge and skills will be more easily acquired for those students who do not rely too much on their teachers and for those who have intrinsic motivation [6]. TA and LA are increasingly becoming one of the most concerned issues among researchers and educators in the field of language education. Understanding the relationship between TA and LA may help both language teachers and students enhance their teaching and learning to meet the requirements of language education programs. 2. TEACHER AUTONOMY The concept of ‗teacher autonomy‘ has been frequently referred to within the literature on language LA in recent years [24]. Researchers and scholars have defined TA in several different ways. TA is defined as 520
the teachers‘ capacity to engage in self-directed teaching [18], as the capacity, freedom, and/or responsibility to make choices concerning teaching [2], as the ability to develop appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes for oneself as a teacher [23], as a right to freedom from control by others [3], as willingness, capacity and freedom to take control of their own teaching and learning [14], and as development of independence and interdependence in their own teaching context [9]. It can be understood that all the aspects related to TA are really complicated. Researchers may have different ways of interpreting the aspects relating to the term ―TA‖. No matter how they are interpreted, the above definitions reflect that autonomous teachers have capacity to control their teaching and be responsible for their teaching and their students‘ learning. They should also be willing to make decisions or choices to develop their autonomy and their students‘ autonomy in learning. 3. LEARNER AUTONOMY New insights into learning a foreign language have considerably increased the demand for ‗learner autonomy‘, and recently theory and practice of LA has developed remarkably [25]. The term LA was first defined by [13] as ―the ability to take charge of one‘s own learning‖. Later, various terms concerning LA have been used by researchers such as self-instruction, self-regulation, independent learning, self-access learning, or self-directed learning [25]. Based on Holec‘s definition of autonomy, it can be interpreted that autonomous students are expected to be responsible for their learning. They have to actively participate in learning, take charge of self-planning, self-management, self-reflection and self-evaluation [25], and make use of their ability both in skills and knowledge in learning and in the language. Autonomous learning also requires students to have desire to learn a language or carry out learning tasks with a particular purposes and to control their learning in a certain learning context [5]. Autonomous students determine the objectives, define the contents, select appropriate learning methods and techniques, monitor the procedure of acquisition, and evaluate what has been learned. When attempting to perform the above tasks, they need to be metacognitively aware of this process. Being aware of the learning process, it is required that they have knowledge, goals and strategies utilized to achieve specified goals. They should have belief in themselves as learners [18, 5, 25]. Autonomous learning also manifests students‘ degree of motivation including instrumental motivation which refers to the need to fulfill the practical objectives of learning a language and integrative motivation which refers to the need to identify with the target language [5 , 25]. Obviously, the terms LA encompasses different interpretations. Nonetheless, it cannot be interpreted that students are independent of their teachers, or their learning is completely isolated from teachers‘ roles and practices, and from the learning environment and the institution. 4. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHER AUTONOMY AND LEARNER AUTONOMY The relationship between TA and LA in this paper is seen from the perspective of [20] models of autonomy. Accordingly, autonomy in language learning manifests three dimensions: autonomy of language competence (ALC), autonomy of choice (AC), and autonomy of language learning competence (ALLC) [20]. The three dimensions seem to be closely related to each other. Regarding ALC, Macaro emphasizes that L2 students should have the ability to communicate appropriately in a particular L2 situation and generate their own sentences or utterances [20]. Obviously, every time if students want to say or write something they must rely on what they have learned; that is the language input which came from their teachers. In respect with AC, researchers have indicated that learning something new requires students to be directed by goals or purposes. According to [19], for goals to be achieved effectively, they should be set through the free choice and commitment of the individual student. Goals must be specific, explicit and attainable. Goal commitment is considered to be particularly important [20]. Commitment to a goal influences performance by (a) directing attention and effort towards goal relevant tasks; (b) adjusting 521
the effort to the level of difficulty required by the task; (c) encouraging persistence until the task is achieved; (d) supporting the development of appropriate action plans and strategies. Goals also provide the standards for the evaluation of students‘ performance, and attainable goals have an important function in the development of self-efficacy. In a formal educational setting, all the above aspects related to goals setting and commitment need the support from the teacher. Another element which is essential for the development of LA is the choice of materials. Students have to decide which materials they need to refer to, for example, outside the class. To select learner-centered materials to foster LA cannot be done by students themselves. It is necessary that teachers know how to evaluate, analyze, and even produce materials [21] to meet the student‘s goals. In terms of ALLC, Macaro indicates that it is the ability to use a range and combination of cognitive and metacognitive strategies [20]. This task can be achieved with the support of the teacher‘s approaches, and later independently of the teacher‘s approaches and techniques. Another aspect relating to ALLC is the learning environment to develop the experience, the confidence and the systematic application of metacognitive awareness. Whether or not the learning environment for students to experience learning strategies is created depends on the teacher. LA, when seen from this perspective, is far from being a withdrawal by the teacher [20]. On the contrary, there is a close relationship between the teacher and students in finding a pathway to improvement that ALC, LC and ALLC are developed. Based on the three above mentioned dimensions of LA, it can be