Healey’s effort, in fact, represents a critical look out of the concept of autonomy in terms of learning that conveys creating the ways and strategies to best achievements, meaningful learning, and perceiving the goals for learning. Healey discusses the four perspectives on autonomy described by Oxford (2003) in the area of CALL: technical (issues of setting & content), psychological, socio-cultural, and political-critical.
The term technical perspective, covering issues of learning, focuses on the gradual alteration of the process of controlling over learning, ranging from highly structured learning through highly self-directed learning. Likewise, regarding the issues of content, the effects of technology on learners’ styles of learning is discussed that how technology can offer varying modes of learning.
Considering the psychological perspective, the matters such as self-motivation, creating independent style o learning, and developing self-knowledge are perceived as major advantages of autonomous learning. This section of the article argues that the real goal of teaching is not necessarily to feed learners by knowledge, but rather to let them to construct knowledge, and to create their own styles.
The article also emphasizes the need for interpersonal interaction that challenges the misconception existing regarding the idea of “autonomy” which implies the association between autonomous learning and isolation or individualized learning. It also addresses CALL as an effective instrument to assist the interpersonal interaction.
The last part of the article, the political-critical perspective, emphasizes learners’ self-awareness and alerts the autonomous learners to be careful regarding using technology because as the article states, all the data is not necessarily provided by a handful of more skilled. Rather, the author encourages the autonomous learners to do not easily accept them. Therefore, the learners must critically look at the issues and should be aware of how to evaluate information.
Overall, I enjoyed a lot reading this article. The author’s efforts show that she could clearly define the responsibility of both instructors and the learners in the process of autonomous learning. In particular, I agree with what the author brought as the main concept of autonomous learning that the term autonomous refers more of thoughts rather than a technique. Most important, I was impressed by what the writer comes up with, that the term autonomy is not associated with isolation, but rather she emphasizes the highly effects of communities on autonomous learners. However, it is disputable for me that regarding the responsibilities of instructors, the article overemphasizes some pedagogical issues as instructors’ responsibilities more than content knowledge. So, I have a question that are the teachers responsible for directing students how they should learn, or also to assist them more of what should they learn?
Reflection 3
16 years ago
2 comments:
Amin,
Your question is interesting. In my opinion, teachers should do both facilitating how students should learn and also assisting what they should learn. Facilitating how students should learn could be issues like helping students to find out their own styles and strategies to best learn a language or to create lessons that facilitate several learning styles so that most students can benefit from those lessons. Assisting what students should learn is also important. I believe that even though we want to use CALL to promote learner autonomy and that teachers should not take too much control over the learning activities, no one can deny that teachers still have their role on helping to design what students should learn.
Kwanjira
Amin, you mention learner motivation. I'm reminded of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivators for learning and can understand how they affect autonomy. For example, it seems to make sense that technology as a positive medium for language learning becomes an extrinsic or external motivator that potentially increases the learner's motivation intrinsically. The opposite rings true as well. If the "reward" (extrinsic motivator) is perceived as not being worthwhile or valued, the learner may feel less confident, uninterested, and/or not in control. Thus, his/her sense of autonomy is not achieved. Moreover, the student can become turned-off to technology.
Sio
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