ISSN 1882-1103

Proceedings of
the JALT Learner Development SIG
Realizing Autonomy Conference at
Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan

Learning Learning: Special Issue
edited by Kay Irie & Alison Stewart

学習の学習: 特別号
編集: 入江恵・アリソン・スチュワート

Volume 19 (2), Summer 2012

Astronomy 101 ReportCopyrightAll pieces are copyright of their respective authors. Permission to reprint and/or
reproduce online writing from Learning Learning should be sought directly fromthe author(s) concerned. If arrangements are made for the reprinting and/or reproduction online of an article originally published in Learning Learning, we
respectfully request that the full citation reference for the original article in
Learning Learning be included with the reprinted and/or reproduced online
version.

To cite this volume: Irie, K. & Stewart, A. (Eds.). (2012). Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development
SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2). Retrieved from http://ldsig.org/LL/19two/19-2.pdf"

LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings

P RO CE E D I N G S O F
TH E JA LT L E A R NER D EV ELOP M E NT S I G
REA L I Z I N G AU TO N O M Y C O N F E R E N C EATNAN Z A N U N I V ER S IT Y, NAG OYA , JA PA N
SATU R DAY, OC T OB E R 2 9, 2 0 1 1Contents
Introduction
Alison Stewart and Kay Irie$

2

AUTONOMY, AGENCY, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL: SURFING THE ALTRUISTICCORAL REEF CAFÉS ON A 40-MILE LAYER OF LIFE!
Tim Murphey "4
EXPLORING LEARNERS’ CHANGING LEXICAL LANDSCAPES AND LEARNERAUTONOMY
Andy Barfield"
18
ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO ENGAGE IN LEARNING OUTSIDE THE
CLASSROOM
Clair Taylor, Daniel Beck, Darre$ Hardy, Keiko Omura, Michael Stout and Gerald Talandis Jr." 31
DEVELOPING A MOTIVATIONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTSteven Paydon"

46

EXPLORING AND TRANSFORMING: A DIALOGUE ON SELF-REFLECTIVE
PRACTICES FOR TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Robert Moreau and Jackie Suginaga"
60
SELF-TALK OF A TURTLE: AUTONOMY IN CREATING A CHAPTER
Naoko Harada"

70

OPENING REMARKS TO THE PLENARY TALK BY RICHARD PEMBERTON AND
MIKE NIX
Andy Barfield"
76
PRACTICES OF CRITICAL THINKING, CRITICALITY AND LEARNERAUTONOMY
Richard Pemberton and Mike Nix"

79

Richard Pemberton: His World of Work and Service
Andy Barfield$

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I N T ROD U C T ION
The Realizing Autonomy Conference, which was held on October 29th, 2011 at Nanzan
University, Nagoya, was a curious, Janus-faced event. On the one hand, looking backwards, theinitial rationale for such an event was to mark the publication by Palgrave Macmillan of the
Learner Development Special Interest Group’s book, Realizing Autonomy: Practice and Reflectionin Language Education Contexts (2012). The three-year-long project of planning, writing, andediting a book had been a collaborative venture from the start, which entailed authors coming
together at a weekend retreat to plan the book and later working together as readers of eachother’s chapters. The idea of a conference was to provide a further opportunity to draw on andcelebrate the energy and enthusiasm of that wonderful collective enterprise.
On the other hand, the conference provided not only an occasion for teachers to share current
and past practices and insights, but also to look to the future and consider new aspects of anddirections for enhancing learning. As Andy Barfield wryly suggested on the day, the prospect ofa Proceedings of the Conference of the book seems to take the notion of “spin-oﬀs” into therealm of the absurd. But, as we hope to show in this special issue of Learning Learning, each of
the articles that appears in these Proceedings represents the wide range of interests and typesof presentation at the conference and oﬀers insights and departures for practice and researchof autonomy and development in language education that are quite diﬀerent and new.
The conference started with a plenary session by Tim Murphey, and his article, “Autonomy,
Agency, and Social Capital: Surfing the Altruistic Coral Reef Cafés On a 40-Mile Layer ofLife!” reflects the whimsical spirit of the talk. As the title implies, Tim’s article covers a lot ofground, ranging from the beginning of the history of mankind to the cyber-communities of the
21st century, and introduces us to a model he calls the dynamic dialectical adjustment harmonizerthat conceptualizes learning and growth as maintaining a healthy balance of autonomy andcommunity.
Tim’s initial overview paper is followed by three articles that present new research and theory.
Andy Barfield’s “Learners’ Changing Lexical Landscapes” is a thought-provoking piece thatraises questions about practices surrounding lexical development and their relation to learnerautonomy. His case study of Reiko illustrates the dynamic and increasingly purposeful way inwhich one autonomous learner seeks to refine a method for recording vocabulary that she
wants to learn.
A second research paper by Clair Taylor, Daniel Beck, Darrel Hardy, Keiko Omura, Michael
Stout and Gerald Talandis Jr., entitled “Encouraging Students to Engage in Learning Outside
the Classroom”, describes an initiative to implement a program-wide practice involving the useof stamp cards to ensure students take advantage of the self-access facilities the university
oﬀers. A particularly interesting feature of this article is its investigation into the eﬀects of thestamp card system over a two-year period, which not only highlights the incremental rewards

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from the innovation, but also reveals the continuing resistance to change and diﬃculty ofcreating a new culture at the university.
Next, Steven Paydon introduces a new model of classroom learning motivation, based on
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. As in his conference workshop, Steve illustrates his theory byshowing how various motivating classroom practices relate to this model: from fulfilling basic
needs for security through a need for a supportive community to a pinnacle of personal growthand learning.
These articles are followed by two reflections on the conference. The first by Robert Moreau
and Jackie Suginaga takes the form of a dialogue about their workshop session on selfreflective practices for teacher development. The second is Naoko Harada’s reflection, inspiredby the image Tim Murphey presented in his plenary of a flying turtle, on the role of positive
self-talk when facing challenges of the unfamiliar or the seemingly impossible.
The final paper in this collection is the second plenary session, “Practices of Criticality, CriticalThinking, and Learner Autonomy”, which was given by Richard Pemberton and Mike Nix.
This is a very special paper, both because it shifts the parameters of learner autonomy research
towards the content of education and because it is Richard’s final publication. At theconference, Richard and Mike’s plenary was movingly introduced by Andy Barfield. His
introduction is reproduced here in the same order as on that day. Andy has also compiled forthis issue a profile of Richard’s life and work, and this stands as the final entry in these
Proceedings.
Although we end the Proceedings by looking back at Richard’s life, we hope and trust that his
legacy—his lifelong commitment to respecting learners and their development, and his
enduring positive influence on students, colleagues and friends—will continue well into the
future. We hope that you will enjoy the Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings, not only
as a record of what transpired in Nagoya on the day, but also as an inspiration and motivation
for developing your own understanding and practices of learner development.

Alison Stewart & Kay Irie

Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude to Hugh Nicoll and Martha Robertson for proofreadingand Darren Elliott for the cover photo.
To cite this article: Stewart, A., & Irie, K. (2012). Introduction. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of
the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 2-3.
Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/stewart-irie.pdf

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AU T O N O MY, AG E NC Y, A ND S OC IA L C A PITA L :SURF I N G T H E A LT RU I S T I C C O R A L R E E FCAFÉ S O N A 4 0 - M I LE LAYE R OF LI F E !
Tim Murphey
This paper begins with a brief recap of human history to show how our curiosity plays acentral role in our development, leading us on to more agency within communities, andfinally to more empathetic altruism. I contend that we have the ability to dynamicallyadjust in order to harmonize ourselves to a wide range of situations, balancing
autonomy and community dialectics. I describe how we naturally learn from near-peerrole models and how it may take a little work to get ourselves out of our comfort zones
in order to model diversity. I argue that we normally position ourselves more toward the
comfort of homogeneity, whereas we need to push ourselves to try new things throughmixing with diversity, in order to really savor our time on this glorious planet.
本論は、人類の歴史を振り返りながら、私たちの好奇心が、社会（コミュニティ）において、個人のエージェンシーと自律性を高めることにいかに影響を与えてきたか、
そして最終的に共感できる利他主義に繋がるかを考える。我々人間はオートノミーと協調性／社会性を様々な環境や状況に合わせて調和する能力を持ち合わせている。そして私たちが自然とまわりにいるニアピア・ロールモデルから学んでいること、また、自分の心地良い空間から外に出て多様なロールモデルから学ぶことの難しさを考察した上で、その重要性を訴える。同質・同種の心地良さに捕われず、多様性に触れながら新しいことへ挑戦することで、この素晴らしい地球で「今」生きていることを味わえるのではないだろうか。

“I think the human spirit always wants to make a contribution. And I don’t think there
are enough invitations” (Angeles Arrien as quoted in Briskin, Erickson, Ott, & Callanan,
2009, p. 156).
So, let’s make more invitations. (Tim Murphey, Oct. 29th, 2011)

This paper’s goal is to playfully, briefly, and selectively look at the anthropological history ofhumanity (only the last six million years!) and to combine that with some views on our agency,social capital, and altruism. It is my belief that the cultivation of these three capacities is theprimary purpose of education. Fortunately, the cultivation of these things is not only relevant,Special Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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but eminently possible in language classes, in which “all subjects are ours” (Rivers, 1975, p. 96).
I would like to invite you (readers) to engage in an experience similar to the one oﬀered to myaudience at my presentation in Nagoya. If you play along and answer the questions below(preferably with someone else), you will get an even better idea of what was happening at theconference.
I started my presentation with the following playful questions on a handout (Brown, 2011).
Please try to answer them yourself for a moment before reading the rest of the article.

1. Why do you think humans stood up 6,000,000 years ago?
2. Why do you think women started birthing earlier about the same time?
3. What were the negative and positive (A B C) results of early birthing?
A)
B)C)
4. How is hip hop going to aﬀect future physiology and possibly brain functioning?
5. Why is a turtle trying to fly more beautiful than a bird sitting in a tree?
Figure 1. The questions given on the handout (taken from Brown, 2011).

Research by Rodiger and Finn (2009) shows that, even if you initially get the answers wrong,having thought about the possible answers first (wrong or right) makes your retention stronger(once you get the right answers) than if you were just given the right answers immediately.
Struggling with possible answers creates neurological networks that are more robust. The
struggling makes questions more important.
Below, I ask you to put on several hats to stimulate your imagination and your learning. As hatsoften do, they resemble each other a bit, but are also unique and multifunctional.

Putting on the Anthropologist’s Hat
Anthropologists estimate that humans began standing up six million years ago. Why this isimportant for linguists and teachers will soon become apparent. There are several theories
about why we stood up—the most likely being we had a sense of curiosity and wanted to see
farther. Some think it was so we could run faster, but, actually, quadrupeds run faster thanbipeds. So, standing may have allowed us to see farther, for example, if some dangerous animals
were coming, but standing also made our getaway slower. Others believe it was to reach higher
fruit in the trees. But since we were already climbing trees, that seems unlikely.
One result of standing and walking on two legs was that our hip structures were reshaped. This
resulted in the reshaping of the birth canal of women, and they began giving birth to babies
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much earlier. Women went from having babies after 12 months of gestation to nine months.
This perhaps had dangerous repercussions for the species, possibly reducing our numbers at
first, until we figured out how to take care of prematurely born children. However, gradually,
caretakers realized the infants needed more care, and they started to attend to them for alonger and longer period of time. This attending was crucial, not only for the survival of theindividuals, but also for the development of the species. I stress this attending because it
meant that caretakers spent more time with infants and bonded with them in ways thatprobably encouraged more extended and intensive communication. Language may very wellhave evolved through caretakers and infants babbling to each other playfully and aﬀectionately
and staying with each other long enough to develop a shared repertoire of signs (Lee, Dina,
Joaquin, Mates, & Schumann, 2010; Murphey, 2011).
Another innovation that occurred in every known group of humans on the planet is the adventof midwives. A much earlier birth was not only hard on babies, but coping with narrower birthcanals meant that women needed help—midwives—to assure that they and their infants lived.
Premature children with a diﬃcult birthing, along with communal hunting and gathering offood, brought people together to help each other survive. These beginnings of communities led
to cultures and eventually to civilization as we know it (not yet perfect, but ever improving
with its ups and downs).
The basic human drives above are interesting to note: curiosity, adaptability, and altruism
through bonding. It seems we are often at our best in the worst of times. These are some of
the best characteristics of the species. However, at times, we also have the opposite
tendencies–to merely do what has been done, force old ways, and to care only for ourselves.
And, whereas community and belonging help us survive, they are not always positive, but canlead to some negative tendencies, such as prejudice against nonmembers, war, and group-think.
As for the last two questions on the handout, the answers will come in due course. Relax.

