THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌
ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 7:
Challenging the Conventions of Learner Development Research
Authors: Dominic Edsall with Ellen Head & Aya Hayasaki
Title: Towards Complexity in Challenging Learner Autonomy Research Conventions: A Wider
View on Learner Development
Date of publication online: 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ7-9
Author contact: <dominic(dot)edsall(dot)15(at)ucl(dot)ac(dot)uk>, <ehead(at)sky(dot)miyazakimic(dot)ac(dot)jp>, <hayasakiaya(at)gmail(dot)com>
Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
https://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2023 each respective author
This article can be cited as:
Edsall, D. G., with Head, E. & Hayasaki, A. (2023). Towards complexity in challenging
learner autonomy research conventions: A wider view on learner development. The
Learner Development Journal, 7, 157–179. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ7-9

This article is part of a collection of practitioner research on the theme of “Challenging theConventions in Learner Development Research” for Issue 7 of the Learner Development
Journal (LDJ7), edited by Ellen Head, Aya Hayasaki, and Ryo Moriya. Published once a year,
each issue of the Learner Development Journal follows a Community of Practices approachover a period of approximately 18 months in which contributors work together, under theguidance of the editors, to share, respond to, and develop their research and writing.
Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors
grant users the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only thatproper attribution is given to the work.

ARTICLE
Towards Complexity in Challenging Learner
Autonomy Research Conventions: A Wider
View on Learner Development
Dominic Edsall, University College London, Institute of Education, UK,& Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan<dominic(dot)edsall(dot)15(at)ucl(dot)ac(dot)uk>
Ellen Head, Miyazaki International College, Japan<ehead(at)sky(dot)miyazaki-mic(dot)ac(dot)jp>
Aya Hayasaki, Waseda University, Japan<hayasakiaya(at)gmail(dot)com>
Learner autonomy is a complex concept that can be viewed from the perspective of human agency andidentity within a continually changing, multilingual ecology. In this article, I address three of the conventionsof learner autonomy that have solidified in the research literature highlighting how these conventions
are challenged by the research in Learner Development Journal 7. I also address some of the challenges
created by the trend towards complex dynamics systems theory in learner autonomy research. Adopting acomplexity perspective (Cameron & Larsen-Freeman, 2007) with critical realism (Bhaskar, 2016) as a metatheoretical framework, I argue that practitioner research should continue to deepen our understanding oflearner autonomy and change by flexibly combining perspectives together.

学習者オートノミー（自律学習）は、絶えず変化する多言語エコロジーの中で、人間の主体性とアイデンティティの観点から考えることができる複雑な概念である。
本論文では、学習者オートノミー（自律学習）に関する3つの定説を取り上げ、これらの定説がLDJの本号の研究によってどのような挑戦を受けているのかを明らかにする。
また、学習者オートノミー（自律学習）の研究において、複雑動的システム理論への流れが生み出すいくつかの課題についても言及する。
複雑性の視点（Cameron & Larsen-Freeman, 2007）と批判的実在論（Bhaskar, 2016）をメタ理論的枠組みとして採用することで、実践者研究が、相反する視点を柔軟に組み合わせながら自律学
習と変化に関する理解を深めていくべきだと主張する。

Keywords

learner autonomy, agency, complexity, practitioner research, critical realism
学習者オートノミー（自律学習）、主体性、複雑性、実践研究、批判的実在論

While the main author of this paper is Dominic Edsall, the writing was collaboratively developed by continuous
dialogue and questioning by Aya Hayasaki and Ellen Head with Dominic. The authorial voice, knowledge, andoverall perspective remain Dominic’s.

Introduction

Conventions have a good side – we know where we are – and a negative side as theytend to lead to inertia and resistance to change. To challenge conventions you need toknow what those conventions are. Building consensus on what the conventions shouldbe, has been a fundamental issue in learner autonomy research (LA) for the last 40 years(Edsall, 2020) because there has been little agreement on what conventions are held tobe true within the wider language teaching field (Block, 2021; Douglas Fir Group, 2016). I
define “convention” here as a norm or rule that provides reason for action or evaluative
judgement (Mamor, 1996; Rescorla, 2008). Conventions are both normative and arbitrary(Mamor, 1996; Ravenscroft, 2015), so the validity of learner autonomy (hereafter, LA)
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conventions depends on their impact within the LA field. Something – for example, a
belief in communication gap activities as the best way to follow a grammar presentation- may be a convention even if you and I as teachers do not slavishly follow such a norm.
The problem occurs when conventions solidify into prescriptive rules which limit newunderstanding. In this article, I am going to identify three of the conventions of learnerautonomy that have solidified in the literature before reviewing how LDJ7 challenges
these conventions. Adopting a critical realist (CR) perspective on LA and ideas frompositioning theory (PT), I then argue that to go beyond these conventions we must flexibly
combine perspectives together. In some cases, seemingly opposed perspectives can be
combined to overcome the limitations of those conventions. Throughout this article, I
will ask questions that challenge the reader to think about their own teaching practices.
Challenging a convention should be a creative rather than destructive process.
This article does not fit the mould of typical practitioner-driven research as found in
the Learner Development Journal (LDJ). The positioning of this article within the LDJ isitself a challenge to the conventions of LDJ, which has a focus on practitioner research(e.g., Ashwell et al., 2021; Jarvis, 1999; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001). You, the reader, may haveexperience of practitioner research from teacher training or continuing professional
development (Hanks, 2017; Menter et al., 2011). Menter et al. (2011) define ‘practitioner
research’ as follows:
Practitioner research in education is systematic enquiry in an educational setting
carried out by someone working in that setting, the outcomes of which are sharedwith other practitioners. (Menter et al., 2011, p. 3)
Practitioner research can provide a valuable contribution to both practitioner understanding
and academic understanding of teaching and learning (Hanks, 2017; Menter et al., 2011). The
aim of this article is to address some of the LA conventions found at the nexus of theoreticaland practitioner research, and upon which much LA practitioner research is based.
A core element to practitioner research is “systematic enquiry” (Menter et al., 2011).
I argue that CR helps support systematic enquiry within LA practitioner research byallowing the combination of different theoretical research paradigms. I was invited towrite this article by the LDJ editors to give a theoretical overview that would tie together
the other articles in a meaningful way. It has developed through discussion with theeditors and steering group over several drafts. I hope this article provides a creative
challenge to the view that the philosophy of science that provides the basis for CR has noplace in qualitative enquiry (Bhaskar, 2013). In the spirit of challenging the conventions,questions are interspersed with the sections of the article inviting the reader to reflect andapply the ideas to their experience.

