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We're all in it together: Exploring the interdependence of teacher and learner autonomy

David Little, Centre for Language and Communication Studies, Trinity College, Dublin

Presented at Autonomy 2000, University of Helsinki Language Centre, 7-9 September 2000

Introduction

Little (1995) argued that learner autonomy depends on teacher autonomy in two senses:
(i) it is unreasonable to expect teachers to foster the growth of autonomy in their learners if they themselves do not know what it is to be an autonomous learner; (ii) in determining the initiatives they take in their classrooms, teachers must be able to apply to their teaching those same reflective and self-managing processes that they apply to their learning.

This paper seeks to extend the scope of that argument both theoretically and practically, by giving greater emphasis to the social-interactive dimension of learning and exploring the implications of that emphasis for the "pedagogical dialogue".

The autonomous foreign language learner

Learners take their first step towards autonomy when they accept responsibility for their own learning (see, e.g., Holec 1981, Little 1991, Dam 1995). This entails an attitude that generates learning behaviours shaped and guided by reflection, and to this extent learner autonomy depends on a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action (Little 1991, p.4). But the development of learner autonomy also has a social-interactive dimension, as successful classroom experiments make clear (e.g., Dam 1995, Seeman and Tavares 2000, Thomsen 2000).

Learner autonomy has been thought important for two reasons: (i) if learners are themselves reflectively engaged in planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning, it should follow that their learning will be more successful than otherwise because it is more sharply focussed; and (ii) the same reflective engagement should help to make what they learn a fully integrated part of what they are, so that they can use the knowledge and skills acquired in the classroom in the world beyond. In the foreign language classroom, this means that the target language must be used as the channel through which teaching and learning take place - including the reflective processes of planning, monitoring and evaluation.

The capacity for autonomous learning behaviour is one that grows under the influence of learning experience, and its scope expands with the development of the learner's proficiency in whatever it is he or she is learning.

A dialogic view of learning and language

The dominant tradition in Western psychology has concentrated on mechanisms and processes internal to the individual, often to the virtual exclusion of social and environmental factors. Examples: Piaget's model of cognitive development; mainstream empirical research into second language acquisition (cf. Ellis 1994, p.657 on the role of "instruction").

Alternative theories of cognition and learning emphasize the interdependence of the individual-cognitive and the social-interactive, e.g., Vygotsky's view (1978, 1986) that the higher cognitive functions are internalized from social interaction (the zone of proximal development is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" [Vygotsky 1978, p.86; italics added]).

Related theories, e.g., distributed cognition, which seeks to account for the fact that we "appear to think in conjunction or partnership with others and with the help of culturally provided tools and implements" (Salomon 1993, p.xiii); situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998), which is concerned with the fact that we learn by constructing meanings and identities as members of "communities of practice"; and interactive minds, which "implies that the acquisition and manifestation of individual cognitions influence and are influenced by cognitions of others" (Baltes and Staudinger 1996, p.6).

On the interdependence of the social-interactive and individual-cognitive dimensions of cognition and learning, cf. Ackermann (1996, p.32): "Without connection people cannot grow, yet without separation they cannot relate". Ackermann understands cognitive growth and learning as "a dance between diving in and stepping out" (ibid., p.28). The truth of this metaphor is confirmed by first language acquisition: social interaction is essential, but so too is the time the child spends alone, talking to herself, playing with words, assisting the internalization process by rehearsal and language games (cf. Crystal 1998, Nelson 1989).

But why are human beings so ready to engage with their environment (including other human beings)? -From birth babies "appear able to engage actively and effortlessly in mutually attuned contact with sensitive and caring adults" (Brten 1992, p.77). Trevarthen (1992, p.102) takes this to be evidence for the existence of an innate capacity for what he calls "intersubjectivity", "a specialized psychological function that perceives, forms actions and regulates itself in relation to an environment of human minds and their motives and emotions" (ibid., p.106).

Brten (1992, p.80) explains the same capacity in terms of a "virtual other" in the mind, which invites replacement by actual others and is "inherent in the operational circuits by which the mind recreates and transforms itself" (ibid.). This amounts to the claim that our minds are dialogic rather than monologic in structure, our cognitive processes interactive, engaging either with the "virtual other" within or with the "actual other" that is another person.

Trevarthen (1992, p.105; italics added): "This inborn intersubjective faculty of the infant must be seen as a direct effect of pure, unthinking motivation. Nevertheless, it has a rudimentary reflectivity and an autonomy that presage thoughtful message-making in the head, and communication of interest in a shared world."

"The natural intersubjectivity of language" (Trevarthen 1992, p.102): "Each of us imagines separately, but we are compelled to question, compare, argue, persuade, agree and disagree as we talk out meanings. As Adam Smith put it, we think in conversation with a notional 'other' in our head" (ibid., pp.102f.).

The pedagogical dialogue: Three principles and their implementation

Traditional forms of pedagogical discourse are based on "the recitation script", which "consists of a series of unrelated teacher questions that require convergent factual answers and student display of (presumably) known information" (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988, p.14). The dialogic understanding of cognition, learning and language requires a quite different form of pedagogical discourse, always immediate, embedded in the here and now of the teacher and her or his learners, focussed on jointly understanding the process in which they are engaged. Only if it is rooted in such an effort to understand can the dialogue that involves "real others"-teacher and learners, learners and learners-feed the internal dialogue in which each of us engages with the "virtual other".