Putting on the Dialectician’s Hat: Autonomy and Social Capital
Stewart and Irie (2011) wrote a wonderful first chapter to Realizing Autonomy in which they note
numerous initial contradictions, or dialectical pairings, involved in researching autonomy, andin particular, “freedom and constraints” within a culture (Bauman, 1999). Stewart and Irie argue
for Marx’s praxis, citing Thornbury’s afterword where he wisely concludes that “individual
independence might best be viewed as a consequence and natural outcome of mutuallysupporting community practices” (p. 264). The chapters in the book are great examples of not
only struggling with and learning from the contradictions involved in fostering autonomy inclassrooms, but, also, of mutually supporting community practices in the very writing of thebook. The authors are all to be applauded. The editing process brings to mind Hanks’s (1991)
contention that “structure is more the variable outcome of action than its invariant
precondition” (p. 17). The authors’ collaborative actions have resulted in a great book, with a
bit of magical restructuring from Irie and Stewart no doubt. As the Realizing Autonomy example

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illustrates, individual agency, social capital, and altruism are intimately connected. Individuals
who come together, aggregate their eﬀorts, and pool their resources thereby increase theirsocial capital, that is, the worth they can generate through social contacts. In addition, thealtruistic eﬀorts they make to collaborate with each other contribute to the development of
new structures and outcomes (procedures for peer editing, draft chapters, and ultimately abook), and this further enhances each individual’s social capital.
Earl Stevick touches on these dialectics in terms of “inside and between.” In teaching, Stevick(1980) introduced the metaphor of “harmony” to balance these two incommensurable
positions, and proposed that the main inducer of eﬀective learning is the ever-changing
rapport among people: “Success depends less on materials, techniques, and linguistic analyses,
and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom” (p. 4). He went on
to suggest that, “The most important aspect of ‘what goes on’ is the presence or absence ofharmony—it is the parts working with, or against, one another” (p. 5). This harmony among
the parts, the opposites, and their balancing, are, for me, keys to making activities and, I dare
say, life meaningful.
In Figure 2, I try to schematically represent Stevick’s (1980) sense of harmony and various
dialectical pairings by means of a diagram. Gal’perin termed such diagrams Schemes for the
Orienting Basis of Action, or SCOBAs, and these SCOBAs “provide learners with resources thatare then formulated as a plan of action...” (cited in Lantolf, 2011, p. 38). The figure is merely
meant to help us think. I do not equate “freedom and constraints” with “inside and between”
and “intermental and intramental,” nor with “autonomy and community,” but they all aresimilar in some obvious ways. We often think that we are free, but, when attached to a group,
we can feel constrained. At the same time, the flip side of this constraint is that, “Freedom’s
just another word for nothing left to lose,” as the country singer Kris Kristoﬀerson recognizedin his song, Bobby McGee. So freedom is not good or bad in and of itself, but, rather, ourthinking and the context make it so. Still, at the extremes of the dialectics, I would suggestthat our thinking has reduced power, and we lose our ability to direct ourselves as the context
consumes us. In other words, being radical autonomy-seekers, like the lone cowboy, might
deprive us of contexts in which we can interact and learn from others and leave us isolated in
the end. Thus, somewhat ironically, we need to use our autonomy to stay in touch with ourcommunities so that we can learn more and, paradoxically, become even more autonomous. By
the same token, trying to be too autonomous—when it means isolation—ends up making us
less autonomous, because we learn less from others about how we might control our lives
more. When we can keep our behavior and thinking within the balancing circles (which, just tocomplicate matters, are always on the move), we are more likely to maintain a balance between
autonomy and community.
This balancing, a cycling movement between the extremes, helps us maintain a healthy life. A
diagram, of course, is not moving and, thus, is limited in its capacity to show the continualadjusting and moving of all the parts (so please use your imagination). There is potential
trouble with going too far to either extreme (becoming a lone cowboy or a sheep) and there isSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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wisdom in changing and adapting as a person-in-context (Ushioda, 2009) and being more orless centered while continually moving. In the circle below, one can ideally move about,adjusting appropriately to contextual needs and enjoying the benefits of all the pairs of
opposites. At times we might drift toward an extreme, but, hopefully, we are soon broughtback into the harmonizing circle that is continually changing. While this may be described as
the fusion of opposites, I would prefer to describe it as an awareness of the need to strike abalance between extremes, trying to maximize the positive attributes of any extreme that lures
us, while at the same time avoiding its negative aspects.

Figure 2. Balancing autonomy and community: Dynamic dialectical adjusting harmonizer(DDAH!) (Sing it!)

Extrapolating from the diagram (having a conversation with the SCOBA and letting it teachme), I think the model is also suggesting that the more we balance ourselves through moving,but staying centered, the more we are likely to enjoy being relatively self-regulated and selfdetermined, i.e., taking more control over our lives. This moving to stay in more or lessharmony opens our Zones of Proximal Development (ZPDs) (Vygotsky, 1978) and Zones of
Proximal Adjustment (ZPAs) (Murphey, 1996a, 2000, in press), in which we develop, activate,
and expand our abilities to learn and adjust to others so they, in turn, can open up their ZPDs
and ZPAs and learn more from us. The use of the concept ZPA implies that we all havediﬀerent and developing capacities to adjust to others in diﬀerent contexts.
Stevick’s (1980) image of harmony draws from music, which is moving waves in the air. Of
course, not all sounds are music to our ears, but, again, context and experience can sometimes
change our perceptions of otherwise discordant sound. Still, no movement, no waves to hear =no chance of harmony. We need to move to have a chance of creating harmony. To illustrateusing the example of another sense, children quickly find out, when they have no training
wheels on their bikes, that biking requires continual movement, or you fall over.

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This ability to move and to process information and to change (harmonize) as need be issimilar to Carol Dweck’s (1999, 2007) incremental theory of intelligence (growth mindset) inwhich learners accept that they learn little by little and that mistakes are part of the territoryof learning. When, by contrast, students operate with an entity theory (fixed mindset), they
believe that, whether good or bad, that is the way they are and that nothing can change it, andthus they don’t really try to change things. Even if learners have a positive first appraisal—“You’re great!”—they often do not want to risk losing the label “great” by trying things at
which they might fail. When learners operate with an incremental theory or growth mindset,
they accept that they are forever changing, moving, and learning how to adjust in order tomake harmonious relationships and attune themselves to others. Students with such beliefs are
more open to learning new things and accepting mistakes as they go along. Both harmony inrelationships with others and fluency in language are incrementally realized through a growthmindset that naturally has its ups and downs. Incremental theories are process-oriented,
harmonizing theories for tuning our instruments in continually emerging realities andsymphonies.

Putting on Another Dialectician’s Hat: Homogeneity and Diversity
Among the crucial survival strategies that we have developed are our abilities to commune,
collaborate, and communicate—what Goleman (2006) calls our social intelligence. With
increased social intelligence comes increased social capital, i.e., the value of our connections.
And the more we exercise our social intelligence, the more we can learn, act, and control ourown lives, further increasing our social capital. We would indeed be shooting ourselves in theproverbial foot if we cut oﬀ the main source of our autonomy, which very clearly is ourmodeling and learning with others in groups. Of course, balancing our time and eﬀort between
community and self can be tricky; it is clear that we need both community and self, but attimes we stray too much to extremes. In the context of our classrooms, while more autonomy
for the individual may be the goal, paradoxically, this learning of autonomy may happen mostoften in highly interactive groups (Thornbury, 2012), or, in another way of describing them,positive present communities of imagining (PCOIz) (Murphey, 2009; Murphey, Falout, Fukada, &Fukuda, 2012; Murphey & Falout, in press). A good read on community is The Power of
Co$ective Wisdom and the Trap of Co$ective Fo$y by Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan (2009).
While focusing mainly on the positive, the book also describes some of the terrors of groupthink and group protectionism, ranging from harmful and prejudicial social acts to violence.
Through all this writing about self and community, I hear Walt Whitman shouting delightfully
from his rooftop, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself! I containmultitudes!” (Leaves of Grass, sec. 51, line 1321). He might as well have said, “I containcommunities!” since it is from our communities that we draw so much of what we know, do,and say. As Bakhtin (1981) says, “The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s
own’ only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when heappropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention” (p. 294).
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Pearce (1971), and certainly others before him, intuitively sensed how “a kind of roughmirroring takes place between our mind and our reality” (p. 1), shaped greatly by ourcommunity. Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson’s volume, Emotional Contagion (1994) detailed how
we “catch” each other’s emotions. A few years later, I described near-peer role modeling(Murphey, 1996b; Murphey & Arao, 2001) in which not only emotions were caught by others,
but so too were strategies, beliefs, and behaviors. In 1998, Judith Rich Harris woke a lot of
people up with her book, The Nurture Assumption, illustrating with powerful data the subtitle,
How Parents Matter Less and Peers Matter More. At about the same time in the 1990s, mirror
neurons were discovered in monkeys. Mirror neurons basically allow our brains to virtuallysimulate whatever it is that we are looking at, such that, when I see you reach for a glass,similar neurons in my brain will be firing in the same pattern as if I were actually reaching for a
glass. Similarly, when we look at a sad face, we tend to feel sad along with the person. Thus,
Ramachandran (2011) even goes so far as to call mirror neurons “Ghandi neurons”, since theyoften elicit empathetic and altruistic tendencies. Mirror neurons have great importance for thelearning and socializing habits of humans, as well as for the spread of civilization(Ramachandran, 2011).
The above three paragraphs support the idea of forming homogeneous communities andlearning from them. This works—to a point. However, homogeneous groups can only get us sofar. Then they need something else—they need a shot or two of diversity. Learning a foreign
language is wrestling with diversity: diverse people, diverse customs, diverse pronunciations,diverse syntax, diverse expressions, and, hopefully, finding joy in the diversity and ending up
identifying with the diversity. Learning a new language is also about opening up to newcommunities. With Figure 3, I hope to communicate that, in describing our communities,
there is a further dialectic of homogeneity and diversity. Once again, the extremes are generally
unproductive: overly homogeneous communities can be boring and lack innovation, as theywish to replicate the status quo, and overly diverse communities can be diﬃcult to coordinate,both of which could explain why some people prefer “doing it” on their own after having had
bad experiences with groups at the extremes. Most people naturally do near-peer role modeling(Murphey & Arao, 2001; Singh, 2010), which works mostly in the domain of homogeneity, andteachers can use this natural tendency to help students learn more. But life is pretty boring if
you just stay with people who are like you. Still, we tend to naturally gather around the single
asterisk (*) in Figure 3 on the left of the line below, under homogeneity. However, getting out
and mixing with diverse people leads to a richer and fuller experience of what is oﬀered to us
on the planet. My ideal for my students would be to stray to the side of diversity around the
double asterisk (**). Of course, when things are too diverse, they can get very complicated andchaotic. So, even something as good as diversity has its limits, and we need to be careful of
extremes. Thus, again, we have a DDAH! to help us adapt and move from homogeneity tomore diversity and back again when needed.

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Figure 3. Balancing homogeneity and diversity: Dynamic dialectic adjusting harmonizer!
(DDAH!)

In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From, Stephen Johnson (2010) uses the metaphor of thecoral reef and the café as places of diversity, creativity, and activity—somewhat scary places for
those who have not ventured far from the cave. However, it is only in venturing out that we
can interact with diversity and become someone diﬀerent through incorporating others into
our mental networks and increasing our social capital. And once we are engaging in diﬀerent
communities, our role models tend to shift as our minds, and our mirror neurons naturally
model the diﬀerent people around us, and we begin diversity modeling (Murphey, in press)
through simulation (Iacoboni, 2008). This could also be called diversity peering, which is thebringing of diverse people, who are quite diﬀerent from us, into our realms of imagination andmodeling them, such that they become our peers (even if only imaginary). Children tend to do
this much more easily, and are adaptable and flexible in this regard, not only with people, butwith animals, plants, and even objects in the world. (See also, along this vein of thought, Jocey
Quinn’s (2010) lovely book on imagined social capital.)
Note that it is also quite frequent that whole fields migrate toward homogeneity in search of a
firm identity (Kuhn, 1970), but, in doing so, they can greatly deprive themselves of diversity
resources. In our own field of SLA, we had a strong movement for a while that suggested theory
cu$ing. But then some brave people dared to speak up for the rights and benefits of diversity.
Two such publications include The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition (Block, 2003) and,more recently, Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (Atkinson, 2011). Of note is
Lourdes Ortega’s final chapter in Atkinson’s volume, in which she describes our choices:…We have a choice in SLA studies among entrenchment, incommensurability, andepistemological diversity. Entrenchment is likely to be a temperamental reaction that is
unsustainable in the long run. Incommensurability is an option that some may findmerit in at this juncture in the history of SLA studies. I want to argue that the third
option, epistemological diversity, is the best choice. (Ortega, 2011, p. 176)

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference ProceedingsPeter Block (2008), citing Putnam and Feldstein (2003), describes social capital, or communitynetwork benefits, which, interestingly, allows us to see epistemological diversity in an evenbetter light:
Bonding social capital are networks that are inward looking, composed of people of likemind. Other social networks “encompass diﬀerent types of people and tend to be
outward looking—bridging social capital.”… And as Putnam and Feldstein (2003) put it,“A society that has only bonding social capital will be segregated into mutually hostile
camps. So a pluralistic democracy requires lots of bridging social capital, not just thebonding variety.” (p. 18)
Bonding social capital, good group dynamics, and near-peer role modeling are all powerful tools
for classroom teachers in the initial stages of bonding. However, after bonding, greater
stimulation can be found through bridging social capital, challenging the unknown (Murphey,1989), and diversity-peering. Inviting opportunities for bridging social capital and Ortega’s(2011) epistemological diversity create spaces for diversity-peering and enlarging theautonomous self through identifying with others. In other words, putting diverse people
together first helps with acceptance that leads to aﬃliation and identification. We tend to
identify with those we live and work with most. When diversity is around us, we begin to
identify with it, bond with it, and empathize with it. Ergo, we contain multitudes. (N.B. You
can also try out the diversity peering survey in Appendix A.)

Putting on the Altruist’s Hat
Our species’ initial drives (curiosity, adaptability, and altruism through bonding, as we saw with
our anthropologist’s hats) have served us well. However, as noted above, too much bondingsocial capital can sometimes create more conflicts, and we need to look at how we can build
more bridging social capital and identify with diversity. I invite you to see ourselves as being in
the invitational profession. We can invite students to look into the diverse lives of others who
have become human rights activists, pacifists, ecological advocates, and others who haveadopted international postures (Yashima, 2009). We can identify with not only strangers in thestreet, but with diverse others in strange lands through the massive media networks. With
animal rights and ecological activists, we might even start identifying with all of nature, and,
finally, with Gaia (Earth) herself as a living entity (Cates, 2005). These sideways steps ofidentification are imaginable because our brains are wired for such imagination to ensure
survival—not just survival of ourselves, but of others and theplanet because we essentially depend upon each other—weare part of Gaia.
“The entire reach of the biosphere envelope is less than 40
miles from ocean floor to outer space. Within this narrow
band, living creatures and the Earth’s geochemical processes
interact to sustain each other” (Ri)en, 2009, p. 597). Some
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people commute 40 miles daily to school or work. It’s just a thinlayer of life on a large planet that already has a few holes here andthere. Along with Ri)en, I am curious as to whether we have theadaptive capacities necessary to survive as a species on the planet,or whether our energy addiction practices will, in the end, disable
life on the planet.
Our propensity toward altruistic action may be our saving grace—an altruism that expands
exponentially in groups of people who belong, bond, and bridge.
So notice is given. You’re all invited. Now, go change the world and have a good life.
And remember… invite your students to join you.

Post Script
It was my students who asked question #4 How is hip-hop dancing going to aﬀect future
physiology and possibly brain functioning? And I have no answer.
Question #5: Why is a turtle trying to fly more beautiful than a bird sitting in a tree? A turtle
trying to fly is attempting to do something, even if it seems impossible, and that is beautiful in
its own way. I believe this is also a characteristic that our species shares with turtles—andpossibly with life on earth.

