Saturday, November 23, 2013

Week 7: Attaining that which was not withheld???


If you consider taking into account the students' learning habits, interests, needs and motivation as imperative and at the end, you do not give them a real opportunity to choose materials and tasks, why bother even considering after all?

On the other hand,

If you just give the students total freedom to choose materials and tasks without first actually considering their learning habits, interests, needs, motivation, you might end up doing cool stuff for them, but you are not going to be sure if that cool stuff is actually contributing to  the language learning process.

As the articles and the discussion have mentioned, learner autonomy does not mean a classroom without teachers... additionally, learner autonomy does not mean students take on the role of teachers. In other words, learner autonomy does not cause the teacher to disappear magically... in fact the existence of both depends on the existence of the other.

Take for example parents and children. When a son or a daughter becomes autonomous, it means that he or she is able to do many things without the strict supervision of the parents. However, parents are still around (they can be contacted for help), they do not suddenly disappear because she or he has become autonomous... then again, if there were not parents at all to begin with, the kid would not have to go through the process of becoming autonomous at all.   

Autonomy cannot exist if there is not a person who confers or bequeaths the said autonomy to another who accepts it, no more than effective communication can exist without a  transmitter and a receptor . If we want our students to be autonomous learners, we will have to be there, helping them, making them think... Otherwise, being autonomous will lose its gist. You certainly cannot become autonomous from nothing, the very word implies that something initially withheld has been attained. 

4 comments:

  1. Hi David,
    I really like the way you compare teacher-student relationship to parent-child relationship. What seems interesting to me is that parents may seem to have more faith in their children's competence as autonomous learners once they know their children are already there, as normally parents know their children well enough to make the judgement. While teachers would always have doubts about students ability and maturity and wouldn't let go. The most frequent asked question would be if the students are maturely enough to study by themselves, why do they still need teachers? But after this week's study we all know that teachers, as you put it, will not just disappear from the classroom. What we need to do is to change our minds and change our roles.
    Good work!
    Best,
    Sijing

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  2. Hi David,

    I agree with you that learner autonomy does not mean a classroom without teachers... additionally, learner autonomy does not mean students take on the role of teachers.

    That’s true. In my country, traditionally, education attaches great importance to learner autonomy. It can be obviously judged from an old Chinese saying: “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.” However, in a Chinese EFL class, that does not mean the teacher could allow learners completely take charge of their learning. As for how much learner autonomy we should grant to students, it depends, differing from culture to culture and varying from person to person. In my culture, learners depend very much on the authority of teacher, if learner autonomy was completely promoted, for example, 90%, learners might think that the teacher is lazy, irresponsible, not doing his/her job and learners could learn almost nothing from the teacher. Learners’complaints might invite the institutional pressure to the teacher.

    Therefore, even if learners were allowed much learning autonomy, the role of the teacher should not be ignored. We’d better meet in the middle of the road.

    Regards,

    Fan

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  3. Hello David,
    I agree with you on many points. Autonomy does not mean that the teacher surrenders his authority or role. In Thanasoulas own words, learner autonomy is best achieved when, among other things, the teacher acts as a facilitator of learning, a counselor and a resource. Second, you cannot become autonomous from nothing. Therefore in areas where teaching is traditionally teacher centered Autonomy should be an ideal for teachers. It is true that it is not easy for teachers to change their attitudes towards learners, but they should keep in mind that autonomy is what will help learners use the language learned in class in situations outside the classroom and it is what will transform them into responsible thinkers in the future. Teachers should consequently communicate with learners in order to persuade them to change their beliefs and attitudes towards learning. One possible way of doing this is to implicitly talk them into the benefits of taking charge of their own learning. Then the learners can be asked to give their point of view about the activities they are performing.

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  4. hello david ,
    I couldn't agree more !Autonomy doesn't come by magic !
    It is a construction and I think teachers have a role in helping young kids and adolescents to become autonomous but parents are on the front row .
    Autonomy is a goal for us in our classes but it doesn't mean abandoning kids to their pulsion and envy .
    Communication , dialogue are also necessary to build this autonomy.
    But we need to be humble and patient !

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