Reflection Questions 1

When you think about your experience of language learning and language teaching up tonow, do you have a sense of “conventions” in the sense of “accepted truths” regarding learnerautonomy? What conventions appear to you to be helpful, and what conventions might needchanging or challenging?

My Position as Author

I have been a teacher for nearly 20 years, but I first qualified as a science teacher specialisingin chemistry before re-training in TESOL. Having studied chemistry, I learned about complexity
theory through the mathematics of chemical reactions. Discovering that adoption of a158

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complexity theory perspective is becoming a convention in second language acquisition(SLA) and learner autonomy (LA) was not a surprise, but the misguided enthusiasm ofsome language teachers and SLA academics (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 2018) was a shock.
As a chemistry student learning statistical mechanics, quantum chemistry, and various
combinations thereof, I could console myself that at least complexity in chemistry wasusually a closed system with known variables. In SLA, a complexity theory perspective
encompasses a wide open system of known and unknown variables, such as thoughts
or future outcomes, which may remain completely inaccessible and difficult to analyse
mathematically. When the inherent and unknown errors in a system may be orders ofmagnitude bigger than any number of Likert scales can cope with, how do you begin
to model and run a mathematical simulation of learner autonomy? I came to thisfundamental quandary in the course of my PhD research into teachers, learners, andviews of LA in Japan. Only after I discovered critical realism (CR) as a meta-framework
for understanding epistemology during my doctoral studies did complexity becomeless intimidating. My qualitative study of 35 students and 52 teachers at 12 different
universities across Japan, exploring their views of LA and developing an ecologicalmodel of LA and identity, is inherently complex. It has demanded of me a fundamental
re-examination of my own understanding of what knowledge is and how it is created.
And CR helped me get a much better handle on this complexity.

Critical Realism as a Framework for Understanding Learner Autonomy

Critical realism (CR) is a meta-framework for bringing together different theories andframeworks. One of its implications is that there are limits to what we as teachers andresearchers can know about LA (Edsall, 2020). CR is based on the philosophy of scienceand social science through the work of Archer (1995) and Bhaskar (2013, 2016).1 Its
perspective on reality as having layers helps explain the limits of empirical evidence in acomplex world: one layer of all real possibilities, one layer of actualized possibilities drawn
from the real, and one layer of empirical evidence drawn from the actual (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Bhaskar’s CR layered reality (Hoddy, 2019 based on Bhaskar, 2008)
1

The Roy Bhaskar Centre website has a number of useful resources that are free to access here.
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Bhaskar’s map helps explain research complexity in a way that satisfies the need for a
simplified map of complexity perspectives (Pallotti, 2021), without being too reductionist.
This map could also inform our readings of LDJ7. The complex lived experiences
documented in each article, are drawn from an open number of possibilities in the real
layer passing through the actual layer to the empirical layer. One way to think about
this is that the real layer is all the possibilities that could happen while you’re asleep, theactual layer is everything that does happen while you’re asleep, and the empirical layer
is everything that did happen and that you learn about the next day, although some ofwhat happened may always remain hidden from your awareness. This explanation issomewhat of a simplification, but the empirical is always a subset of the actual, which isalways a subset of the real. You may never empirically find out everything that happened,i.e., the actual, and the full scale of the real layer will always be obscured. Figure 1 thus
shows a simplified representation of critical realism’s layered reality that could form thebasis of such a map and help explain the sensitivities of complex dynamic systems.
Complexity’s sensitivity to initial conditions is rooted in the differences between eachlayer: Over time different real possibilities become actual at different points but either ofthese may not happen or may not be empirically observed: past layers of reality provide
the initial conditions for future layers of reality, but the connections between different
factors across layers may not be observed, so the completeness of our understanding
starts to break down. This goes to the fundamental reason for doing practitioner research- deeper, richer understandings can be developed other than by pure academic researchalone. I argue that any examination of LA must adopt an open-ended approach: Looking
at a student, we do not know the initial conditions of their LA and we cannot confirm thetotality of LA after an arbitrary amount of time. Recognizing the complexity of learnerautonomy development, we can only hope for a richer understanding (Edsall, 2020) andnot a complete representative understanding. Research efforts that hanker after narrowly
defined “best practices” are doomed.
Even the choice of time frame that helps decide when a set of “initial conditions”
are observed is arbitrary and problematic within social research (Bhaskar, 2016).
This raises the question of whether LA is even researchable (Edsall, 2020). Given thatsome practitioner-researchers have found students faking autonomy in an attempt
to manipulate teachers or the system (Rivers, 2015) and that some teachers recognise“fauxtonomy,” an inherent contradiction between their pedagogic beliefs and practices(Mullen et al., 2016; Rivers, 2002, 2015), it might be difficult to differentiate between
what is and what is not LA. If we want to regard LA as a researchable construct, then theimportant philosophy of science (and social science) question is whether LA conventions
can provide a “falsifiable” definition (Popper, 1963) of LA, because that would at least
provide some explanatory power over empirical observations. At the same time, it isbeneficial as a teacher, learner, or researcher to maintain a constructive creativity aboutthe LA of individuals with different identities, perspectives and social positions.