Tim Murphey (PhD Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in Applied Linguistics) Kanda Universityof International Studies professor, TESOL’s Professional Development in Language Education series editor,
co-author with Zoltán Dörnyei of Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom, presently researches
SCT applications with particular emphasis on student voice, agency, identity, and community construction.
He rea$y gets a kick out of creatively scaﬀolding the agentizing of students’ languaging abilities andteaching people to ski and ju+le, at the same time. His novel on the Japanese entrance exam system, The
Tale that Wags (Perceptia Press) came out in 2010 in English and Japanese in September 2011. His mostrecent book is Teaching in Pursuit of Wow! (2012, ABAX).
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To cite this article: Murphey, T. (2012). Autonomy, agency, and social capital: Surfing the altruistic coral
reef cafés on a 40-mile layer of life!. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner
Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 4-17. Retrieved
from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/murphey.pdf

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Bauman, Z. (1999). Culture as praxis (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Washington, DC: Georgetown
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Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Briskin, A., Erickson, S., Ott, J., & Callanan, T. (2009). The power of co$ective wisdom and the trapof co$ective fo$y. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
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Cates, K. (2005). Teaching for a better world: Global issues and language education in Japan. In
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Harris, J. (1998). The nurture assumption. New York, NY: The Free Press.
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Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come -om: The natural history of innovation. New York:Riverhead –Penguin. (See also Where Good Ideas Come From [video file] at http://
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theory, second language acquisition, and artificial L2 development. In D. Atkinson (Ed.),
Alternative approaches to second language acquisition (pp. 24-47). London: Routledge.
Lee, N., Dina, A. Joaquin, A., Mates, A., & Schumann, J. (2010). The interactional instinct. New
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Murphey, T. (1989). Sociocognitive conflict: Confused? Don't worry, you may be learning! Et
Cetera, 46 (4) 312-315. (Journal published by the International Society for General
Semantics.)
Murphey T. (1996a). Proactive adjusting to the zone of proximal development: Learner andteacher strategies. Paper presented at the 2nd Conference for Socio-Cultural Research,
Vygotsky and Piaget, Geneva, Switzerland.
Murphey, T. (1996b). Near peer role models. Teachers talking to teachers. JALT Teacher
Education SIG Newsletter, 4(3), 21-22.
Murphey T. (March, 2000). Strategies for zoning in on the ZPD. Paper presented as part of thecolloquium on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development at the American Association ofApplied Linguistics Annual Conference (AAAL), Vancouver, Canada.
Murphey, T. (2009). Present communities of imagination. PeerSpectives, 2, 14-15.
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hot or it’s not! Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2(2), 87-90. Retrieved from http://
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Murphey, T. (in press). Adapting ways for meaningful action: ZPDs and ZPAs. In J. Arnold & T.
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in present communities of imagination. In S. Mercer, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.),
Psychology for language learning: Insights -om research, theory and practice (pp. 220-38).
Basingstoke: U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ortega, L. (2011). SLA after the social turn: Where cognitivism and its alternatives stand. In D.
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U.K.: Routledge.
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Quinn, J. (2010). Learning communities and imagined social capital. London: International
Publishing Group.
Ramachandran,V. (2011). The te$-tale brain: A neuroscientist’s quest for what makes us human. New
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York: Penguin.
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Newbury House.
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Scientific American: Mind Matters. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/
article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong
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Anatomical Sciences Education, 3, 50–51.
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Stewart, A., & Irie, K. (2012). Realizing autonomy: Contradictions in practice and context. In
K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection in language education
contexts (pp. 1-17). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thornbury, S. (2012). Afterword: Dogme for beginners—The autonomy of the group. In K. Irie
& A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection in language education contexts(pp. 257-265). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
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215-228). Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
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Harvard University Press.
Yashima, T. (2009). International posture and the ideal L2 self in the Japans EFL context. In Z.
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Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

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Appendix A
Diversity Peering Survey
1. How many people in your professional environment have you regularly collaborated with(that you see on a monthly if not weekly or daily basis) in the last year? Write theirnames: _______________________________________________________total #_______$
2. Occasional collaborators – you collaborated one or more times this past year on a
project? (paper, presentation, class lessons and study, curriculum, reports, etc.) Write theirnames: $____________________________________________________total# _______
3. How many of the people above are of a diﬀerent gender? total#______________$
4. How many of the people above are 10 years older or younger? total#_______________
5. How many of the people above are of a diﬀerent nationality? total#______________
6. How many of the people above are of a diﬀerent ethnicity? total# _____________$
7. How many of the people above are not in your immediate field? total# ________$
8. What is your total 3 through 7 added up: _______________ **How do you feel about this?
___________________________________________________________________________$$$$
9.What kind of people would you like to collaborate more with? _______________
10. Where might you find these people?______________________________________$** Note: There are no absolute scores for how collaborative someone is. It is up to you andrelative to your context and desires. Research does say however that the more diverse thepartners are, the more beneficial the collaboration usually is (thus questions #3-7). Send
comments to Tim Murphey at mits@kanda.kuis.ac.jp

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

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EX P L O R I N G L EA R N E R S ’ C H A N G I N GLEXICAL LANDSCAPESA N D L E A R NE R AU T ONOM Y
Andy Barfield
This paper presents the concepts of school knowledge and action knowledge (Barnes,
1992, 2008) and certain basic principles of learner autonomy as a necessary
background for exploring learners’ lexical development in different pedagogies forautonomy. Using a case study approach, the lexical landscapes of a single student in acontent-based learning course are explored as the student develops her vocabulary
practices over an academic year through experimentation, interaction and reflection
with her peers. The student’s emerging preference for using collocations, word
associations and short paraphrases reveals an original combination of different
vocabulary practices. It also suggests that learners, under appropriate conditions, willreadily move beyond word-by-word translation and the simple listing of L2-L1
equivalents that entrance exam cramming requires them to do. Further researchquestions about the relationship between lexical development and learner autonomy are
addressed in the final part of the paper.
本論は二つの「知識」に関するコンセプトschool knowledgeとaction knowledge(Barnes, 1992, 2008)及び学習者オートノミーの基本的理論が 自律性重視の教育において語彙発達の探求に不可欠であることを論じる。ケース・スタディ手法を使い、content-based learningの年間授業で、一人の学習者の語彙学習を追った。 クラス
メイトたちとの交流の中での試行錯誤、自分の学びの振り返りを通しての語彙(lexicallandscape)の発達を研究した。学習者がコロケーション、単語の関連性、短いパラフ
レーズなどを中心にする独自の学習スタイルを確立していく様子がはっきりと伺えた。これは適切な環境と指導があれば、学習者が単純な単語リストや英和対応などの入試対策として行ってきたもの以上の語彙学習を実践することができることを示唆するものである。語彙の発達と学習者オートノミーの研究に向けて、今後の方向性についても考察する。

Introduction
While we seem more than ready to discuss nonlinguistic dimensions to the realization oflearner autonomy, we are curiously reluctant to get specific about processes of lexical
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development that may be involved in that realization. One eﬀect of this separation is that
diﬀerent positions around issues to do with learner autonomy and lexical development become
lost or silenced. It is interesting, for example, that discussions of autonomous learning cansometimes go hand in hand with uncritical assertions that students should be assigned 20, even50, words a week to record and learn, without further consideration of the contradiction
between such demands and the realisation of learner autonomy. For these reasons, it seems
useful to me to revisit certain fundamental pedagogic principles of learner autonomy inrelation to fostering learners’ lexical development. This may allow us to consider, in a detachedway, possible relationships between learner autonomy and lexical development. In this paper, I
first look at the distinction between school knowledge and action knowledge that Barnes(1976, 2008) makes and connect this to three basic, commonly held principles of developing
learner autonomy in practice. I then consider how these principles might be applied to lexicaldevelopment, before reviewing some classic examples of learner autonomy practices where
vocabulary learning and use are highlighted. My aim is to question how lexical development isaddressed and represented in certain pedagogies for autonomy. Following this, I present thecase of a single student in a content-based learning course so that we can explore in some detailthe lexical landscape that she moves through as she pays conscious attention to developing her
vocabulary practices. In the final part, I identify a few important questions that it may be
helpful to address further in exploring learners’ changing lexical landscapes in relation to thedevelopment of learner autonomy.

Some Basic Principles of Learner Autonomy in Language Education
Within formal education, an important distinction has been made between two modes oflearning. These modes are known as school knowledge and action knowledge. Barnes (1976)
comments:
School knowledge is the knowledge which someone else presents to us. We partly grasp
it, enough to answer the teacher’s questions, to do exercises, or to answer examinationquestions, but it remains someone else’s knowledge, not ours. If we never use thisknowledge, we probably forget it. In so far as we use knowledge for our own purposes,
however, we begin to incorporate it into our view of the world, and to use parts of it tocope with the exigencies of living. Once the knowledge becomes incorporated into thatview of the world on which our actions are based I would say that it has become “action
knowledge.” (p. 81)

Barnes (1976) associates school knowledge with the knowledge of others (e.g., teachers, texts
that learners read, books that learners study) and action knowledge with the constructivist
capacity of the learner to reinterpret others’ knowledge, reshape it to their own purposes, andmake it part of their understanding of the world where “the pupil’s ability to reinterpret
knowledge for himself is crucial to learning” (p. 142). The concept of action knowledge leads

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into questions of how new understandings of the world are managed by learners. Barnes (2008)
explains:
It is only the learner who can bring the new information, procedures or ways ofunderstanding to bear upon existing ideas, expectations and ways of thinking andacting. That is, the learner actively constructs the new way of understanding. (p. 3)
Given the emphasis on the active role of learners in shaping their knowledge of the world, it is
not surprising that the school knowledge/action knowledge nexus has been taken up by
diﬀerent learner autonomy theorists and practitioners as a way of understanding the capacityof learners to be authors of their own learning.
David Little, in particular, has theorized from Barnes’s work and put forward three generalpedagogic principles for the development of language learner autonomy: learner involvement,
learner reflection and appropriate target use (e.g., Little 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009). What Little(2007) means by learner involvement is that learners “are brought to engage with their learningand take responsibility for key decisions” (p. 7). This principle highlights the importance oflearners determining for themselves their learning purposes and goals, as such selfdetermination can directly influence their motivation and sense of control. From the principleof learner reflection follows the need for learners to be “taught to think critically about theprocess and content of their learning” (p. 7). Learners should therefore be guided to consider
cognitive processes of learning and develop insights into their own ways of learning; theyshould also have freedom to choose (or at least the right to negotiate) the materials they use
for their learning. The third principle, appropriate target language use, refers to learners “using
the target language as the principal medium of language learning” (2006, p. 2). Learners should,
in other words, use the target language not only for their own communicative purposes, butalso for the metacognitive functions of reflecting on and evaluating their performance anddevelopment in the target language. These principles are seen by Little as operating in dynamic
relationship to one another: the development of autonomous learning may take place, heargues, only under conditions where all three principles are followed in practice.

Addressing Questions of Learner Autonomy and Lexical Development
Relatively little has been written about the diﬀerent pedagogic and learning practices that theabove principles might entail with regard to vocabulary learning in the development of learnerautonomy. Following Little, we may make the following assumptions, however: (a) learners
should be guided to engage with their vocabulary learning and take responsibility for key
decisions about the vocabulary that they decide they need to develop; (b) learners should betaught to think critically about the vocabulary that they want to learn and about diﬀerent
processes of lexical development, as well as have the right to choose (or at least negotiate) how
they wish to learn vocabulary; and (c) learners should use the vocabulary that they learn (ormake decisions about what vocabulary they need to use) and should be guided to reflect on
their lexical development. With these theoretical principles as initial reference points, I look
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next at three examples of learner autonomy practices where vocabulary learning and use have aprominent role.
The first example is from a class of English beginners under Leni Dam’s tutelage in a secondary
school in Denmark. In the description of her own practices for developing learner autonomy(Dam, 1995; Dam & Legenhausen, 1996), Dam shows how the very first English lessons with aclass of Danish 11-year-old learners in a state school focus on what the learners want to say in
English, and on how they are asked to bring into the classroom and use English words they findin the world outside. From the first lesson, the learners also use The Oxford English Picture
Dictionary (Parnwell, 1989) to find funny, exciting or useful words that they need for their own
purposes (Dam, 1995, pp. 13-19). Within a few lessons, the lexical choices that the learners
make are written up by Dam on posters and displayed in the classroom, so that the whole class
can use this shared vocabulary to write brief profiles of themselves in English. Other times,“making word cards” and “practising words” (p. 19) are among the activities that learners
choose to do. Here, they are guided to write down words in their learning diaries that theywould like to know/remember, to make drawings and write short texts, regularly sharing theirwork with each other (Dam & Legenhausen, 1996, p. 269). The learners also produce wordcards1 with “a drawing, photo or L1 equivalent on one side and the corresponding English
expression on the other side” (p. 269) and make word games that can be used by others in theclass. A couple of weeks after starting to learn English, learners are further encouraged to use
new vocabulary in writing stories (Dam, 1995, pp. 19-20). Dam’s account shows how learners
can be asked from the very beginning to be self-directed in their lexical development. She also
illustrates how learners can actively explore with each other diﬀerent ways of learning andusing vocabulary. They do not need to be restricted to one single way. Overall, a notably
distinctive feature of Dam’s practice is that learning vocabulary is closely (but not exclusively)
connected with use, as well as with learners making decisions themselves about the vocabularythat they need and how they want to use it. A very important point to keep in mind here isthat the vocabulary focus in these classes is part of an overall approach leading towards projectwork.
In a diﬀerent take on autonomous learning and vocabulary development, Little (2009) shares
examples from a vocabulary list by a 30-year-old Ukrainian student at the A1 beginnerproficiency level2 in an intensive course organized on autonomous learning principles. The list
includes vocabulary such as operation, inflamed, tablets and temperature. These relatively lowfrequency words are directly related to the young man’s need to consult a doctor about healthproblems (pp. 163-6). Thirty-three items are listed by the young man on the top half of aworksheet called My Personal Dictionary with the instructions, “Write 60 words. Find apartner. Test your spelling” (p. 166). Little makes the important point that “… learners acquire
the vocabulary appropriate to their personal interests and priorities, which may entail the earlylearning of low-frequency words and technical terms” (p. 163). A similar claim is made in a rare
quantitative study by Dam and Legenhausen (1996); they also report that “vocabularyacquisition in the autonomous approach is very successful and compares favourably with
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results from more traditional textbook-based approaches” (p. 280). In Little’s 2009 account,the specific vocabulary task of listing 60 words lacks the creative dimension that we saw in theexample from Dam’s practices; at the same time, it includes peer review and recycling toconsolidate basic vocabulary knowledge. There is, however, no discussion, as far as vocabulary
learning and use is specifically concerned, of what learners do beyond recording words in a list
for their personal dictionaries. This makes it diﬃcult to get a more detailed sense of how
diﬀerent pedagogic principles may apply in practice, unless we assume that learners are able touse the listed vocabulary for later action knowledge tasks that they do and assess themselveson.
Dam (1995) also reports on the vocabulary practices of a diﬀerent intermediate class of 14- and15-year-old learners at a Danish secondary school. In one example, some learners are describedas noting down new English words after reading a poem they have chosen as part of theirgroup project. However, how they do this is quite diﬀerent from the creative vocabulary
activities with the beginner class detailed in the first example. The intermediate learners
simply write in their learning diaries the English words in a list next to the respective Danishtranslation equivalent each time. Dam does not mention any other ways in which the learners
in this intermediate class record vocabulary. Clearly, in both of her classes, self-directed
vocabulary development plays an essential part in the learners’ engagement with content indoing project work. The children are regularly asked to evaluate the strengths and weaknessesof how they are learning and using English in the group-based projects that they do. Yet, while
we may assume that Dam’s learners develop a critical awareness of learning and using the
vocabulary that they need for their projects, the evidence from the intermediate class suggeststhat some kind of shift has taken place in these learners’ vocabulary practices towards“banking” vocabulary in L2-L1 lists. It is almost as if the learners have started collecting
vocabulary for its own sake rather than for their own learning purposes.
This points to some gaps in the lessons that we can draw from these examples, particularly
with regard to what learners do after recording vocabulary that they choose as important, andwhy learners tend to list vocabulary in L2-L1 columns as they gain in language proficiency. Is
listing a function of increased lexical proficiency, in that intermediate learners may not need toorganize vocabulary in any particular way in order to learn and use it? Is it perhaps an eﬀect offurther schooling and the greater institutionalization of learning as school knowledge so thatvocabulary development starts to be separated from learner interest, purpose and use? Whatplace does explicit attention to the development of learners’ vocabulary practices have as
learners become more lexically proficient and go on through the formal education system?
University students have necessarily had to reconcile their own purposes with theinstitutionalized learning that the education system has required of them over several years.
The pressure to cram vocabulary for university entrance exams in Japan is one example of how
an overbearing emphasis on school knowledge forces learners into specific vocabulary practices
that distance them from using the language meaningfully for their own purposes. How does
this impact their later vocabulary practices and goals when they continue learning English
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beyond high school? Some possible answers to such questions may be provided by looking at
the single case of a second-year student, Reiko, in a content-based learning course where shedoes self-directed research projects over cycles of several weeks.

