Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): Short Articles

SHORT ARTICLES | 小論
What Qualities Autonomous Teachers Should
Nurture to Promote Learner Autonomy
Kyoko Gruendel
Kanda University of International Studies<5161112@kuis.ac.jp>
During my later years in elementary school, I remember my homeroom teacher calling mestupid. I responded to her, smiling at the same time, “Yep. You are right. I am stupid.” However,deep down, now when I think about it, I am not sure whether I really liked it or not. It was years
and years ago, but I might have been hurt, and I might have put on a facade of not caring. As mymotivation was always low, and I was the kind of student who always got bad grades, most of myteachers continued to look down on me until I was a second grader in junior high school. One day,my social studies teacher said to me, “You really ought to study hard, otherwise you won’t be able
to go to high school.” His comments really hit home. I decided to start sitting at my desk toreview the pages I had learned within that day. I continued to study like that until I got intouniversity.
By the time I was a university student, I decided to become an English teacher. Because of mypast experiences at junior high school, I was determined to become an English teacher who is nonjudgemental. That is, I do not want to judge my students based on how they look and talk. If they
study hard enough, they can achieve anything. Although I worked for foreign-affiliated andJapanese companies for 10 years before I finally became an English teacher, my thinking about
this didn’t change in the slightest and still remains the same today. I learned from my experiencesthat I will tell my learners if I can do it, they can do it. I would like to interact with my learners
with that in my mind and with respect. In a nutshell, if I am not motivated, how can my learners
be motivated?
After 10 years of working in business, I started teaching. I then began asking myself questions
such as “What does teaching really mean and how should I really teach? or “Is the way I teach mylearners OK? Shortly afterwards I learned that there is a TESOL Master’s program at Kanda
University of International Studies, and decided to apply. I started doing my Master’s in 2016, andsince then I have felt joy about learning every minute I study, even a sense of accomplishment
when I submit my term papers after a course is over. For some reason, I seem to have always
known that teachers need to be autonomous at a subconscious level if they expect their students
to be autonomous.
After taking a course in Learner Autonomy as part of my MA studies, my belief that teachers
need to be autonomous before they can expect their students to be so grew even stronger thanNewsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): Short Articles
before. To foster students’ autonomous language learning, Benson (2011) observed “teachers
themselves must display a degree of autonomy in their approaches to teaching and learning” (p.
185). I have also come to question how any learners could develop their own autonomy unlesstheir teachers themselves are autonomous. Little (1995) stated that “…since learning arises frominteraction, an interaction is characterized by interdependence, the development of autonomy inlearner presupposes the development of autonomy in teachers” (p. 175). Teachers interact with
their students in their classroom, and hence, naturally, teachers influence their own students intheir learning and teaching. In my case, for example, I use “near-peer role models” (Murphey,1998) during my class. Although age-wise my learners are much younger than I am, talking to mylearners in English as much and successfully as possible “increases my learners’ motivation andstrategy-choice while challenging limiting beliefs” (Murphey, 1998, p. 201). A few students
actually have come to me during breaks asking me how they could improve their English skills, or
telling me that they want to be able to speak English like I do. Although the number of students
who have talked with me like that is just a handful, there is a possibility that I might actually have
had some influence on other students as well. For reasons like this, teachers being autonomous isessentially prerequisite for students to foster their own autonomy. In the second half of this shortreflective article, I would like to share my opinions and views regarding what qualities
autonomous teachers should nurture in order to promote their students’ autonomy.
Dialogue and inquiry: Teachers might want to take some time to talk to or ask their students
questions regarding lessons activity contents to improve their teaching skills and approaches.
When I was a high school student and university student, I often asked my teachers questions. I
still ask my students many questions. In this sense, my students are my teachers. I believeautonomous teachers keep asking themselves and their own learners about how they can foster
autonomous learning for their own learners.
Dialogue and reflection: As a teacher seriously interested in teacher autonomy, I reflect before,during, and after lessons. This is also why I ask my students and myself more questions related
to my teaching. In this sense, I’m a learner myself. In addition, I often write a reflective journal
in regard to what I teach and how I teach. I can try to improve my own teaching skills as well as
what steps I need to take for my learners’ language learning related to my teaching.
Positive attitude: I believe that autonomous teachers tend to have a positive attitude about
students having the capacity to learn autonomously. I started having a positive attitude toward
my students’ capacity to be able to learn more autonomously in and outside the classroom. By
this I mean that teachers should be equipped with their belief in their students’ capacity tolearn autonomously if we want to promote learners’ autonomy.
Continuous support: Based on my experience, autonomous teachers are more likely to continue
assisting their students until they can reach their goals every step of the way. Language learning
is to some extent a time investment and requires an interactive process with others. Hence,teachers’ continuous support related to their performance and interaction can lead to theirlearners becoming autonomous.
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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): Short Articles
Proactive, continuous development of teacher autonomy: Teachers need to be open tocontinuous improvement and development of their skills and knowledge. “This is a sign ofteacher autonomy and itself further develops teacher autonomy” (Gruendel, 2018, p. 144). AsLittle (1995) puts it, “...language teachers are more likely to succeed in promoting learnerautonomy if their own education has encouraged them to be autonomous” (p. 180). In my own
case, for example, I started educating myself more by attending lectures, and taking classes at
my graduate school related to teaching. By doing so, I learnt new ideas about teaching andhave applied some of these to my own teaching context and put them into practice.