Whatever the teacher does in the classroom is inevitably shaped by her or his unique system of personal constructs: "you are yourself, in some sense, what you teach" (Salmon 1995, p.28). Teacher autonomy is grounded in the uniqueness of each individual teacher, but if dialogue is a reciprocal process, our understanding as teachers must develop in interaction with the development of our learners' understanding. Teachers no less than learners have a "virtual other" to feed.

Three pedagogical principles derived from my earlier characterization of the autonomous language learner: (i) learner empowerment, (ii) reflectivity, (iii) appropriate target language use.

The principle of learner empowerment entails that as teachers we bring our learners to accept responsibility for their own learning. A truly dialogic process entails joint exploration: our understanding should grow along with that of our learners. If it doesn't, that is a sure sign that we are standing outside the process, going through the motions rather than engaging with our teaching in the way that we demand our learners should engage with their learning. Note that we are concerned here with a gradual process of empowerment, and one in which our professional knowledge and experience contribute to the dialogue a content and (sometimes) a direction that it could not otherwise possess.

The principle of reflectivity is already implied by the principle of learner empowerment. In the autonomous language classroom, reflection begins as a collaborative activity in which teacher and learners seek to make explicit their joint understanding of the process they are engaged in. Reflection must be pursued as a routine that retains its meaning because the scope of the learners' responsibility is always expanding outwards, which means that the reach of their reflection is always being extended.

Reflection is unlikely to progress far without the support of writing because (i) it is by writing things down that we provide ourselves with something to reflect on in the first place, (ii) it is easier for us to step back from our own utterances and thoughts when they have been written down, and (iii) the reflective process itself is greatly facilitated if we use written notes to help us work out what we think (cf. Clark 1997, chapter 10).

The use of writing to support reflection should help to develop not only learners' metacognitive control of the learning process but also their conscious awareness of the target language and its grammar: there is a sense in which literacy-making language visible-is metalinguistics (Olson 1991).

When reflection is explicitly focussed on the learning process, it is likely to take account of motivation and affect-"I worked well/badly"; "our group liked/didn't like this project"; "I was happy/unhappy with today's work"; but it should always try to focus on the specific quality of the experience that gave rise to positive or negative feelings-"How did I work well/badly?", "Why did our group like/not like this project?"; "What made me happy/unhappy about today's work?". For that is how learners gradually become aware that a growing capacity for metacognitive control nurtures intrinsic motivation.

The principle of appropriate target language use requires that from the earliest stages we must engage our learners in forms of exploratory dialogue that require them to use the target language to express their own meanings. We must help them to construct and maintain multiple scaffolding in writing and in speech; and we must include in appropriate target language use the activities required by the principle of reflectivity. The three principles of learner empowerment, reflectivity, and target language use do not refer to three discrete aspects of the language teaching-learning process. Rather, they offer three closely related perspectives on one holistic phenomenon, the web of pedagogical dialogue that is woven partly in interaction between the participants in the process and partly in each participant's head. Their consistent and sustained pursuit produces a learning community in which teaching is learning, learning involves teaching, and language learning is inseparable from language use.

A practical tool for developing teacher and learner autonomy: The European Language Portfolio

The essence of my argument: the pedagogical dialogue will be maximally effective only if teachers as well as learners are fully involved, open to challenge and change. The pedagogical dialogue cannot be conducted by rote or recipe: it must be invented, elaborated and explored anew in each classroom; our dialogic role as teachers is never constant, our understanding of the teaching-learning process constantly in flux.

This means that we can never achieve the educational goals implicit in the notion of learner autonomy by teacher training alone; but it also means that teachers control their own professional development once they accept the challenge of exploratory partnership with their learners. The Council of Europe's European Language Portfolio (ELP) is a means of supporting teachers in this exploratory partnership, especially those teachers who have been formed in pedagogical traditions characterized by the "recitation script"?

The ELP has three components: a passport, which summarizes the owner's linguistic identity and includes the owner's assessment of his or her language proficiency; a biography, which is used to set learning targets, review learning progress, and record specially important learning and intercultural experiences; and a dossier, which contains the owner's selection of work that best represents his or her foreign language capacities.

The ELP has a reporting function - to supplement certificates and diplomas by presenting information about the owner's foreign language experience and concrete evidence of his or her foreign language achievements; and a pedagogical function - to make the language learning process more transparent to learners, help them to develop their capacity for reflection and self-assessment, and thus enable them gradually to assume more and more responsibility for their own learning.

Two findings from pilot projects conducted over the past three years: (i) the reporting function of the ELP tends to be valued by learners only to the extent that its pedagogical function has been fully exploited; and (ii) when its pedagogical function is taken seriously, the ELP can have a transformative effect on learners but also teachers. The reason for this: the ELP provides a firm framework within which to plan, monitor and evaluate learning; it puts exploratory reflection and self-assessment at the centre of the learning process; and it provides teachers as well as learners with a continuously moving reference point against which to plot the progress of the pedagogical dialogue.

References

ý David Little

This article was first published in the newsletter of the IATEFL Poland, Teacher Development and Autonomous Learning Special Interest Group (TDALSIG), April 2000. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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