The Lexical Development and Vocabulary Practices of One Student
In the 2011 academic year, I tracked the vocabulary practices and goals of several students
doing a content-based learning course, a small but important part of which was devoted toencouraging students to explore and develop their vocabulary practices in diﬀerent ways forthemselves. The proficiency levels of the students ranged from high intermediate to advanced.
Here I focus on one student in particular, Reiko, and her changing vocabulary history over theyear (Barfield, 2011, 2012). A vocabulary history (VH) is similar to a language learning history(Benson & Nunan, 2005; Murphey, 1997; Murphey, Chen, & Chen, 2005; Pavlenko, 2001) inwhich a learner narrates their personal story of language learning and formulates their futurelearning plans and goals. What is diﬀerent about a VH is that the learner gives much greaterattention to how they have learned vocabulary at diﬀerent stages in their L2 development andwhat positive and negative experiences they have had in doing so.
After discussing her own VH and reading some near-peer role models of vocabulary histories
produced by other students, Reiko presented her own VH in the following way:
I started to learn the vocabularies from elementary school. I was very young, so there aremany pictures in textbook of the cram school. At the cram school, we pronounced the words
I learnt again and again, and after that we looked the sentences including the new words. I
think this is the best way of remembering the words. Pronouncing is very useful to remember
the words, and I could know how to use the word looking the sentences.
At the junior high school and high school, I learnt the vocabularies in bad ways. I just makethe vocabulary notes that there are the vocabularies I didn’t know and remembered thewords before the exam by writing again and again. This was very easy to forget the words.
After the exam, I forgot all of words I learnt. I just learnt for getting score of exam. This wasvery bad motivation. Also I couldn’t know the pronunciation of the vocabularies.
At the university I could know a lot of words in the writing & speaking classes so far. I readso many articles and books written by English in the classes. And I have a lot ofopportunities to explain the words I found out to other students. So I think that I have tounderstand definitely the words’ meanings. So the classes give me a good motivation oflearning and remembering the vocabularies.

One of the interesting points about Reiko’s vocabulary history is that her practices are quite
specific to each stage and context of her formal education. Early on, her vocabulary learning isfocused on remembering, pronouncing, and using lexical items; however, in junior high andhigh school, as her vocabulary development becomes exam-driven, memorization throughrepeated writing takes over completely from use. At university, her way of learning vocabulary
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comes from a great deal of reading, as well as from using words to explain their meaning toother students. All in all, Reiko shows a greater concern with meaning as her English
proficiency develops and as she becomes more concerned with using English. Anotherinteresting point is that repetition of one kind or another (either to herself or to others—
repeated pronouncing, repeated writing, and repeated explaining) figures as the most
personally significant lexical development process for Reiko. Beyond that, however, she does
not really articulate any other specific details about learning and using vocabulary for herself
and her own purposes.
From the start of the second research cycle onwards, the students spend some (limited) timeeach week looking and experimenting with diﬀerent ways of recording, learning and using
vocabulary. The main focus is on their research into NGOs, working on issues to do with
developing countries. Explaining and paraphrasing key ideas in their research notes to otherstudents are a key part of the process by which they build their knowledge of NGOs. Reiko
researches Save The Children, and, at the start of the cycle, she chooses a few key words fromher research notes in English before listing diﬀerent collocations in which they can be used(see Figure 1).

Children

Education

help( disadvantaged children

provides a ( broad education( special-needs children

delivercare for ( difficult children( general

received no formal education

help the (contribute to ( child malnutrition( child maltreatment( child trafficking

tradition of ( religious education( legalFigure 1. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in early June 2011.

Although Figure 1 shows that Reiko records several diﬀerent collocations, she tends to limit
the number of possible combinations that she records with either key word. It appears that
Reiko is becoming concerned with the quality of her vocabulary knowledge, rather than justwith increasing the size of her vocabulary. This change from quantity to quality is one of the
crucial changes that most students go through as they attend more consciously to their lexicaldevelopment in a self-directed way (cf. Benson & Lor, 1998, who note a similar shift in learners’
general conceptualisations of language learning as they become more autonomous).
A couple of weeks later, Reiko starts experimenting with using word associations. Here she
mentions in her notebook the importance of trying to create a concrete image and ofconnecting words actively with other words. The new words that she chooses are shown on theleft in Figure 2, with the word associations that she makes shown on the right.

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Reiko’s word associations are made with highly frequent vocabulary, revealing how she is trying
to connect new words to vocabulary that she already knows very well. When, later in the same
research cycle, Reiko chooses to record advocacy, advocate, address and lobby, we begin to see
how her way of recording key vocabulary now includes short paraphrases, associations andcollocations as she continues to experiment and try to find ways that work best for her (as in
Figure 3).

measles

infection, fever, children (はしか,	
 麻疹)

notablyimportant, outstanding, remarkablestrap

belts, fasten

bureaucratic(官僚的な) rules, official, complicated, arguments

squabblingargue, girls, quarrel(squabble)
livelihood

money, important, protect

burdenheavy, load

Figure 2. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in early July 2011(v) address

to speak to someone directly

話しかける,	 	 言う

to make a formal speech to a large group of people
talk, complain, speak(ex a meeting/conference etc

similargovernments about
an audience(v) lobby 働きかけ

- to try to persuade the government or someone with
political power that a law or situation should be changes
government, campaign, addressex.: lobby ( for a reduction( our leader to support --( against a bill

Figure 3. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in late June 2011.

In this example, to speak to someone directly and to make a formal speech to a large group of people are
Reiko’s short paraphrases for address, whereas talk, complain, speak are her personal
associations, and a meeting/conference governments about and an audience are collocations that she
feels are important for her to learn and use. Figure 3 also illustrates how, within a short periodof experimentation, Reiko has started to combine diﬀerent subprocesses together in the waythat she records vocabulary for herself.
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By being asked to consider what she is doing to develop her vocabulary knowledge and to
think about the strengths and weaknesses of what she does decide to do, Reiko begins tobecome critically aware of the eﬀectiveness of her choices and actions. In a short reflection
written in her notebook about her changing vocabulary practices, Reiko notes at this point:
Today I researched similar words, but I found the way that of using is different each other.
So I think my way is good for understanding, and also this way shows me the meaning of thewords in both of languages, so I can understand the meaning absolutely. By doing theassociation, I can have the image of the words.
Then, a few weeks later at the end of July, as she looks back on the development of her ways oflearning and using vocabulary in the previous two months, Reiko interprets the changes in thisway:
At first of learning and using vocabulary I just wrote down the word and the meanings of thewords in English. But I realized that this way was not useful because I couldn’t remember
the word through this way. I found that association was very helpful and it was very fun!
And using collocation was also very useful! So finally I wrote down the word that I want toresearch and the meaning of that in English and Japanese, association and collocation. I
think this way was the most useful for me. My goal in the third cycle is to increase my
vocabularies which is in the field that I’m interested in.
In the autumn, Reiko continues using short paraphrases, associations and collocations as themain way of organising her vocabulary notes. She believes that taking time to create several
connections helps her “know a lot of words” and “know how to use the word clearly”; her way,
she observes, also helps her to “use diﬃcult words in conversation”. An example is shown in
Figure 4.

competition

1. when a company or person is trying to be more
successful or better than otheradj + N – intense
keen

V+N
competition

globalface, be up against

competition

beat oﬀ
N + V competition → heat up
2. an event when people try to win prizes

destroy stop

organizegive up take out

compete in→ competition

be banned from

Figure 4. Reiko’s way of recording vocabulary in October 2011.

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The vocabulary notes shown in Figure 4 come from a research cycle where Reiko has chosen tolook at how green businesses are developing their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
policies to address diﬀerent social and environmental issues. At the end of the third cycle,
roughly six months after she started reflecting on her vocabulary history and diversifying her
vocabulary practices, Reiko sees her lexical development like this:This time I found lots of specific words which is related to CSR. These are difficult, but I
could remember and know how to use it by changing my vocabulary notes and using thewords a lot. Also I could learn more words through learning one word. I tried to find therelated word with the words which I researched so I could learn the meaning of the words inother words.
It is important to note that, within this content-based learning course, no other student madethe same choices as Reiko as to how to develop their vocabulary practices. Each student foundtheir own new pathways through their lexical development. One of Reiko’s main concerns was
making connections between what she was trying to learn and what she already knew; here sheused word associations in conjunction with short paraphrases and simple collocations to create
multiple connections between new vocabulary and known vocabulary. She also used Japaneseequivalents at times to consolidate those connections. Over time, Reiko gradually became
more astute in selecting useful and important vocabulary for development rather than focusing
exclusively on unknown lexis as she did early on (as shown in Figure 2, for example, with her
first set of word associations). From the outside looking in, it seems that Reiko was able to finda growing sense of creativity in using word associations eﬀectively. She also achieved, it seems,
a strong sense of communicative accomplishment in developing short practical paraphrases
and small sets of useful collocations around key words and ideas in her research.

Concluding Questions
It needs to be emphasized that the focus on self-directed lexical development was only a smallpart of the content-based learning course. The main focus in the course was on the research
projects that the students did, as well as on their co-constructing knowledge of the diﬀerent
issues that they researched. For the lexical development part of the course, however, students
were guided to engage with diﬀerent ways of developing their vocabulary practice and takeresponsibility for the vocabulary that they wanted to learn and use. Starting fromreconstructing her own vocabulary history and becoming aware of the strengths andweaknesses of diﬀerent practices she had tried in the past, Reiko started to find a criticalstance towards her own lexical development. She then continued to experiment with, andfurther develop, vocabulary practices that worked well for her, by building her awarenessthrough discussion, short written reflections, and using key vocabulary to explain her research
to her peers. Reiko’s story shows that there is no necessary reason why young adult learners
cannot develop their own eﬀective ways of learning and using vocabulary for themselves as partof the overall process of their becoming more autonomous in how they learn and use English.
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Are the processes of lexical development and restructuring (Henriksen, 1999) that Reiko
embodies in her vocabulary practices available to learners at other levels of overall language
proficiency? These processes include (a) connecting up new with known vocabulary, (b) moving
between associative lexical knowledge and conventionalized collocation knowledge, (c)focusing on both individual words and multiword phrases, and (d) learning to create shortparaphrases in English of key ideas. If they are available, in what ways might they be diﬀerently
realized by others? If not, in what ways might those processes of lexical development andrestructuring be restricted? Is the development of these processes (either individually or in
combination with each other) possible in formal education contexts only under conditions that
support autonomous learning? What further connections can be made between lexicaldevelopment and the development of learner autonomy? These are, I believe, some of theinteresting questions that the journey through Reiko’s lexical landscape invites us to explore in
the future.

Notes
1. Kramsch (1979) reports the use of index cards where vocabulary items are chosen by students
and recorded “together with a synonym, antonym, or translation, and an example sentence” (p.
154).
2. The A1 level is part of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) scheme ofproficiency levels (A1 and A2: basic user; B1 and B2: independent user; C1 and C2: proficientuser). For more details, see the Council of Europe European Language Portfolio website (n.d.).
Acknowledgement
My thanks go to Alison Stewart, Hugh Nicoll, Kay Irie, Mike Nix, Phil Brown and Steve
Brown for their great comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Andy Barfield teaches in the Faculty of Law at Chuo University in Tokyo. His pedagogic and researchinterests include learner/teacher autonomy, content-based learning, students’ vocabulary practices anddevelopment, and co$aborative curriculum development. Andy is currently co-editing a multivocalic
anthology of teachers’ stories to do with their engagement with learner autonomy, due to be published thisautumn by the IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG.
To cite this article: Barfield, A. (2012). Exploring learners’ changing lexical landscapes and learner autonomy. In
K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy
Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 18-30. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/barfield.pdf

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References
Barfield, A. (2011). Re-constructing learning histories, distributed cognition and lexical
resources. Learning Learning, 18(2), 38-40. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/18two/back.pdf
Barfield, A. (2012). Lexical development and learners’ practices in a content-based learning
course. Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, 1(1), 10-19. doi: 10.7820/vli.v01.1.barfield
Barnes, D. (1976). From communication to curriculum. London: Penguin/Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton/Cook-Heinemann.
Barnes, D. (2008). Exploratory talk for learning. In N. Mercer & S. Hodgkinson (Eds.),
Exploring talk in schools (pp. 1-15). London: Sage.
Benson, P., & Lor, W. (1998). Making sense of autonomous language learning. English Centre
Monograph, No. 2. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong.
Benson, P., & Nunan, D. (Eds.) (2005). Learners’ stories. Cambridge.: Cambridge University Press.
Council of Europe (n.d.). European Language Portfolio levels. Retrieved from http://www.coe.int/t/
DG4/Portfolio/?M=/main_pages/levels.html
Dam, L. (1995). Learner autonomy: From theory to practice. Dublin: Authentik.
Dam, L., & Legenhausen, L. (1996). The acquisition of vocabulary in an autonomous learning
environment: The first months of beginning English. In R. Pemberton, E. S. L. Li, W. W.
F. Or, & H. D. Pierson (Eds.), Taking control: Autonomy in language learning (pp. 265-80).
Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Henriksen, B. (1999). Three dimensions of vocabulary development. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition, 21(2), 303-17.
Kramsch, C. J. (1979). Word watching: Learning vocabulary becomes a hobby. Foreign Language
Annals, 12(2), 153-158.
Little, D. (2009). The European Language Portfolio: Where Pedagogy and Assessment Meet.
8th International Seminar on the European Language Portfolio, Graz. Retrieved fromhttp://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/elp/elp-reg/Source/Publications/
ELP_pedagogy_assessment_Little_EN.pdf
Little, D. (2006). Learner autonomy: Drawing together the threads of self-assessment, goalsetting and reflection. Training teachers to use the European Language Portfolio. Retrieved
from http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/Elp_tt/Results/PagEF/e06.html
Little, D. (2007). Introduction: Reconstructing learner and teacher autonomy in language
education. In A. Barfield & S. H. Brown (Eds.), Reconstructing autonomy in language
education: Inquiry and innovation (pp. 1-12). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Little, D. (2009). Learner autonomy, the European Language Portfolio. In R. Pemberton, S.
Toogood, & A. Barfield (Eds.), Maintaining control: Autonomy and language learning (pp.
147-173). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Murphey, T. (1997). Language learning histories. Nagoya: South Mountain Press.