confirmed that students need support to develop language competence themselves; they should be provided with opportunities to develop autonomy in choosing what materials and learning strategies are best for their learning. In addition, autonomous students should have the awareness, the knowledge and the experience of strategy use, and the metacognition to evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies. This leads to the fact that when seen from this perspective teachers cannot be the outsider in the development of LA. Other researchers and educators have also raised their points of view about this aspect. LA and TA are ‗interdependent‘ [18]; and almost all students need to be prepared and supported on the path towards greater autonomy by teachers [22]. Researchers also indicated that LA does not mean learning in isolation; instead, it needs teachers‘ and others‘ support [10]. In addition, to help students become autonomous, teachers have to be autonomous and have beliefs about what autonomy is [26]. Especially, according to [15], TA is now recognized as a major factor that affects the development of LA in second language learning; and that is why there is always a close link between TA and LA [17]. LA can also be cultivated and explored in the classroom with the help of TA [28]. TA and LA are interrelated and interactive. Developing autonomy in formal situations cannot take place without teachers‘ engagement [16]. LA is an achievement which can be attained interrelationally between students and teachers. It depends upon how teachers and students relate to each other on their capacities to develop their relationship in ways conducive to LA [11]. Based on the above-mentioned analysis of literature, it can be interpreted that there is a dynamic relationship between TA and LA; and it is of vital importance to understand this relationship. To enhance LA, we must have autonomous teachers in both professional development and action. An autonomous teacher with autonomous students will make an autonomous language class. So, what should foreign language teachers do to foster LA in their classes? 5. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ESL/EFL TEACHERS As analyzed in the above section, autonomous learning does not exclude teachers‘ responsibilities and different roles in class. On the contrary, teachers play a crucial role in promoting LA. It can be inferred that LA needs autonomous language teachers who have the ability and willingness to help 522
students take responsibility for their own learning, reflect their roles and are independent enough to help their students become autonomous or promote LA. Little claims that teachers can only develop LA if they themselves are autonomous [18]. The development of LA depends on the teachers‘ own autonomy and their teaching skills. It is unreasonable to expect teachers to foster the growth of autonomy in their students if they themselves do not know what it is to be an autonomous student. Language teachers must be able to exploit their professional skills autonomously to apply to their teaching. Cotterall states that those students who view the teacher as a counselor and a facilitator of learning are ready for autonomy [7]. That is to say, teachers should take more roles and responsibilities if they want to create an autonomous language learning context instead of being a knowledge conveyor or an arbitrator in the traditional teaching context. It can be said that changing the role is essential for a language teacher in promoting LA. Researchers state that to foster LA in language classrooms, teachers should play the role of a facilitator, a counselor, resource provider, manager, or an organizer and so on [27, 12, & 29]. As a facilitator, the teacher can make the learning process easier, provide technical and psychosocial support by helping students to plan and carry out their independent learning through the use of such tasks as conducting needs analysis, setting objectives, making plans, and selecting materials. The teacher should also provide the psycho-social support by helping students to overcome difficulties, permitting students to raise their voice and making them aware of the importance of independent learning [27]. As a counselor, the teacher should provide advice to those students who encounter problems and the ways to solve these problems so that students can become more self-directed and efficient learners. Instead of doing everything to finish the lesson reluctantly, language teachers should provide students with responsibility- informing practices such as suggesting materials, learning strategies, planning procedures, self-assessment techniques and so on. In addition, the teacher is considered as more of a resource person than an authority. He is concerned with his own sensitivity to the students and to their individual differences in learning styles and rates of learning [27]. Teachers are the people who provide students with language input, skills and learning strategies. What is more, according to [1], language teachers have knowledge of how objectives can be set and study plans can be made, and how the learning of a particular item can be evaluated. ALC and ALLC need to be trained and experienced. It is the teacher‘s responsibility to accomplish this task. Apart from the above-mentioned roles, in learner-centered classrooms or in autonomous language classrooms, in-class practices used by the teacher are considered the first step for promoting LA. Teachers must take responsibility to organize different types of learning tasks. Learning strategies should be employed during instruction. It can be concluded that language teachers should take three major responsibilities: (a) supporting students in the development of the awareness of autonomous learning and confidence in their learning, (b) employing in-class practices and responsibility-informing practices to promote LA, and (c) creating a good learning environment for students so that they may acquire and practice knowledge and skills autonomously. 6. CONCLUSION This paper has discussed the concepts of TA, LA and the relationship between TA and LA in ESL/EFL education. From different points of view of researchers and educators, it can be confirmed that TA and LA has a close link. TA has been acknowledged as central to teachers‘ efforts to promote LA. The critical role that language teachers play in implementing innovative pedagogical practices may help enhance autonomous language learning. Having the ability to take charge of their own learning indicates that autonomous students need to be able to decide on all aspects relating to learning, including setting their long-term goals and short-term objectives, choosing learning materials for learning, determining tasks and 523
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