Reflection Questions 2

As a teacher, do you ever come across situations in which it is difficult to be sure whether the
students are genuinely autonomous? As a teacher, what would a constructive creative reaction
be when students are apparently passive during a class?

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Positioning and Identity as Aspects of Autonomy

Identity work is an ongoing process seen through sociolinguistic interactions, and it
is vital to LA. Block’s (2021) combination of CR and positioning theory (PT; Block, 2021;
Harré & Langenhove, 1991; Langehove & Harré, 1994) provides an approach to analysing
identity within the context of sociolinguistic interactions. Block’s (2021) adaptation of
PT is based on both the philosophy of science as well as philosophy more generally,
bringing in socioeconomic factors, ideas about the distribution of power, as well as the
cognitive and neurological perspectives in a transdisciplinary framework. This criticalrealist map of complexity that is not too reductionist (Pallotti, 2021) brings together theperspectives of TESOL, with its background of cognitively oriented SLA studies, and themore socially oriented field of education. As teachers, we need some heuristic systemwith sufficient explanatory power to inform our decisions: We need a rule of thumb - anexperience- or preference-based decision model in complexity theory terminology (An,2012). One way of understanding these rules of thumb for language teaching has been
proposed by the Douglas Fir Group (2016) based on Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1979, 2009)
ecological model of human development as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Douglas Fir Group’s (2016) Transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world

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In this framework, conventions from opposing cognitive and social perspectives on SLA
are arranged within different spheres extending out from the learner, representing thedifferent spaces that influence language acquisition (Douglas Fir Group, 2016). Contextualising
this framework around teaching and teacher identity, De Costa and Norton (2017) note that
this allows teachers to navigate dominant ideologies, institutional constraints, and classroom
challenges as they construct and reconstruct their professional identities.
Taking a look at this framework, we can already see that it has explanatory power tobring together all the studies in LDJ7 and give us a fresh sense of various alignments andresonances between them. For example, it connects with Takagi et al. (2023, this issue),
who show that teacher autonomy is important in order to foster autonomous learning
communities within the classroom. De Costa and Norton (2017) make the argument thatteacher identity work creates a unique, personal experience across the macro-meso-microlevels for each teacher. This means the rule of thumb will actually be different for eachteacher. There might be some superficial consensus between teachers working in the sameor similar institutions, but actually each teacher will create their own unique rules of thumb
through their own identity work.

Reflection Questions 3

What kind of “rules of thumb” are you aware of in your own learning and teaching? Do you
have different “rules of thumb” in different contexts?
In my teaching context, the Douglas Fir Group framework provides a helpful way tounderstand why students make choices that I might consider irrational as the teacher. In
my doctoral studies, it helps explain the dispositions that teachers adopt towards learnerautonomy and the related goals of their institutions, exploring how the social field of theclassroom is affected by the individuals within, the institutional power structures above,
and wider global influences. No model exists in isolation. An important precursor to the
Douglas Fir Group model, Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 2009) ecology of human development
offered a map of the impact of global realities, institutional power structures, classroom
social realities, and cognitive resources. Since the publication of the Douglas Fir Groupmodel, Block (2021) has worked with its implications for social identity. These have been
indispensable in my own research into teachers’ views of learner autonomy in Japan.
Finally, the scalability, rigour, and philosophical depth of both CR and PT appeal to
my identity as a science teacher who has converted to TESOL, even if there are somemethodological problems that need to be ironed out (Head, 2022). I want my scientificunderstanding of the world to be reconcilable with my understanding of teaching.
Identifying what the conventions are within LA research might offer new insights into how
to bridge the research-practice divide. This might then be the first step back from theconcrete minutiae to the bigger abstract picture for me as an author, and indeed as anobserver, researcher, interpreter, and so on. Having explored how positioning and identity
might be viewed from a broader perspective as connected to learner autonomy, in thenext part of the article I will discuss three conventions of learner development researchwhich I feel need to be challenged.