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Murphey, T., Chen, J., & Chen, L. (2005). Learners’ constructions of identities and imaginedcommunities. In P. Benson & D. Nunan (Eds.), Learners’ stories (pp. 83-100). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Parnwell, E. C. (1989). The Oxford English picture dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pavlenko, A. (2001). Language learning memoirs as a gendered genre. Applied Linguistics, 22(2),213-240.

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ENCO U R AG I N G S TU D E N T S T O E N G AG E I N
LEA R N I N G O U TS ID E T HE C LA S S ROOM
Clair Taylor, Daniel Beck, Darrell Hardy, Keiko Omura,
Michael Stout, & Gerald Talandis Jr.
This paper describes an ongoing action research project designed to promoteautonomous learning in a required Freshman English course at a Japanese university.
Several teachers collaborated to encourage self-access learning using a stamp card
system. Teachers used the cards as a way of introducing learning activities that learners
engage in outside of class time. At the time of writing, the project was in its second
cycle. Significant adjustments were made to the stamp card system at the end of the firstacademic year. The data from both cycles of research show that the stamp card system
encourages more students to make use of the university’s self-access facilities. The
findings highlight the importance of clear induction with hands-on experience,
especially for computer-related study, and the benefits of cooperation among teachersin implementing this approach.
英語の習得には授業内外での大量の学習が不可欠である。学生は学習法を学び、自律した学習者になる必要がある。本稿は、学生の自己学習を支援するために開発したス
タンプカード・システムの実践報告である。このシステムによって、多くの学生が、様々な学習法を体験し、授業外でも自己学習を進めることができるようになった。体験による学習法の指導だけでなく、教員の連携による持続的な支援も重要であることが明らかになった。

It takes roughly 10,000 hours of learning or practice to attain expert ability in any given skill(Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoﬀman, 2006). Eaton (2011) applies this concept tolanguage learning and suggests that students supplement formal instruction with self-study,
practice in informal contexts, and overseas immersion experiences to get the 10,000 hours ofstudy and practice needed to become fully proficient. Recognizing that a limited number ofcontact hours will not be suﬃcient to significantly improve students’ language proficiency,
many universities in Japan are following the Japanese Ministry of Education’s Action Plan to
Cultivate “Japanese with English Abilities” (MEXT, 2003) by setting up conversation lounges toprovide places for learners to interact in English in an international atmosphere. Additionally,
universities are providing self-access centers which may include study booths, reading areas,
and access to online materials. However, these facilities often remain underused. Students may
not have the motivation, skills, or experience to make good use of the facilities, and an
institutional culture of independent study may not exist.
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Some universities in Japan have found a carrot-and-stick approach eﬀective in promoting
independent study. Ashurova and Ssali (2007) oﬀer points to students for participating insessions in their university’s World Plaza interaction lounge, and attendance at a World Plaza
event counts towards the students’ semester grade. Barrs (2010) reveals that one of the factors
underlying the success of his university’s popular self-access center is that students can earn
extra credit for undertaking independent study modules. Heigham (2011) reports that all
students on the Communicative English Program at her university are required to attend theself-access language center 12 times per semester to do independent listening, in lieu of alistening course. These papers all suggest that once they have been encouraged or pushed tomake use of the facilities, students see the benefits and many then become voluntary users.
The requirement or incentive to participate acts as a form of support that bridges classwork
and independent study, and helps learners make steps towards developing autonomy.
This paper describes an ongoing action research project aimed at encouraging self-study at our
institution.
Setting
Toyo Gakuen University is a private university with campuses in Chiba and Tokyo. The Chiba
campus serves approximately 1,200 first and second year-students, for whom English is arequired subject. Most students are still at false-beginner or elementary level, despite six years
of English language instruction. Motivation levels are generally low.
In 2006, the university opened an English Lounge at the Chiba campus. This is a relaxed,
comfortable space where students can have natural conversations in English. It is open all day,with Lounge Time sessions at lunchtime where students can chat with a native-speaker teacher
or intern over a meal. The lounge also serves as a self-access learning center, with learning
support and advice available during the lunch hour. The lounge is stocked with graded readers,
computers, and other learning resources.
Although the university created this English language environment, the facilities and resources
remained underutilized for the first four years. Attendance at Lounge Time sessions was poor;
teachers saw the same faces week after week, and attempts to attract more students throughspecial events were largely unsuccessful. Self-reports from students suggested that few learners
were making use of the website or the graded readers, or engaging in any kind of independent
study. Previous action research projects showed that the student population at this university
fail to engage in independent study unless supported by a tracking system which helps learners
work towards set goals (Taylor, 2009; Taylor & Birchley, 2008). There was, however, no
program-wide system in place to help students manage their independent study.
This was a particular problem for the authors of this study, as we faced this situation directly
on a daily basis. The five native-speaker instructors are assigned regular Lounge Time sessions,and one Japanese faculty member sometimes joins these sessions. We found it diﬃcult togenerate conversational flow and maintain a vibrant atmosphere in the lounge with so few
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students in such a large space, and dealing with the same students so frequently. The sessions
were uncomfortable, and we felt disappointed that the lounge was not thriving. We wanted to
do more to help our students make the most of the facilities provided for them and make moreprogress in their language learning.
Research Questions
In 2010, we decided to embark upon a collaborative action research project in an attempt totackle these problems (Talandis, et al., 2011). The following research questions were devised:• How can we get our students to study on their own outside of class?
• How can we boost attendance in the English Lounge?
Cycle 1: The Intervention
The intervention used in this project was a stamp card system (see Figure 1). Students wereinvited to earn stamps for participating in a Lounge Time session or event, attending a selfstudy support session, reading a graded reader, learning a set number of vocabulary items using
the web application Smart.fm (now iKnow!), and engaging in pronunciation practice using the
web application EnglishCentral. The items were chosen to encourage students to explore arange of study methods and develop in all skill areas. Both online applications allow students
and teachers to track student progress.

Figure 1. The 2010 stamp card.

The system was implemented across the Freshman English program, chiefly in the Speaking
classes. Program-wide coverage was easily achieved, since the members of this action researchgroup teach the Speaking component of this program for almost all of the approximately 600
first-year students. Cooperation was secured with the one Speaking class taught by anotherfaculty member in 2011, and two classes in 2012.

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The program is taught by teams of four teachers, with Speaking and Reading classes held in
regular classrooms, and Listening and Writing classes typically scheduled in computer rooms.
There are 20-26 students in a class, and the students are divided according to department andlevel. The stamp cards were distributed in the Speaking classes, and students were set thetarget of gaining a stamp in every box, earning credit towards their Speaking course grade.
There was flexibility as to whether the card was mandatory or optional, and with the amountof class time used for orientation. Some Reading, Listening and Writing teachers alsocollaborated with the Speaking teachers by promoting the card, providing further orientation,and counting stamps towards their course grades.

Methodology
In the first cycle of this project, teachers utilized the cards over the course of the Spring 2010
semester and gathered usage data and student feedback from an end-of-term questionnaire(see Appendix A). The authors of this study then produced written reflections on theoutcomes of this stage of the project, and shared these accounts with the other members of
the action research project group. Minor modifications were made before the Fall semester,with more usage data collected, in addition to student interviews. The next cycle of the project
began at the start of the 2011 academic year with significant changes to the system. Further
data was collected, from usage records and a feedback survey (Appendix B).
Cycle 1: Spring and Fall 2010
Spring Semester
A key diﬀerence in the way teachers implemented the stamp cards was the decision onwhether or not to make card completion mandatory. Three teachers made it part of the grade,and three gave extra credit for card completion. Data on completion rates supported the
mandatory approach (see Table 1). Where stamp cards were optional, the vast majority ofstudents did not attempt any kind of study at all. However, when stamp card completion was
required, most students engaged in some study, and 9% earned a stamp in every box.
Table 1Comparison of Optional Versus Mandatory Approaches
All

Part

None

Totals

Optional

0.5% (1)

18.0% (57)

81.7% (259)100.0% (317)

Mandatory

9.0% (24)

46.0% (122)45.0% (117)100.0% (263)Note. Numbers in parentheses represent students.

Collaboration proved to be another significant factor in achieving active student participation.
Two of the Speaking teachers persuaded team teachers to promote the stamp card in some of
their classes. When we compare the outcomes for these classes, it is clear that collaboration
among teachers led to more students earning stamps (see Table 2). For the four classes with noSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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collaboration, fewer than half of the students submitted a card, compared to 60% of those inwhich students had this extra support from another teacher, and over 90% when two
additional teachers collaborated with the Speaking teacher. Students received moreencouragement and more orientation, and had a bigger incentive to earn stamps as they got
more credit for their eﬀorts. Also, unlike the Speaking teachers, the Writing and Listening
teachers hold their classes in computer rooms, so it is possible to build a regular slot into eachclass for students to use the web applications. This allowed students to become very familiar
with the tools, which enabled independent use.

Table 2
Eﬀects of Co$aboration
All*

Part**EnglishCentral
Average Points

Smart.fm
Average Points(Mastered Items)

No collaboration

6%

43%

729

18

2 teachers collaborating

0%

61%

687

48

3 teachers collaborating

86%

5%

4030

189

Note. Total number of classes = 9. *Percentage of students completing all of the card. **Percentage of students
completing part of the card.

Average lounge attendance during the Spring 2010 semester increased notably over theprevious year, as Figure 2 shows. The influx of students generated by the stamp cards resulted
in a more vibrant and attractive lounge atmosphere, which, in turn, provided further incentive
to come (see Figure 2).
On the questionnaire, a sizable proportion (9.7%) of the students commented that contact
with native speakers in the lounge and opportunities to speak 生英語 [nama-eigo = real-live
English] led to an increase in motivation. Their comments also indicated that the stamp card
gave reluctant students a reason to come to the lounge, and that once students participated ina session they found it a rich experience:
English Lounge は最初は行きにくかったけど、スタンプカードのおかげで、行きやすくなった。身近に英語が感じれた [sic]。

[At first it was hard to go into the lounge, but thanks to the stamp card it became easier togo in there. I was able to feel English up close.]This indicates that the stamp card can help students move out of their comfort zone to try
new learning experiences.

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Figure 2. Comparison of the average number of students attending lounge sessions in Spring2009 and Spring 2010.

Feedback from the questionnaire also helped identify strengths and weaknesses in the system.
Some students who attempted activities reported an increase in motivation because they could
improve their vocabulary, interact with native speakers more confidently, or discover new anduseful learning resources. Students who did not complete the cards cited a lack of time orinterest, whilst others had not understood the system or found the activities diﬃcult, whichsuggested the orientation to the stamp card needed improvement. Despite the improved
atmosphere, a number of students stated that it was 入りづらい [diﬃcult to enter] the lounge.
Fall Semester
In response to the results from the Spring semester, individual teachers made a variety ofminor changes for the Fall term. For example, teachers created more esthetically pleasing cards
by copying the template onto heavier, glossier card or colored paper. Some teachers carried out
regular progress checks and took students to a CALL room to familiarize students with the
web applications. Two teachers switched from an optional approach to a mandatory approach.

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Figure 3. Comparison of the average number of students attending lounge sessions in Fall 2009
and 2010.

Results continued to improve. Lounge attendance increased from an average of nine students
per session in Fall 2009 to just over 19 in Fall 2010 (see Figure 3). Furthermore, more students
were able to at least partially complete their stamp cards, with 45% of the students completingsome or all of the stamp card, up from 35% in the Spring semester (see Table 3).
These results supported the mandatory approach, but showed that the stamp card
intervention was failing to change the behavior of more than half the students, and thus
needed modification. Our aim was for all the students to engage in at least some of the stamp
card activities.
Cycle 2: Intervention Modifications in Spring 2011
Based on the results of the first cycle, a number of changes were made to the stamp card
system. First, all teachers made completion of the stamp card mandatory. The card now
constitutes 20% of the students’ grades in the speaking classes. The card has 25 boxes, andstudents are asked to fill 20 boxes with stamps. This builds in an element of choice, allowing
students to focus on activities which they find more enjoyable or useful. The stamp card was
also modified. The vocabulary web application Smart.fm became a paid service, and wastherefore substituted with a free vocabulary application, Quizlet. The CD-ROM that
accompanies the student textbook was introduced as an item, oﬀering students the option of
focusing on grammar. Furthermore, to provide more eﬀective orientation, a bilingual manualwas distributed in class, explaining the rationale behind the card system and each study
activity, and giving detailed instructions on registering for and using the web applications.
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Teachers also provided more eﬀective monitoring by giving weekly reminders to complete thecards.
The results showed considerable improvement. The average number of students coming to a
Lounge Time session in Spring 2011 was 33, compared to 24 in the first cycle of the project in2010, and only 10 in 2009 before the stamp card system was implemented (see Figure 4). The
number of students attending events in the lounge also increased from an average of 36 in thefirst cycle to 60 in the second cycle. The number of students completing all required tasks
increased dramatically (see Table 4).