Awareness raising: Autonomous teachers can raise students’ awareness to be more responsible forwhat they study and how they study because they were once learners who raised consciousnessof their own language learning. According to Kohonen (1992), “Raising the awareness of one’s
own learning and gaining an understanding of the process involved is thus an important key tothe development of autonomous learning” (as cited in Benson, 2011, p. 107). By becoming moreaware of their language learning, learners will learn to realize how important it is to study theirtarget language with their own clear and specific purposes.
Motivation: According to Dörnyei (2001), motivation is one of the key factors in learning alanguage. As Spratt, Humphreys, and Chan (2002) put it, it is motivation that precedes
autonomy. Without motivation, autonomy does not arise in students’ language learning.
Teachers play a significant role in fostering and encouraging students' motivation. If teachers
are not motivated, how would they know how to motivate their own students? Autonomousteachers can profoundly understand the value of motivation and how they can utilize it toencourage their learners to be autonomous in their learning and teaching. With this value,autonomous teachers can direct their learners into the right path for them to acquire theirsecond language and take greater control of their learning.
Encouraging learner control: If students are given opportunities to take control of their ownlearning (Benson, 2011) and their learning is positive with teachers’ sufficient support, students
can assume their control of their own learning, and hence, take more responsibility for theirown learning. For instance, teachers can encourage peer-teaching and decision-making in theirlesson contents. Furthermore, having students choose their own homework, for example, fromavailable resources can enhance their decision-making for homework assignments tasks. Thisway, students can feel like they have more control over their learning and take more
responsibility for what they do and how they study.
Up until now, there has been some research done regarding this field (e.g., Smith & Erdoğan,2008; Mello, Dutra, & Jorge, 2008; Tehrani & Mansor, 2012). The eight elements that I haveproposed autonomous teachers should attend to in order to foster learner autonomy are based on
my subjective experiences and reflection in a second language teaching and learning classroom.
There are perhaps more elements to be nurtured to become an autonomous teacher. For example,Little (1995) viewed an autonomous teacher as “... having a strong sense of personal responsibility
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Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 26 (1): Short Articles
for their teaching, exercising via continuous reflection and analysis the highest possible degree ofaffective and cognitive control of the teaching process, and exploiting the freedom that thisconfers” (p. 179). Benson (2011) moreover mentions that the idea of teacher autonomy can beviewed as “...a professional capacity connected, on one hand, to the ability to control theprocesses involved in teaching and, on the other, to the ability to control one’s own development
as a teacher” (p. 189). However, there are also institutional settings to consider. Benson (2011)
adds that learner autonomy arises and progresses in school settings mainly through the transfer ofcontrol from teachers to students, many teachers work in conditions where the control they exert
is normally constrained by school rules and conventions. We also need to think about otherconstraining factors such as stakeholders including parents, other teachers, and administrators.
Benson goes on to say teachers’ willingness to go against the conventional wisdom of educational
systems and make efforts to create spaces within their working environments for students to takemore control over their learning is an important aspect of teacher autonomy.
I myself am still searching for more ways to show my autonomous aspects to my learners atschool. As Barfield et al. (2002) argue in the Shizuoka definition of teacher autonomy, theautonomous teacher is one who can understand different constraints on teaching and learning attheir own institution. In addition, they are willing to “confront institutional barriers in sociallyappropriate ways” and to change those constraints into affordances. I would like to keep
searching for better ways to be an autonomous teacher, while, at the same time, as Barfield et al.
(2002) put it, taking responsibility for my teaching and learning by first confronting whateverdifficulty might arise, secondly reflecting on my teacher role and teaching process and who canchange it in a socially acceptable manner, and finally committing myself to promoting learnerautonomy as my lifelong learning engagement at school into the foreseeable future.
References
Barfield, A., Ashwell, T., Carroll, M., Collins, K., Cowie, N., Critchley, M., Head, E., Nix, M.,
Obermeier, A., & Robertson, M. C. (2001). Exploring and defining teacher autonomy: Acollaborative discussion. In A. S. Mackenzie & E. McCafferty (Eds.), Developing Autonomy,
Proceedings of the College and University Educators’ 2001 Conference, Shizuoka, Japan (pp.
217-22). Tokyo: The Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. Harlow, UK: Pearson.
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Gruendel, K. (2018). The interrelationships between learner autonomy and teacher autonomy.
Relay Journal, 1(1), 142-46.
Little, D. (1995). Learning as dialogue: The dependence of learner autonomy on teacherautonomy. System, 23(2), 175-81.
Mello, H., Dutra, D. P., & Jorge, M. (2008). Action research as a tool for teacher autonomy. DELTA:
Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada, 24, 512-528. Retrieved fromhttp://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_issuetoc&pid=0102-445020080003&lng=en&nrm=iso
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Murphey, T. (1998). Motivating with near peer role models. In B. Visgatis (Ed.), On JALT ’97: Trendsand transitions (pp. 205-209). Tokyo: The Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Smith, R., & Erdoğan, S. (2008). Teacher-learner autonomy: Programme goals and student-teacher
constructs. In T. Lamb & H. Reinders (Eds.), Learner and teacher autonomy: Concepts, realities,and responses (pp. 83-103). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Spratt, M., Humphreys, G., & Chan, V. (2002). ‘Autonomy and motivation: Which comes first?’
Language Teaching Research, 6(3), 245-56.
Tehrani, I. A., & Mansor, W.F.A.W. (2012). The influence of ‘teacher autonomy in obtaining
knowledge’ on ‘class practice’. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 66, 544-54.

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