Reflection Questions 4

Looking back at the diagram of the Douglas Fir Group model, which area of the model do you
feel is the most approachable and interesting? Why?
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Convention 1: Defining Learner Autonomy

It’s over 40 years since Holec (1981, p. 3) provided his influential definition of learnerautonomy. It has since gained recognition within the language teaching community as
the conventional definition of learner autonomy, namely “the capacity to take charge of
one’s own learning.” (Benson, 2011; Jiménez Raya et al., 2017; Palfreyman, 2021). Manyinterpretations of this definition adopt a cognitive perspective (Little, 1991), making a
psychological judgement of the learner by linking the capacity for responsibility only toobservable behaviours (Edsall, 2020). While Holec’s was not the first definition of learnerautonomy, as evidenced by the much earlier work of Dewey (1938/1998), Piaget (1959),
and Dearden (1975), it became widely adopted and gained convention status throughinclusion in the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Project (Holec, 1981; Jiménez
Raya & Vieira, 2021). Palfreyman (2021) argues that Holec’s conceptualisation of LA
was not intended to be so narrow, but as this definition has become convention overthe 40 years since its publication, the knowledge claims within Holec’s work became
codified symbols in a research literature mainly concerned with practical applications(Leydesdorff et al., 2016; Palfreyman, 2021). As Palfreyman (2021) also argues, Holec’s
intentions have since been reinterpreted or even misunderstood. Discourse within
the professional TESOL community split around the conceptualisation of learnerautonomy as a cognitive capacity (Benson, 2011; Benson, 2013; Little, 1991) - an allegedly
quantifiable neurological limit on students’ abilities that is somehow separate fromagency, a social capacity. This separation of autonomy and agency into the cognitive
and the social in the TESOL community (Benson, 2013) matched a split in the wider
educational field between cognitive and social understandings (Block, 2021; Douglas
Fir Group, 2016; Moore, 2004, 2013); between positivist (quantitative) and interpretivist(qualitative) knowledge claims (Moore & Müller, 2002). The conventions of research
and academic publication have also tended to favour a singular focus on quantitative(positivist) or qualitative (interpretivist) research methods, with mixed methods
hampered by limited time and more limited research funding compared with othermethods (Wisdom & Fetters, 2015) and a bias of particular universities or researchcommunities to one or the other and a feeling that mixing the two is not a correct way
to do research. This bifurcation between ways of understanding the world, researchmethods, funding, and communities was something that the Douglas Fir Group (2016)
were hoping to overcome by encapsulating a much wider array of theories and researchlenses.
In the intervening period since 2016, there has been a proliferation of work drawing
on the idea of complex dynamic systems that is both academic and practitioner based.
Mercer (2019) reinterprets autonomy as a cognitive need for learners to feel “an active
sense of being able to influence their learning experiences” (p. 651), but makes theargument that relatedness and agency must be involved if students are to engage withlanguage learning. Reeve (2022) links autonomy and agency through self-determination
theory (Reeve et al., 2004), categorising autonomy as the motivational need for ownershipof learning, and agency as motivation. However, Reeve (2022) does not resolve the gap
between the idea of autonomy as a cognitive capacity and agency as motivation leading
to agentive engagement. While there are the beginnings of a shift towards interconnected
frameworks, such as the Douglas Fir Group framework, autonomy remains separated
from agency in much of the literature, creating one of the first conventions of learner

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autonomy: Autonomy is a cognitive competence, while agency is a separate socio-affective
capacity for action.
Rarely has conventional separation of autonomy and agency been challenged in theliterature (Chong & Reinders, 2022; Edsall, 2020; Little, 2020; Palfreyman, 2021) until recently
when researchers have started to attempt to study specific contexts that are supportive oflearner autonomy, such as university self-access centres (e.g., Reeve, 2022). Much of thiswork has grown out of the recent development of self-access learning culture, stimulated
within the Japanese context by educators like Cotterall and Murray at Akita International
University, Murray later at Okayama University, and Mynard at Kanda University ofInternational Studies. Learning advisors have access to do one-to-one research in a very
natural way and develop insights into longitudinal patterns of development as part of theirjob. For example, Mynard (2020) adopts sociocultural concepts on agency, dialogue, andinteraction to explain how advising can support the development of the metacognitive
skills and self-determination necessary for autonomous learning. In examining learnerengagement through self-determination theory, Mercer (2019) argues that learners havegenuine learner agency within the classroom. There is an implicit acceptance of agency andthe social within recent literature while still retaining a focus on the individual psychologyof learning. This contrasts with early attempts to explain the effects of socialisation onlearner autonomy, such as Benson (1991), that maintained that socialisation was a primarily
oppressive force restricting individual metacognitive skills, such as critical reflection.
Examples of the interplay between socialisation and critical reflection can be seen in
Morioka (2023, this issue) and Barfield and Nakayama (2023, this issue), both highlighting
positive and negative outcomes, raising questions about the role of reflection.

Reflection Questions 5

How different is the social field of the classroom in which you teach, from the other social fields inwhich your students participate? How do you negotiate or navigate the different understandings
about the respective roles of teachers and students, if their understandings are different fromyours?

Convention 2: Democratising Learner Autonomy

The second convention that I would like to challenge is that learner autonomy is always themost rational choice because it is in the best interests of the student in a democratic society(Dearden, 1975; Jiménez Raya et al., 2017); therefore, a failure to be autonomous during alanguage class must be a learner’s failure to make a rational choice. Overt expression oflearning engagement is considered essential in some frameworks for learner autonomy,such as Jiménez Raya et. al. (2017). This creates and maintains a deficit model of learnerautonomy - if a learner is not autonomous, then it is the learner’s cognitive deficit that is
to blame. Problematic individual differences in a learner’s psychology are criticised for alack of observed autonomy rather than other social factors, which are dismissed as due
to unregulated affective or emotional factors (Jiménez Raya et al., 2017). This contrasts
with Reeve’s (2022) work that accepts that learner engagement is not directly linked withcognitive capacity. In Reeve’s model, students may become disengaged due to social orenvironmental factors. Unfortunately, many scholars until now have adopted a stanceresembling rational choice theory (Archer, 2000), which assumes that human behaviour isa series of rational choices. The assumption that autonomy is always an outwardly rational
choice can be found in much of the learner autonomy literature (Benson, 2011; Benson &164