Table 3
Stamp Card Completion Fa$ 2010
All

Part

None

TotalsSpring Semester

4.3% (25)

39.1% (179)

64.8% (376)100.0% (580)

Fall Semester

6.0% (22)39.0% (217)

55.0% (319)100.0% (558)

All

Part

None

TotalsCycle 1 (Spring 2010)

4.3% (25)

30.9% (179)

64.8% (376)100.0% (580)

Cycle 2 (Spring 2011)30.0% (121)

53.0% (245)

17.0% (73)100.0% (439)

Table 4
Stamp Card Completion Spring 2011

While in the first semester of 2010 only 4% of students managed to complete all the required
tasks, by the end of the first semester of 2011, 30% were able to accomplish this. In fact, somestudents did much more than was required, filling several cards or getting extra stamps on theback of the card (see Figure 5). This indicates that the modifications to the stamp card systemwere eﬀective in motivating students to engage in independent study. However, the fact that
17% of the students failed to attempt any study at all suggests that teachers need to do more to
motivate and support this diﬃcult-to-reach group.
Ultimately, the goal of the stamp card system is not merely to achieve student compliance inusing the facilities, but to encourage students to develop lasting independent study habits. For
this reason we included items on the questionnaire which asked students about their future
intentions and expectations. The responses indicated that many students anticipate using one
or more of the learning activities over the summer, and also in their second year, when theySpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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would not be required to do so (see Figure 6). It is possible that, even though the questionnaire
was anonymous, students were trying to answer in a way that pleased their teachers. Even so,these results are positive, indicating that the stamp card system may have some impact on
students’ ongoing study habits and development.

Figure 4. Comparison of the average number of students attending lounge sessions in the Springsemester 2009-2011.

Figure 5. Stamp card with more than 20 stamps.

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Figure 6. Student questionnaire responses on their future study plans.
Discussion
This action research project has been a journey for the participating teacher-researchers, andhas impacted on our evolving beliefs about how best to foster independent learning in ourstudent population. We have grappled particularly with the issue of learner autonomy, which
we define as the learners’ freedom to choose how to learn and the ability to carry out theirlearning plans. This requires the learners to be proactive, to “explicitly accept responsibility for
their learning, share in the setting of learning goals [and] take initiatives in planning andexecuting learning activities” (Little, 2002). As teachers, we believe that we should empower
learners by encouraging autonomy. Thus, when our English Lounge was first opened, we felt
strongly that we should not force learners to make use of the facilities but instead attract themto the lounge by promoting the space and being as welcoming as possible. We also believedthat we should not require university-level students to engage in any particular form of
independent study outside of class time, but oﬀer a wide range of eﬀective and attractive
resources and let students explore them and find for themselves which activities best suit theirlearning style. However, the failure of this approach led us to re-evaluate our stance.

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It was clear that although we had given the students complete freedom in choosing how tolearn, students were not able to take responsibility and exercise those choices. There were anumber of obstacles for the students to overcome. Firstly, the majority of the learning
resources were online, yet many students struggled even to recall their passwords to log on to
the campus computers, and could not remember how to access or use the applications they
were introduced to in classes. More importantly, students lacked the experience to create theirown learning plans, and without any incentive to engage in independent learning, busy
students failed to make time for study. Moreover, due to lack of use, the English Lounge
became a somewhat stigmatized place. Students were embarrassed to be seen eating lunch witha group of teachers in the middle of a large, empty room. Overall, a culture had developed inwhich not studying was the norm.
The stamp card intervention aimed to tackle these obstacles, and the results indicated that it
was successful. The card system made it easier for students to create a learning path by setting
achievable goals and restricting the students’ choices to a limited range of activities. The
students could still choose when and where to study, and had considerable scope for choicewithin those activities (e.g., there are many genres and levels of graded readers in the library,
and a choice of over 2,000 videos to study in EnglishCentral). The system gave students areason to learn, as card completion counted towards the students’ semester grades. When
students had an incentive to study, they made use of the lounge and computer facilities. Inturn, this increased usage rate reduced any stigma about coming to the lounge. Also, students
felt the need to learn how to use the web applications, and weaker students sought help fromteachers and peers. It was common to see students helping their friends access and use theapplications, and working collaboratively.
As teacher-researchers we accepted that our freshman students need a structured system tohelp them develop autonomy, but some of us felt uncomfortable with making the stamp card
mandatory. At the start of the study three teachers made the cards optional, believing that wecannot help the students learn to take responsibility for their own learning if we remove that
responsibility from them. After the first set of data was collected, it was clear that the optional
approach was not successful. Two teachers switched to a mandatory approach, but one teacher
resisted, believing that his students could find in themselves the motivation and initiative toengage in the study activities if he promoted them more enthusiastically. Only after the second
collection of data did this teacher change his views, accepting that our students are not readyyet to take on this responsibility, and need the experience of engaging in the stamp card
activities for a sustained period to develop the skills, habits, and awareness needed to takecharge of their own independent study.
As this project progressed, we realized the power of group action research to generateinstitutional change. We found a shift occurring in the culture of our campus. Enteringclassrooms before lessons started, we sometimes found students talking about the stamp card,
discussing their motivation levels for diﬀerent activities. Our students began voluntarily
posting about their graded readers on Facebook, and the lounge became an increasinglySpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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popular place to spend time. The students now have a social and psychological environment
which supports independent study. This change would not have been possible if only one or
two teachers had introduced the stamp card system with their students. Only a small
percentage of students would have received the cards, and this would not have had the sameeﬀect on the school culture. The fact that the system has been implemented program wide is
the key to its success.
Moving Forward
The project continues to impact positively on student learning behavior and the developing
culture of independent learning at our institution. It is clear that a long-term commitment isrequired to sustain and deepen this process. The next cycle of this project will aim to improvestudent participation rates further through securing greater cooperation from other teachers in
the Freshman English team. The project group also aims to strengthen the practice ofextensive reading in English on campus by building stronger links between the stamp card
activities and classwork. As the 2012 student intake moves into their second year, it will also be
possible to explore how far these students continue to study English independently without
the stamp card system to motivate them.

Daniel Beck, Darrell Hardy, and Keiko Omura are sti$ based at Toyo Gakuen University, which
has campuses in both Chiba and Tokyo. Clair Taylor now teaches at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University and
Gerald Talandis Jr. now teaches at the University of Toyama. Michael Stout wi$ start teachingat the University of Tsukuba in September. As a group, their research interests span a range of areas
including vocabulary learning, CALL, literature, project-based language learning, and online communities
of practice. They share a keen interest in self-access learning and passionately believe in the power of action
research as a transformative tool for bringing about positive change in educational institutions.
To cite this article: Taylor, C., Beck, D., Hardy, D., Omura, K., Stout, M., & Talandis, G. (2012). Encouraging
students to engage in learning outside the classroom. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT
Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 31-45.
Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/taylor.pdf

References
Ashurova, U., & Ssali, V. (2007). Creating an L2 community in an L1 environment. In K.
Bradford-Watts (Ed.), JALT 2006 Conference Proceedings. Tokyo: JALT.
Barrs, K. (2010). What factors encourage high levels of student participation in a self-accesscentre? Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 1(1), 10–16.

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings

Eaton, S. E. (2011). How long does it take to learn a second language?: Applying the “10,000-hour rule” asa model for fluency. Calgary: Onate Press.
Ericsson, A. K., Charness, N., Feltovich, P., & Hoﬀman, R. (2006). Cambridge handbook on
expertise and expert performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heigham, J. (2011). Self-access evolution: One university’s journey toward learner control.
Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 2(2), 78-86. $$$$Little, D. (2002). Learner autonomy and second/foreign language learning. In The guide to goodpractice for learning and teaching in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. LTSN Subject
Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, University of Southampton.
MEXT (2003). Action plan to cultivate “Japanese with English abilities.” Retrieved from:http://www.mext.go.jp/english/topics/03072801.htm
Talandis Jr., G., Taylor, C., Beck, D., Hardy, D., Murray, C., Omura, K., & Stout, M. (2011). The
stamp of approval: Motivating students towards independent learning. The Toyo Gakuen
Daigaku Kiyo [Bu$etin of Toyo Gakuen University] 19, 165-182.
Taylor, C., & Birchley, S. L. (2008). Virtual cards: An action research project exploring how far
online flashcards can invigorate vocabulary learning for students. The Toyo Gakuen Daigaku
Kiyo [Bu$etin of Toyo Gakuen University] 16, 47-56.
Taylor, C. (2009). How can I get my students to study vocabulary between classes? The Toyo
Gakuen Kiyo [Bu$etin of Toyo Gakuen University] 18, 277-288.

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Appendix A
Questionnaire Handed out to Students at the End of the 2010 Spring Semester
基礎英語1-4A Semester 1 Questionnaire

Class ____Your English teachers would be very happy if you could answer these questions in English or Japanese. It may takeabout 5 minutes.

お手数ですが、以下の簡単なアンケートにお答えください（約５分）。日本語でも、英語でも結構です。
1. How many stamps did you receive for each activity below?

以下の項目で、それぞれいくつのスタンプをもらいましたか？
●
●
●
●
●

Lounge time/event _____
Self-study support _____
Graded readers _____
Smart.fm _____EnglishCentral _____

2. What do you think the purpose of the stamp cards is?

このスタンプカードのねらいは何だと考えますか？

3. Did you find the stamp card motivating? Why or why not?

スタンプカードを使うことで、英語に対する意欲が上がりましたか？
理由も教えてください。

4. If you didn't use the stamp card, why not?

スタンプカードを使わなかった方への質問です。なぜ、使わなかったのですか？
●

I was too busy 忙しかった●

I was not interested 興味がわかなかった●

I did the activities, but I forgot to get a stamp●

I lost my stamp card and didn't replace it スタンプカードを紛失して、新しいカードをもらわなかった●

What is a "stamp card?" スタンプカードそのものを知らない●

Other (please write) その他

活動はしたが、スタンプをもらうのを忘れた＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

5. How can the stamp card system be improved?

今後、スタンプカードをより良くするためにはどうしたらいいと思いますか？

Thank you for your time!

ご協力ありがとうございました。

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Appendix B
Questionnaire Handed out to Students at the End of the 2011 Spring Semester
基礎英語とスタンプカードに関するアンケート Kiso Eigo Semester 1 Stamp Card
Questionnaire

class ____Your English teachers would be very happy if you could answer these questions. It may takeabout 2 minutes.
お手数ですが、以下の簡単なアンケートにお答えください。（所要時間2分）
1. Which KisoEigo teachers talked to you about the Stamp Card? Please circle Yes, No or Can’t Remember
基礎英語の担当教員はスタンプカードについて説明しましたか？「Yes」か「No」か「覚えていない」に○を付けてください。
Did your KE1 (Grammar/Writing) teacher talk to you about the stamp card?
Did your KE2 (Reading) teacher talk to you about the stamp card?
Did your KE3 (Listening) teacher talk to you about the stamp card?

Yes No Can’t Remember
Yes No Can’t Remember
Yes No Can’t Remember

2. Which teachers gave you class time to do Stamp Card activities, such as reading a graded reader, Quizlet,
EnglishCentral, or the CD-ROM? Please circle Yes, No or Can’t Remember.
どの基礎英語の担当教員が、授業内でスタンプカードの課題（グレイディッドリーダー、 Quizlet、EnglishCentral、またはCD- ROM）のために時間を使いましたか？「Yes」か「No」か「覚えていない」に○を付けてください。
Did your KE1 teacher give you class time to do Stamp Card activities?
Did your KE2 teacher give you class time to do Stamp Card activities?
Did your KE3 teacher give you class time to do Stamp Card activities?

Yes No Can’t Remember
Yes No Can’t Remember
Yes No Can’t Remember

3. Did you get enough training for the computer activities on the Stamp Card? Please circle Yes or No.
あなたは、スタンプカードの、パソコンを使った課題に取り組むために必要なパソコンの訓練を受けましたか？
「Yes」か「No」に○を付けてください。
Did you get enough training for using the CD-ROM?
Did you get enough training for using Quizlet?
Did you get enough training for using EnglishCentral?

Yes
Yes
Yes

No
No
No

4. Which activities will you use in the summer vacation? Please circle Yes or No for each.
夏休み中は、以下の課題の中で、どの課題に取り組みますか？「Yes」か「No」に○を付けて下さい。
I will use the CD-ROM in the summer vacation.
I will use Quizlet in the summer vacation.
I will use EnglishCentral in the summer vacation.
I will read graded readers in the summer vacation.

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

No
No
No
No

5. In your second year at Togaku, which activities do you think you will continue independently? Please circle Yes or No
for each.
２年生になってからは、以下の課題の中で、どの課題を自主的に使い続けますか？「Yes」か「No」に○を付けて下さい。
I will continue coming to the English Lounge
I will continue using the CD-ROM
I will continue using Graded Readers
I will continue using Quizlet
I will continue using EnglishCentral

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

No
No
No
No
No

Thank you for your time!

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D E V E L O P I N G A M O T I VAT I O N A L
L E A R N I N G ENV I RONM ENT
Steven Paydon
In this paper, I propose that, by fostering interpersonal relationships in the classroom,
we can help to create a productive learning environment and, consequently, enhance theconditions for personal growth in our students. Drawing on theories of motivation andgroup dynamics, I present a new hierarchical model representing classroom motivation,and describe each of its successive levels in turn. My workshop at the Realizing
Autonomy Conference sought to demonstrate the practicability of the model bysimulating a classroom with the participants. The paper concludes with a reflection onthat experience and a discussion of the relationship between productive groupformation and autonomous learning.
本論は教室内の対人関係の育成が生産的な学習環境の構築につながり、結果として学習者一人一人の成長を促すことを訴える。動機付け理論、及びグループダイナミクス理論に基づき、教室におけるモチベーションの新しい階層モデルと各ステップを説明する。 ２０１１年に開催のRealizing Autonomy 学会で参加者と一緒に行った模擬クラ
スワークショップでこのモデルの実用性を探求した。このワークショップを振り返り、生産性の高いグループの構築と自律学習の関係について考察する。

Introduction
A common concern among foreign language teachers in Japan is student motivation. This
paper aims to address this concern by introducing a model of motivation that can help us
better understand and create conditions for enhancing group performance, student motivation,
personal growth, and learning.
Group performance refers to the quantity and quality of classroom interaction. This is an
important idea in the context of communicative language teaching, where emphasis is upondeveloping the learners’ communicative skills through participation in authentic
communicative tasks (Ehrman & Dörnyei, p. 141, 1998). Motivation, here, refers to the driving
force behind human endeavor. Motivation is responsible for why people decide to dosomething, how long they are willing to sustain the activity, and how hard they are going topursue it (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 8). By looking at a group’s dynamics, we can strengthen theinterpersonal relationships and optimize group processes, thus dismantling barriers tocommunication and freeing up interaction. By looking at individual student needs, we canSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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appeal to the motivational drives that will both further enhance classroom task performanceand, ultimately, lead to personal growth. This paper attempts to blend theories from the fieldsof group dynamics and motivation to provide a basic, unified model of motivation that applies
to teaching and learning in a communicative and collaborative classroom context.
This paper grew out of the workshop titled Developing a Collaborative (and Productive)
Learning Environment that was held at the Realizing Autonomy Conference, Nagoya, 2011. In
this workshop, I introduced an original model of motivation, and then invited the participants
to become students in a mock classroom exercise, enacting the steps towards developing a
motivational group environment. As in the workshop, I start by explaining the theories
supporting this model, and discussing the significance of its successive levels, along with ideas
for practical applications in the classroom. This is followed by an account of the Nagoya
workshop and my reflections upon that experience. Finally, I clarify the link between thismodel and other theories of autonomous learning.