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Voller, 2014; Dam, 1995; Little, 1991; Littlewood, 1996; Murray, 2021; Reinders, 2021). Thisidea ignores the fact that classrooms do not always provide much freedom and autonomy
might not be perceived as being in that individual’s best interests at a specific time or place(Archer, 2013; Mullen et al., 2016; Rivers, 2002, 2015), especially if the classroom is not seen
as democratic by the students (Head, 2006a, 2006b) or if the teacher does not value thestudents’ identities (Norton, 2014). Under such a frame of mind, the rationality of autonomy
choices is judged by the teacher rather than the learner making those choices, whichraises further questions about the empirical reliability of such judgements (Edsall, 2020).
Non-participation, for example, is often seen as the most logical choice by students (Norton,
2014), even though it may appear to be irrational to the teacher.
Like most authors and teachers, I would argue that learner autonomy is beneficial tostudents, but I equally believe that it is wrong to assume that students’ choices aroundautonomy are insulated from the rest of their lived experiences. Little (2020) points outthat Holec’s definition of learner autonomy was developed in the context of organisational
choices in adult education. More social definitions of learner autonomy, such as Dam’s(1995), where a rational choice is also a socially responsible choice within the secondaryclassroom, reflect the wider context in which education aims to develop teenagers into
responsible adults. Of course, all modern education systems aim to develop responsible
adults, but the difference is in how the term, “responsible adults” is defined and who
creates/enforces that definition. For example, Japan’s 1998-2003 policy failure that was
yutori kyouiku, relaxed education (Sakurai, 2016), could be seen as an example of where a
new definition of “responsible adult” failed due to insufficient support.
For me as a teacher, finding a rational cause-and-effect relationship can be a relief
because it makes teaching simpler, but very few people are always rational. The
role of affect or emotions on learner autonomy is comparatively under-described in
the literature (Aoki, 1999; Swain, 2011). Chong and Reinders (2022) found only a few
references in autonomy-related literature to affect within specific self-regulatory
learning frameworks. This focus on learner self-regulation can be seen in the second
convention that displaying learner autonomy in the classroom is always the mostrational choice for students. Such an assumption allows researchers to ignore the messy
reality of emotions, akin to Krashen’s (1985) “affective filter” hypothesis of much older
SLA literature (Swain, 2011; VanPatten & Williams, 2014). Approaching emotions andaffect from the individual differences’ perspective, much of the research that looks at
the effects of affect on autonomy is concerned with supposed irrational choices thatblock or hinder autonomous study, which conveniently - but misleadingly - bundles
together factors that are difficult to tease apart.

Reflection Questions 6

As a teacher, do you think that the learners’ emotions are important? How do positive andnegative emotions function in motivating your students in your classroom?

Convention 3: Insulating Learner Autonomy

The third convention in the learner autonomy literature that I will challenge is based on
the first and second conventions, and it is that learner autonomy does not vary over timeor between contexts. This convention is being increasingly challenged as researchers
examine learner autonomy from a complexity perspective (Larsen-Freeman et al., 2012;
Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008; Paiva & Braga, 2008). Many works in the literature
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clearly delineate this insulation of autonomy by arbitrating that “autonomy” is separate
from “learner autonomy,” which in turn is separate from “language learner autonomy”(Benson, 2011); and that LA can be separated from politics and everything else beyond theclassroom walls (Benson, 2014). An alternative view proposes that learner autonomy is aWestern concept bundled up within linguistic imperialism (Humphreys, 2014; Humphreys& Wyatt, 2013). Some researchers have put forward the view that learner autonomy canbe studied in isolation from time and life events (Bei et al., 2019; Dixon, 2011; Macaskill &Taylor, 2010; Murase, 2015; Yen & Liu, 2009). Many of these delineations are the result of
the underlying research epistemologies - the specific researcher’s theory of knowledge,
where more positivist epistemologies require more isolation of learner autonomy
conceptually (Edsall, 2020), resulting in differing degrees of insulation of learner autonomy
from other factors. This can be seen in Jiménez Raya, Lamb and Vieira’s (2017) positioningof learner autonomy on a spectrum of definitions, requiring the separation of agency
and autonomy as per the first learner autonomy convention. This creates conceptual
insulation between agency and autonomy.
Adopting a complexity perspective on learner autonomy (Paiva & Braga, 2008), we cansee critically that much of this conceptual insulation is for practical expediency, enablinga specific research method at the cost of banal results (Edsall, 2020). We can also seethat some of this insulation is the result of structure within the wider fields of education
and applied linguistics, and the different subfields of language teaching (Block, 2021;
Douglas Fir Group, 2016; Edsall, 2020), which much of the learner autonomy literatureignores (see Figure 3 in the following section). Where the literature does not ignore such
structures (Benson, 2000, 2008; Lamb, 2008; Little, 1995; Nakata, 2011), it is usually in
relation to teacher autonomy, but the obvious link with learner autonomy via agency isoften ignored. One danger of considering autonomy in isolation from other factors is thatthe presentation of autonomy in pre-service and in-service teaching programmes can
produce a double-bind for teachers in which they “have” to incorporate certain kinds ofmethodology due to a government policy, imposed from the top, supposedly in favourof learner autonomy, but without the resources or a complete understanding of how
to do so. As mentioned earlier, the implementation of Japanese yutori kyouiku [relaxededucation] was just one example of an attempt to introduce autonomy which had limited
success for such reasons (Head, 2006b). To overcome such structural constraints on
observable autonomy, adoption of a complex dynamic systems perspective highlights
the interconnectedness of various factors, while allowing practitioners to focus on a small
area available to them for research (Dörnyei, 2014; Larsen-Freeman et al., 2012; Paiva &Braga, 2008).

Reflection Questions 7

What links have you established between learner autonomy and the agency of your students?
What kind of observable behaviour makes you feel that your students are agentive or autonomous?

The Complex Effects of Change and Affect

Above I have described how many learner autonomy studies have come to be insulated
from time or contexts. The insulation of autonomy from research on emotions is equallyproblematic. Emotions do influence our choices (Swain, 2011) and, as an important factor
in our choices, emotions are an inseparable facet of our humanity and the empiricalscience that we do (Bhaskar, 2016). Emotions also form an important aspect of learner
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identity development (Hiver et al., 2021; Miyahara, 2015). This is quite perplexing whenstudying learner autonomy because it creates a complex nexus of different factorsthat we can only hope to understand partially (Borges, 2022; Edsall, 2020). Barfield andNakayama (2023), for example, discuss their own struggles as teachers to understand
student approaches to Project-Based Learning and the different factors they encounter.
Morioka (2023, this issue) finds that reflective activities with teenage students may
actually discourage engagement with group work in some circumstances. Kawasaki(2023, this issue) grapples with this notion directly by looking at how peer interaction
influences emotional regulation. All three articles challenge much current researchwhich fails to account for the complexities of affect.
What we can state is that many important choices occur at points of change and that
we all react differently to change (Williams, 1999). At each point of change, our reaction isgoing to be based on whether we individually see the event as positive or negative, which
involves an evaluation that is based on both rational and irrational responses to thatchange. In my doctoral work, I adopted Williams’ (1999) template for human responses
to change; the model was intended to identify successful strategies for recoveringfrom change induced crisis - a practical purpose that bridges both cognitive and social
perspectives. How each individual responds to the same change may be different or thesame, and an outside observer may not see any response or even notice that there has
been a change (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. William’s (1999, p. 611) template for human responses to change
In Williams’ (1999) model, a crisis point is where dramatic change and responses are most
likely to be empirically observable to an outside researcher. Unexpected success in a major
speaking test or an embarrassing mistake can bring about change through responses tothat event. However, we can envision similar but less dramatic points of change that
influence the learner and create both diversity of choice and diversity of change with learnerautonomy and learners. In this connection, Barfield and Nakayama (2023) highlight theirown struggles and diverse crisis points as teachers trying to manage both students andcurriculum change. Yunita (2023, this issue) adopts a complexity perspective by focusing
on the two learner’s behavioural changes given their affective state and regulation within
individual constraints and the external context. This external context is depicted in terms
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Towards Complexity in Challenging Learner Autonomy Research Conventions: A Wider View on Learner Developmentof events which push learners towards autonomy and people and things2 which support
autonomy, but remains an open complex system, of which some aspects are accepted as
being unknown.
Adapting William’s model to include points of change as well as crisis, we can trace
how a learner’s journey passes through points of change, where those points of change
emerge from events at different levels of the Douglas Fir Group framework. Throughuse of a learner narrative approach (Barkhuizen, 2016, 2017a, 2017b), Yarwood (2023,
this issue) traces Hiroto’s emotions through three different levels from the micro level
representing individual thoughts, emotions, and beliefs; to the macro level representing
institutional and social spaces; and to the meso level representing the ideological andcultural contexts. This narrative approach allows Yarwood (2023) to trace salient variables
across these different levels to illustrate how emotions impact motivation and provide
metacognitive resources. We can see that this challenges the second convention thatlearner autonomy is always a rational choice because learner autonomy could also be theirrational choice: In Yarwood’s (2023) study, Hiroto re-evaluated negative experiences ofself-directed learning at an emotional level through positive interactions with an empathic
advisor and increased self-awareness. This demonstrates that autonomy is involved in
the constant process of learner re-construction of identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015; De
Costa & Norton, 2017; Huang & Benson, 2013; Murray et al., 2011). Yarwood’s researchalso demonstrates that we can get a better picture of learner autonomy by examining thedifferent complex layers in which we do identity work as learners and teachers and tracing
our unique trajectories through these spaces. This idea of complexities will be further
discussed in the following section, but I would first like you to pause and think about yourown teacher identity.

Reflection Question 8

How has your autonomy as a teacher and learner been involved in the (re-)construction of yourown teacher identity?

A Critical Stance on Complex Perspectives in Language Learning
and Autonomy

At this point, we need to look more closely at what we mean by adopting a complex dynamic
systems theory perspective. It is self-evident that language learning and by extension learnerautonomy are complex and should be viewed from a complex dynamics system perspective(Atkinson et al., 2016; De Bot et al., 2007; Hiver et al., 2022; Larsen-Freeman et al., 2012;
Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008; Ushioda, 2021). The real danger in adopting a complex
dynamics system perspective is that we might get carried away with the word “perspective”
encouraging us to make unsupported assumptions and misuse CDST terminology. Thereis also the temptation to give up on other social methods even where it might be possibleor useful not to do so (Pallotti, 2021). To avoid this danger, I propose to adopt a criticalrealist stance: I use the word approach here to denote a scientific methodology or set ofprocedures that are agreed within the literature. In a complex dynamics system approach,such as meteorology, most of the underlying connections between factors are reasonably
well known allowing an approximation of the errors involved in trillions of calculations
using billions of data snapshots taken every minute across and through the earth’s
atmosphere (Huba et al., 2014). As language teachers we cannot possibly hope to replicate
2 I use ‘things’ here to encompass the vast array of supports for learner development (e.g., Barfield, 2014).