Motivation Theories
The Classroom Motivation Model oﬀers a simple construct that explains classroom motivationand justifies a special focus on the facilitation of a productive group learning environment. It
draws mainly from the fields of sports psychology, group psychotherapy, education, andpersonal teaching experience. The model is also influenced by various motivation and groupdynamics theories. First is Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET), a subtheory of Self
Determination Theory (SDT). By focusing on the social environment of the classroom, CET
facilitates intrinsic motivation by supporting the students’ innate psychological needs (Ryan &Deci, 2000).
The Classroom Motivation Model also draws from sequential stage theories of groupdevelopment As the name suggests, sequential stage group development theories assume thatgroups move through stages of development. Ehrman and Dornyei (1998) have developed afour-stage model of this theory relating to the second language classroom (see Figure 1). Thesestages are formation, transition, performing, and dissolution. The formation stage starts whengroups first come together and is a period of orientation and ice-breaking. The transition stage
is characterized by conflict and resolution, or “storming and norming” (Tuckman, 1965, p. 396),
where group members work through conflicts and diﬀerences before accepted behavior
patterns emerge and the group matures into a unified, organized and cooperative unit. At thisstage, the group has developed into a cohesive, performing unit. Dissolution begins when thesequence of developmental stages ends and the group breaks up. Awareness of these stages ofgroup development helps us to predict how a group might behave at any given time in its
development. This awareness is also particularly important when developing groupperformance, because a group will not be able to perform to its potential until it has reached
the phase of development that supports it.

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Figure 1. Ehrman and Dörnyei’s Group Development model (based on Ehrman & Dörnyei,
1998).

Another motivational theory that underlies the Classroom Motivation Model is Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs (1943) (see Figure 2). Maslow maintains that we all have varying levels ofneeds, and that the lower-level needs must be met before we can progress to the next higher
level. For example, our most basic needs are physiological. We need things like food, shelter,and sleep, and these needs must be mostly satisfied before we become interested in the nextlevel: safety. The key point that relates to classroom motivation is that higher needs, such as
language learning and personal growth, are unlikely to be met if a basic need for security has
not been satisfied first.

Figure 2. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (based on Maslow, 1943).

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The Classroom Motivation Model
The model I introduce here has five levels (see Figure 3). The bottom four levels—structure,
trust, cohesion and performance—can be seen as steps leading to group development, while
the fifth level represents personal growth. The levels are not mutually exclusive; however, eachlevel is built on the one that precedes it. Performance is the primary aim of the model in theclassroom, and the stages leading to performance focus on what the group needs to realize thisaim. At the performance stage, which is similar to Erhman and Dörnyei’s (1998) performing
stage, the group has matured into a unified, organized, and cooperative unit in action. The
group’s interpersonal relationships and group processes have been enhanced, the group has
become important to its members, and students are interacting freely and willingly to achieve
their group aims. In other words, the quality and quantity of interaction has been optimized
and the performance goal has been reached. Once the students have reached the stage where
they have matured as a group, and are achieving optimal performance as part of their group,
they are ready to progress as individuals to the final stage. Here sits the ultimate goal of
personal growth. In the context of a communicative classroom, this ultimate aim provides
further potential to extend student performance and maintain motivation. Let’s take a look at
the steps in detail.

Figure 3. The Classroom Motivation Model.
Structure
The Classroom Motivation Model begins by focusing on structure. Structure refers to both
physical and the social structure, and is the basic foundation upon which all progressive levelsof the model are built. Physical structure refers to the tangible environment the students study
in: the room size, seating arrangements, and lighting, for example. Social structure refers to“the pattern of relationships that emerges among its members” (Ehrman & Dörnyei, 1998, p.
76). Whether we recognize it or not, right from the very first time students are assembled into
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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedingsa group, a structure begins to develop. During this time, peer relations, status hierarchies, roleand norm systems are developing that will prevail for a long time (Ehrman & Dörnyei, 1998, p.
110; Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003, p. 12, pp. 14-15). Dörnyei and Murphey (2003) emphasize that
this is a very important period in a group’s life (p. 12). While on the surface things might seemsmooth and harmonious during the initial classes, under the surface, plenty of structuring andinternal organization is going on (p. 12, pp. 14-15). With a little input in the right places at theright times, the teacher can influence the way that structure develops, and encourage a positive
group environment to evolve.
According to MacLennon and Dies (1992), the physical environment of the classroom aﬀects
not only the climate and quality of interaction, but also how the group will evolve. In order for
students to develop into one cohesive group, they need to look and feel like one group. If there
is too much space between students, they can experience feelings of insignificance, emptiness,isolation, and anxiety (p. 22). These feelings can encourage subgroups and cliques to develop,
and will result in a fractured group. As Ehrman and Dörnyei (1998) suggest, “Physical closenesstends to lead to psychological closeness” (p. 143). Students should not be seated so close
together that they feel crowded or confined, but neither should they be seated too far apart(MacLennon & Dies, 1992, p. 22). One practical idea is to provide an organized seating plan. A
grid system usually works best. Bring the students in together and give each a designated seat.
This immediately alleviates student anxiety over where they should sit. This organization will
provide three important elements for developing a group: proximity, contact, and interaction(Ehrman & Dörnyei, 1998, pp. 142-144).
Once the class physically resembles a group, it is time to start working on the social structure.
One way to encourage a positive social structure is by working on a set of class rules with thestudents. Let them know that this is their class, and that they should have their own rules.
Give them examples, and then together discuss what kinds of rules they might like for theirclass. Next, brainstorm the rules on the board, and then, go through a process of negotiation.
Negotiation is important because students will likely come up with some untenable ideas.
However, through a process of negotiation the teacher and students can come to an agreementthat suits both parties. Some common examples of class rules from in my own classes include:·

We can drink in class.

·

If we finish our work, we can leave early.

·

We must have a class party.

Each of these student-generated class rules contributes to the development of a positive
learning environment. The negotiation of a rule to allow drinks in class, for example (acompromise on the usual ban on eating and drinking), helps students personalize theclassroom. The decision to leave once the work is done motivates them to work hard andrewards them for doing so. A class party always creates a great opportunity for the teacher toreward the students for their hard work with something they will not only all enjoy, but thatSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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will also contribute to developing a positive group dynamic. A party is also a helpful way tomotivate students for a final project or assessment. By encouraging them to work hard towards
a major goal, and scheduling a party to celebrate its completion, the two become associatedtogether and the students have something to look forward to, knowing that their hard work is
not solely for assessment purposes.
Student-generated class rules also influence the basis of the social structure, and help toestablish a norm system. A positive norm system is essential for a good class. As Forsyth (2010)
explains, “Norms are a fundamental element of a group’s structure, for they provide direction
and motivation, organize social interactions, and make other people’s responses predictable
and meaningful” (p. 145). In this way, the rules help to guide accepted norms of classroom
behavior. Consequently, as Cohen (1994) observes, an accepted norm system has the eﬀect oftransferring control from the teacher to the students:
Much of the work that teachers usually do is taken care of by the students themselves;the group helps to keep everyone on task; group members assist one another. Instead of
the teacher having to control everyone’s behavior, the students take charge ofthemselves and others. (p. 60)
A final advantage to involving students in developing a set of class rules is that these rules help
to personalize the class and give the students a sense of ownership and control—in otherwords, autonomy.
The emphasis on structure may seem somewhat restrictive. However, we can’t have freedom
without some constraint. Stewart and Irie (2011) point out that "… freedom and constraint areheld in direct dialectical relationship to each other, and that this tension between freedom andconstraint is particularly salient for teachers who base their classroom practices on theprinciple of learner autonomy" (p. 14). As they point out, one of the traditional roles of theteacher, and institutions, is to provide structure in order to manage and control the process oflearning (p. 15). Of course, there is a need for a balance between freedom and constraint.
However, establishing some structure provides the students with a basic stable framework
within which they can thrive. Structure in the form of classroom norms, for example, provides
the students with an ability to understand what is expected of them, and security comes fromthat understanding. This, in turn, makes it easier for students to interact freely. Once a
structure has been established, then the groundwork will have been laid from which trust can
grow.
Trust
As Lencioni (2002) observes, trust lies at the heart of any functioning, cohesive team (p. 195).
Trust is the confidence among a group’s members that their classmates’ intentions are good,
and that there is no need to be defensive or careful around them (Lencioni, 2002, p. 195).
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Trust implies expectation. When two people trust each other, they make demands on
the other to respond in a particular way. One has confidence in the predictability of theother, and anticipation that the other will respond in terms of what is needed, an
expectation that the other will not inflict hurt, and a belief in the other’s consistency.
(p. 19)Trust is especially important in a language class. Learning to speak a second language,especially at the lower levels, requires students to constantly risk potential embarrassment.
They will avoid interaction if they feel they might lose face and, thus, energy will be wasted on
avoiding potentially negative interactions and staying safe. These dysfunctional interactions
divert energy and attention away from group tasks (Ehrman & Dörnyei, 1998, p. 2; Lencioni,
2002, p. 196). When students don’t trust each other, their resources are focused on simply
keeping themselves out of trouble. However, when a group’s participants do trust each other,
they are more willing to take risks, and they can focus their energy on group tasks.
The first step to developing trust is to encourage interaction. The teacher now needs toimplement ways for the students to share information about themselves in order to discoversimilarities and develop interpersonal attraction. Set up activities that facilitate interaction,such as, “Find-someone-who …” exercises, random pairing/grouping, and information-exchange
activities. We are drawn to people we have something in common with, and feel empathy
towards people with whom we share similarities. One important point is to get all of thestudents in the class mixing with as many other students as possible. If they mix only withthose they already feel comfortable with, then there is a danger of cliques developing. Random
pairing is important because it encourages students to invest in the whole group, rather thanjust their friends, since they never know who their next partner will be. When students knowthat they might be partners with someone in the future, it positively aﬀects how they regard
the others in the group (Erhman & Dörnyei, 1998, p. 143). When a level of trust has developed,
and the participants are interacting freely, then it’s time to develop the cohesion.
Cohesion
Structure, trust, and cohesion are all closely related. Structure provides the basic proximity,
contact, interaction, and security that will facilitate the development of trust. Whereas trust
helps the group to function eﬀectively, interpersonal relationships build the cohesion that will
power the group’s performance. Without first establishing trust, cohesion would never havethe opportunity to develop. Cohesion grows out of the confidence to take the risks that trust
provides. Lind (1999) describes the relationship between trust and cohesion thus:… mutual trust must be built between group members before the group can becohesive. The mutual trust between group members then results in the group members
interacting with each other to a greater degree. When a high level of group trust exists,
the group members will feel more tightly bound and connected into the group
activities. Thus group cohesiveness emerges from group trust. (p. 859)