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that level of explanatory power and weather forecasts are not even that accurate or precise,
yet the words “complexity” and “complex dynamic systems,” and the abstruse terminology
used in the field (Sampson & Pinner, 2021; Ushioda, 2021), convey a greater sense of legitimacy
to truth claims than the word “perspective” alone can really support. Critical realism allows us
to work with the incomplete nature of such perspectives (Edsall, 2020, 2022).
While many recognise that as language teachers we must adopt a perspective rather
than an approach (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008), there are many examples in theliterature where researchers have unwittingly made insufficiently supported claims to truthand empirical evidence, with Hiver et al. (2022), for example, finding 63 research papers ina scoping review of 20 years of CDST research. There is a danger in research that confuses
perspective with approach basking in undeserved scientific legitimacy and misleading future
researchers - scientism (Lerner, 2020) without the actual scientific evidence to support
such rhetoric. A claim to have found an attractor state, for example (Whiteside, 2013), isa statement that carries with it a specific mathematical meaning that can be supported
only by a complex dynamics systems approach and not a mere perspective. That is not to
say that language teachers must abandon the ideas of complexity. We need to be mindfulthat the very nature of complexity that is the source of such a perspective’s explanatory
power, namely the concepts of complete interconnectedness between data snapshots (therelational principle), emergent behaviour, and sensitivity to initial conditions (the adaptive
principle, highlighting the importance of time) (Hiver et al., 2022; Lerner, 2020), can also
obscure our understanding and place hard limits on the truthfulness of any insight itprovides (Alemi et al., 2011; An, 2012; Edsall, 2020, 2022). We also need to be mindful that
imprecise adoption of complexity perspectives may provide the frustrated positivist with apragmatic excuse not to engage with a more holistic approach that encompasses qualitative
as well as quantitative research. For example, in a recent scoping literature review, Hiveret al. (2022) highlight a number of studies whose methodologies were incompatible with
explaining the dynamics of change that were claimed to be the focus of study.

Reflection Questions 9

With those caveats in mind, are you interested in adopting a complex dynamic systems perspective
to better understand learner autonomy? Which of the approaches, if any, which you have readabout in LDJ7 attract you as a means of developing your own understanding of autonomy?

Identity, Autonomy, and Ecological Perspectives

Language is both a linguistic system and a social practice, where identity is negotiatedin a complex context of unequal social relations (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton, 2013,2016, 2021). Norton (2013, p. 4) defines identity as “the way a person understands his or
her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space,and how the X’s understands possibilities for the future.” As teacher-researchers, weshould be concerned with the social structure of our classrooms as they give us specifictime-dependent snapshots of different communities of practice (Brouwer et al., 2012;
Burgess, 2010; Lave & Wenger, 1991, 1998; Leander & Sheehy, 2004,; Lemke, 2009). Froma complexity perspective, we should be thinking about when, the amount of time, andthe zeitgeist3 as possible temporal factors (An, 2012; Castellani & Hafferty, 2009; Lemke,
3 The prevailing ideas, attitudes, and beliefs within a social field may impact the strength of connections
between when, the amount of time, the speed at which events happen, and other factors, and may also
impact empirical observability.
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2009; O’Sullivan, 2004). A learner’s negotiations of their own identity will inform theirunderstanding of learning and their conception of the future possibilities of learning later,which matches well with Bourdieu’s (1977) concept of habitus - another possible lens in the
CR toolkit that we can use. The concept, habitus can be defined as a transposable system ofdispositions towards agency that enable individuals to negotiate different situations basedon past experience (Block, 2021). Traces of this idea can be seen in how Nakayama (Barfield& Nakayama, 2023) wants to make her students “break through the cocoons of habituatedthinking and assumptions” (p. 19). Nakayama (Barfield & Nakayama, 2023) gives an exampleof how this “breaking through the cocoon by students” came about by intercultural contact,
while in Barfield’s case, it happened when his seminar student adopted a critical perspective
on her own consumption habits and the practices of different fast fashion actors. Adoptinga Critical Realism stance (Bhaskar, 2016), we can see that such knowledge production
transforms our social identities as the diversity of unique experiences gives rise to adiversity of social, political, and cultural identities (Bhaskar, 2008, 2016). As both a part and a
result of such negotiations, the results of any agency exercised in the pursuit of autonomy
will constantly re-inform the learner’s understanding of agency and autonomy and thefuture possibilities thereof within and beyond the classroom setting. This can be seen in allof Harrison (2023, this issue), Kawasaki (2023), and Takagi et al. (2023) where learning aboutboth EFL and LA happens in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1998, 2002; Tassinari,
2017; Wenger, 1998, 2000) fostered by the teacher.
Adopting a complexity perspective can bridge the gap between social and cognitive
perspectives and the gap between the concepts of societal, institutional and personalautonomy (Benson, 2019; Block, 2021). So, negotiations of identity within a classroom will
have an impact on the amount of learner autonomy observed or unobserved: Learnerautonomy plays a role in the identity negotiations within a classroom because of theinherently complex, social nature of such a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1998;
Wenger, 1998, 2000) and vice versa: Identity as social struggle (Darvin & Norton, 2015) will
feedback to learner autonomy. Thus, Kawasaki (2023) found that a classroom learning
community can increase the likelihood that students will express their identity openly
enabling more successful language learning. Similarly, Takagi et al. (2023) also discoveredthat when a teacher had the autonomy to create such a learning community, the students’learning and creativity flourished.
Practitioner research often has a profound impact on identity. We can see this process
at work in many of the articles in LDJ7, for example in Harrison’s paper, which uses thegenre of autoethnography to explore the interpretation of public and private identities(Harrison, 2023). Practitioner research often involves classroom interventions aimed atcreating occasions when learners can exercise agency and develop autonomy. Kawasaki’s
experiments with peer support (Kawasaki, 2023) and Morioka’s trials with group reflection(Morioka, 2023) offer relevant examples here.
No matter a learner’s cognitive capacity for taking responsibility (Holec, 1981), wecannot see learner autonomy unless there are spaces within the other spheres that aresupportive of learner autonomy and agency. Ahearn (2001, p. 112) defined agency as the“socioculturally mediated capacity to act,” and so our observations of learner autonomy
via agency must be socioculturally mediated in some way.

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The Critical Realist Challenge to Conventional Understandings ofLearner Autonomy

In this article I have set out to frame what some of the conventions of learner autonomy
are and how these three presented conventions are challenged from a complex systems
perspective. The first convention that autonomy and agency are separate, unconnectedconcepts continues to be challenged by a growing body of literature that examines
autonomy within wider social contexts that are supportive of autonomous learning. The
work of the Douglas Fir Group (2016) brings together social and cognitive perspectives
on language learning, further questioning the methodological separation of autonomy
and agency. Adopting a complexity perspective (Cameron & Larsen-Freeman, 2007) withcritical realism (Bhaskar, 2016) as a meta-theoretical framework, I argue that learnerautonomy and agency are intrinsically linked.
Challenging a convention should be a creative rather than destructive process as
the authors in this issue have shown. Yarwood (2023) and Yunita (2023) demonstrate
the importance of understanding learners’ histories, and the role of affect in how theirtrajectories through learning change. Harrison (2023) demonstrates the importance ofunderstanding ourselves deeply and holistically as teachers as a way to support learnerdevelopment. Kawasaki (2023), Morioka (2023), and Barfield and Nakayama (2023)
explore aspects of learner autonomy as a social rather than purely cognitive capacity, andhow learner autonomy must be viewed as connected to the wider context rather than inisolation. Takagi et al. (2023) focus on a situation in which a teacher has the autonomy
within their institution to foster a creative and supportive learning community.
I hope that this article has shown that the deep understanding that practitioner research
can provide is strengthened by adopting a CR stance within a complex dynamic systems
theory perspective. Combining social and cognitive perspectives creates possibilities forteacher-researchers to better understand both themselves and their students from theperspective of human agency and identity within a multilingual ecology. My article has
focused on the meso and micro levels of the Douglas Fir Group (2016) framework (see Figure2). On the way it has created a number of questions for myself and other teachers, and also
hopefully for you, the reader. Adopting a critical realist stance in a complex dynamic systemperspective will allow further exploration of these important questions.

Author Bios

Dominic Edsall is an Assistant Professor of Medical Communication, at Kyoto Prefectural
University of Medicine, and a doctoral candidate at UCL Institute of Education in Curriculum,
Pedagogy and Assessment. His doctoral research focuses on teacher identity and thenegotiation of learner autonomy. He also teaches education courses part time at Nara
Women’s University. His research interests include learner autonomy, agency, identity inlanguage learning, critical realism, CLIL, pedagogy, teacher development, and curriculum.

エデソル・ドミニクは京都府立医科大学の医療コミュニケーション学助教であり、UCL Institute of Educationのカ
リキュラム・教育学・評価学の博士課程に在籍している。
博士課程では、教師のアイデンティティと学習者オートノミーの交渉について研究している。
奈良女子大学非常勤講師として教育方法論も教えている。
研究テーマは、学習者
オートノミー（自律学習）、主体性、言語学習におけるアイデンティティ、批判的実在論、CLIL、教育学、教師開発、
カリキュラムなど。

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Ellen Head works as an associate professor at Miyazaki International University, Japan.
She has been involved with many Learner Development SIG projects, from the Autonomy
You Ask! anthology, to the most recent conference, LD 30. Her research has included
applications of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) to Content andLanguage Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs at her university.

エレン・ヘッドは宮崎国際大学で准教授として勤務している。
Autonomy You Ask！選集から最近ではLD30カンファレンスまで、多くのLearner Development SIGプロジェクトに関わる。
これまでの研究には、CEFR（Common
European Framework of Reference）のCLILプログラムへの応用も含まれている。

Aya Hayasaki is a research associate at the Research Institute for Letters, Arts and Sciences
at Waseda University. She is also a PhD student at Waseda University and a part-time
lecturer of Self-Directed Learning at Gakushuin University, Japan. Aya holds a Master ofArts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from the University of Birmingham, UK. Her
main research interests include L2 learner and teacher well-being, learning beyond theclassroom, and transformative learning, especially in rural contexts.

早﨑綾は、早稲田大学総合人文科学研究センター助手である。
同大学大学院文学研究科博士後期課程に在籍し、学習院大学非常勤講師として自己主導型学習の講義も担当している。
英国バーミンガム大学にて教育学修士（TEFL）を取得。
研究の主な関心は、L2学習者と教師のウェルビーイング、教室を超えた学習、特に地方における変容的学習。

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