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The cohesion level in this model also draws on the ideas from the field of social psychology.
Ryan and Deci (2000) maintain that we have three basic psychological needs that enhance
motivation and mental health—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—which, whenthwarted, lead to diminished motivation and well-being. The cohesion stage of the model
appeals to the need for relatedness by supplying the students with a social context within
which they can satisfy this need. Similarly, this stage also relates to Maslow’s (1943) love/
belonging level of needs, as well as to Baumeister and Leary’s (1995) Need to Belong Theory,
which maintains that human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least aminimum number of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships. This need tobelong is considered a fundamental human motivator (p. 497).
To maintain the cohesiveness of the class as a whole, students must be given opportunities tointeract with all the other members of the group. Changing partners often, and with a sense of
randomness, remains important throughout the course. Cohesion is the glue that binds a groupof people together. That glue is made up of all the interpersonal relationships sharedthroughout the group. The strength of the bonds shared by the participants determines thedegree of cohesion of the group. As all these interpersonal relationships are woven throughout
the group, binding all the members together, the group starts to resemble a tapestry. If you pull
the corner of a tapestry in one direction, the rest will follow. Just like a tapestry, if you
encourage a cohesive group to move in one direction, they will move together.
Social structure, trust, and cohesion are all intangible elements. However, you can sense thecohesion in a class that has it. This is the class where students hang around after the bell andlook like they don’t want to leave. You can also recognize the absence of cohesion in a classthat doesn’t have it. This is the class where, after the bell has gone, they can’t wait to get out
the door!
Performance
Once structure, trust, and cohesion have been established, the group has matured. They should
now be a unified, organized, and cooperative unit. Up until this point, the focus has been on
removing barriers to group performance. Now it is time to focus on motivating the group to
optimize performance. Three areas of opportunity for increasing motivation at this level lie in
intensifying the interpersonal relationships, working on the group members’ social identity,and providing optimal challenge.
Referring again to the model, it is worth noting that Evans and Dion (1991) found groupcohesion and performance are positively related. When a group is high in cohesion, therelationships the students have with each other become the source of motivation. Maslow’s(1943) Hierarchy of Human Needs again oﬀers some insight into this idea. Once we haveprogressed up through the levels of physiological needs, safety, and need to belonging, we cometo the level of the need for esteem. At this level, we are looking for positive reinforcement, andhere is the connection between cohesion and motivation. The strong bonds that the students
have developed at the cohesion level will lead the students to seek respect and positive
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reinforcement from the classmates with whom they share these bonds, motivating them to try
harder, do better, and achieve more.
Another idea for increasing motivation at the performance level is to increase students’
identification with the group. Social identity theory suggests that when individuals derive theirsense of self and identity from the group, they expend extra eﬀort for their group (Forsyth,2010, p. 298). Therefore, the more important the group is to them, the harder the students will
work because they will not want to let their fellow group members down.
One simple but eﬀective way to increase social identification is to take a group photo. The
group photograph establishes each student as part of the group. Combined with a positive
group experience, the group photo will reinforce a sense of belonging to a rewarding group,and this helps make the group more important. So, early on in the group’s life, take thestudents outside, or have a class party, and take a group photo of them having fun. Then usethat photo on some classroom worksheet, for example, so that they each get a copy of it tokeep and look back on.
The third motivational consideration is aiming for optimal challenge. Both the concepts of
SDT and flow are important here. CET, a subtheory of SDT, emphasizes the psychologicalneed for competence. Similarly, Csikszentmihalyi’s (2001) concept of flow also calls for clear
proximal goals (p. 90). This means that to activate intrinsic motivation, tasks need to be at alevel where the students are neither bored because the task is too easy, nor overloaded because
the task is too diﬃcult. What is needed is a Goldilocks factor of optimal challenges that will
foster competence. Recounting an interview with Csikszentmihalyi for the New York Times,
Goleman (1995) relates that Csikszentmihalyi told him:
People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them are a bit greater thanusual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them,people are bored. If there is too much for them to handle, they get anxious. Flow occurs
in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety (p. 92).
Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (2001) further relate how people in a “flow” state experience
the activity itself as intrinsically rewarding, they lose track of time, their awareness merging
with their actions as they become intensely focused on what they are doing at the present
moment (p. 90). I believe this concept of flow resonates with the classroom motivation model
introduced here.
To increase investment in a relationship, students need to take more risk with regard to trust.
As suggested earlier, in the early stages of developing the students’ relationships, we might
facilitate ways for them to discover similarities they have with each other, because this leads tointerpersonal attraction. But to make those bonds grow stronger, they need to share
incrementally more intimate information about, for example, their strengths and weaknesses,or their greatest fears. By taking more interpersonal risk, and investing higher levels of trust,the interpersonal bonds grow stronger and the relationships intensify. The stronger theSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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relationships are, the harder the students will work for each other. Therefore, at this level, we
need to include activities that will strengthen those interpersonal relationships.
As for aiming for optimal challenge, this of course relies on the teacher’s judgment andautonomy. Teachers can also be challenged by institutional constraints here, for example.
However, with adequate course flexibility, a good project that works here is small group poster
presentations. Both the ideas of CET and flow also outline a need for feedback on progress(Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 70; Nakamura & Csikszenmihalyi, 2001, p. 90). Poster presentations
oﬀer an opportunity to break the project up into smaller steps that can be achieved moreeasily. These steps can then be aimed at the appropriate level of challenge. Poster presentation
projects also oﬀer an opportunity for students to work towards, and receive, positive
reinforcement from both their classmates and the teacher. Each step is rehearsed, and eachpresentation is given multiple times, allowing students to practice, improve, and impress.
Performance has been the primary aim of the model up to this point. For any course, this is agood initial aim. However, when teachers have adequate autonomy to tailor a course to theirstudents needs, then the ultimate goal of the model—personal growth—oﬀers significant
potential to extend performance and maintain motivation.
Personal Growth
Up until this point the focus has been on group needs. However, at the apex of the hierarchy,
the focus shifts to the individual. Personal growth sits at the top of the pyramid because, as
humanistic psychologists like Maslow and Rogers have pointed out, personal growth is an
inherent human need (Dörnyei, 2001, p.8). Once the group has reached the level of
performance, personal growth as a higher goal oﬀers the potential to maintain, or extend,
motivation.
In the context of a class, keeping students motivated after a major project has been completed
can be diﬃcult. A class that has high levels of cohesion may start to focus more on social
relationships for interpersonal reinforcement; thus, getting them back on task can bechallenging. I had this exact problem with a year-long course I had been teaching for a number
years. I seemed to be able to get the students motivated to perform in the first semester, but,in the second semester, it was diﬃcult to get the group refocused and on task. To make mattersworse, this particular class was taken in the students’ third year and many of the students werepreoccupied with job hunting. Their school days were coming to an end and they werethinking a lot more about what they were going to do after they finished school, rather thanwhat they were doing in school.
I thought about where they were in life and how I could tailor the classroom content aroundsomething that might hold significance in the next stage of their lives. If I could deliver
something that rewarded them in terms of personal growth, then maybe I could reengage
them. Following this thought process, and after having some success with using identity andvalues as content in previous courses, I came up with the idea of writing personal mission
statements. Much like a company writes a mission statement that clarifies its identity, its
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values, and its goals, we started a project that explored each of these elements in the context ofthe students’ own life. We explored the notion of identity, and the students then used it toclarify their own identities. This helped the students to discover what is important to them,
how people relate to them, and who they are. We also explored the notion of values and learnt
about how values influence our decisions. The last topic we explored was the importance ofgoals, and the students set some life goals. Finally, the students drafted and peer edited
personal mission statements. Their peers were people they respected, such as their parents,
brothers, sisters, teachers, or best friends. I supplied a worksheet prompting peers to commenton specific areas of the students’ mission statements. When the students brought their peer
feedback to the class, the comments were shared and used to redraft and improve theirstatements. By the end of the project the students had defined who they were, what was
important to them, what they wanted out of life, and all these things (their identity, values, andgoals) had been influenced and reinforced by their peers. Throughout the project, they learned
a lot about themselves and how others perceived them.
The group dynamic supported the conditions necessary for achieving personal growth. The
students had high levels of trust in each other, and their group members’ opinions were
important to them. These conditions helped the students to remain engaged and motivated in
the English class as they reached towards the ultimate level of the Classroom Motivation
Model; that of personal growth.

Conference Workshop Experience
The model presented above is a staged approach to developing motivation in the classroom. I
have found it an eﬀective basis for managing classes, and the Realizing Autonomy conference
provided a timely opportunity to share it with others. Aiming to show how classroom
performance can be enhanced, the workshop took a collection of casual acquaintances (theworkshop participants) and endeavored to turn them into a cohesive, performing group.
About 20 participants came to the workshop. The first step was to pair everyone up and seatthem all in a semicircle. In this way, a basic, physical group structure was initiated andparticipants started the workshop with proximity, contact and the ability to interact easily.
Next, I gave a brief overview of the Classroom Motivation Model and explained that the aimof the workshop was to develop our group in order to reach the Performance stage. We started
to build the group’s social structure by discussing a few basic rules along the lines of being
proactive, encouraging others, and participating equally. The rules helped the participants tounderstand what was expected of them and created an environment in which trust could grow.
Once friendly interpersonal relationships had been established throughout the group, and trust
had started to develop, we worked on developing group cohesion and then on intensifying
those relationships. We began by sharing non-intrusive information, but, gradually, through aseries of trust-building activities, the participants were challenged to share incrementally more
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resistance to the activities during this process, and these were used as indicators to determine
when the group was ready to advance to the next level of interpersonal risk-taking. In this way,
the participants were increasing interpersonal investment, sharing incrementally more personal
information, developing their interpersonal relationships, and these all resulted instrengthening the cohesive bonds.
The final task tested the proposition that we can increase performance by developing thegroup dynamics and combining these with individual motivational drives. The participants
were regrouped, given another short task to establish their new subgroup’s dynamic, and thenwere told a story. The story had five characters. Each character had a flaw, and the task for eachgroup was to retell the story, discuss the merits of each character, and, together, place thecharacters in order from best to worst. The real purpose of the task was to demonstrate how
the enhanced interpersonal relationships and group process facilitated reaching theperformance level as the participants discussed the story. Throughout the exercise, therelationships were enhanced, the participants were proactive, and communication flowed
freely. In the final summary and feedback segment of the workshop, the participants indicatedthat we had successfully demonstrated the eﬀectiveness of enhancing performance bydeveloping group dynamics.

Reflection
Although somewhat artificial, the workshop simulation seemed to be a success. Building astrongly bonded, highly productive group takes more time than the workshop really allowed.
However, the final task suggested that, by focusing on the diﬀerent steps in succession,building interpersonal relationships and developing the group, we were able to enhance
performance. The feedback at the end of the workshop, and informal discussions withparticipants afterward, reinforced this idea.
On a personal level, the workshop was rewarding for me, too. Discussing personal experienceswith participants, both about their classes and about the workshop, helped me to understandhow others grapple with the concepts I presented. These discussions gave me confidence inthe model as the stages I proposed were generally accepted by the participants.

From Structure to Autonomy
Setting up the conditions in which students can achieve personal growth starts by establishinggroup structure. On the physical level, this means ensuring group proximity, contact, and theability to interact freely. Combined with social structure, it assists the establishment ofinterpersonal trust, and as trust develops throughout the group, it will lead to strong
interpersonal relationships. Developing these interpersonal relationships also assists thedevelopment of student autonomy. Little (2009) advocates that interdependence andautonomy are basic human needs, and elsewhere states that “learner autonomy, which implies
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freedom from the control of others, turns out to be the product of interactive processes thatare characterized not by independence but by interdependence” (Little, Ridley, & Ushioda, 2002,
p. 7, italics author’s own). This point fits in with the Classroom Motivation Model where thefocus, in the initial stages, is on developing interpersonal relationships within the group. The
model highlights the importance of building group structure as an essential precursor todeveloping constructive, interdependent relationships in which learners are encouraged topush themselves to excel, and from which they can achieve personal growth. Students cannot
operate in the group freely until they feel secure and trust the whole group. Only when thegroup has structure and trust will they feel relatively free to focus on their learning goals.
When a classroom group becomes cohesive, students act as one group, rather than as a
fragmented collection of individuals. At this level of development, the teacher can hand overincrementally more direction of the class to the students. This feeds the students’ need forautonomy, giving them input into their own learning goals and exploiting their own
motivations to design and facilitate new activities, allowing them to ultimately reach towards
personal growth.
The interpersonal relationships we share in a classroom are one of the most importantelements of teaching and learning. Palmer (1998) stated that “teachers possess the power tocreate conditions that can help students learn a great deal—or keep them from learning muchat all”, and that “teaching is the intentional act of creating those conditions” (p. 7). By
developing a positive, supportive learning environment, teachers can free students to focus on
their learning goals. Although, perhaps, not all classes may reach the performance level—letalone personal growth—the advantages of developing a strongly bonded, smoothly functioning
group will always yield some reward in enhanced performance. We cannot guarantee that all
students will learn or grow in our classes, but we can help create a motivating environment inwhich this is possible.

Steven Paydon has been teaching English in Australia, Taiwan, and Japan since 1993. He started
teaching with an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies, added a certification in TESOL, and then an
MA in Applied Linguistics. He has been teaching at the Tokai University Foreign Language Center since2001. His research interests genera$y revolve around motivation, in particular group dynamics, with a
specific focus on interpersonal relationships in the classroom.
To cite this article: Paydon, S. (2012). Developing a motivational learning environment. In K. Irie & A. Stewart(Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue]
Learning Learning, 19(2), 46-59. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/paydon.pdf

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References
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal
attachment as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bu$etin, 117(3), 497-529.
Cohen, E. (1994). Designing groupwork (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Dörnyei, Z., & Murphey, T. (2003). Group dynamics in the language classroom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Ehrman, M. E., & Dörnyei, Z. (1998). Interpersonal dynamics in second language education: The
visible and invisible classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Evans, C. R., & Dion, K. L. (1991). Group cohesion and performance: A meta-analysis. Sma$Group Research, 22, 175-186.
Forsyth, D. (2010). Group dynamics (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional inte$igence. New York: Random House.
Lencioni, P. (2002). The five dysfunctions of a team. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Lind, M. (1999). The relationship between trust and cohesion in temporary knowledge work
teams. AMCIS 1999 Proceedings. Paper 301. Downloaded from http://aisel.aisnet.org/
amcis1999/301
Little, D. (2009). Learner autonomy, the European Language Portfolio and teacher
development. In R. Pemberton, S. Toogood, & A. Barfield (Eds.), Maintaining control:
Autonomy and language learning (pp. 147-173). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Little, D., Ridley, J., & Ushioda, E. (2002). Towards greater autonomy in the foreign language
classroom. Dublin: Authentik.
MacLennon, B., & Dies, K. (1992). Group counseling and psychotherapy with adolescents (2nd ed.).
New York: Colombia University Press.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M., (2001). The concept of flow. In C. R. Snyder & S. J.
Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist 55(1) 68-78.
Stewart, A., & Irie, K. (2012). Realizing autonomy: Contradictions in practice and context. In
K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection in language education
contexts (pp. 1-17). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequences in small groups. Psychological Bu$etin, 62,384-399.

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EX P L O R I N G A N D T R A N S F O R M I N G :A DIALOGUE ON SELF-REFLECTIVE
PRAC TI C E S FO R TE AC HER D EV ELOP M E NT
Rob Moreau & Jackie Suginaga
Critical self-reflection is an example of a transformative process. We can use it toreshape existing knowledge and beliefs, and enhance what we do on a professional andpersonal level. As an application of self-reflective practices, this post-conference reporthas been written as a dialogue. Reflecting together, as we have done, has proved to be a
powerful way for us to develop our individual thinking and open up new perspectives on
critical reflection on our work and working environments. We hope that this dialogue, inturn, will act as a catalyst for change in our own professional development, and serveas an inspiration to our colleagues and our students.
批判的に自己を振り返ることは潜在的な変化の過程である。自分が持っている知識や信条を作り直すため、教師、個人レベルでの考えや実践を高めるために、批判的な自己の振り返りを使うことができる。自己の振り返りを発展させるものとして、この大会後のレポートは対話形式で書かれている。この形式は、著者にとって個人の思考を超え、新たな視点を開くために有効な道具になると考えたからだ。そしてそれが私達
自身が教師として成長するための触媒の役目を果たし、学習者にも同じ効果をもたらすことを期待するものである。

Origins: A Chat in the Teachers College Library, August 2010
Our roundtable presentation at the Realizing Autonomy conference grew out of a poster
presentation we gave at Nakasendo in June 2011, which, in turn, evolved from a chancemeeting in the library at Teachers College, Tokyo a while back. The chat that day went
something like this:
Rob: So, what’s your MA paper on, Jackie?
Jackie: Well, overall, it’s about teacher autonomy in relation to teacher development on aprofessional and also a personal level. I talk about how people like Dick Allwright, Phil Bensonand others maintain that teacher education is most eﬀective when it’s blended with approaches
like reflective practice, action research, and exploratory practice.

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Rob: What are the diﬀerences between these practices?
Jackie: Well, basically, reflective practice requires teachers to critically reflect on therelationship between teaching and learning; action research is studying classroom practices inorder to understand them better or solve particular problems; and exploratory practice iswhere teachers work together with their students to develop their mutual knowledge andunderstanding of learning. You could say that action research focuses more on investigating aproblem, with the end result being an action taken to improve the quality of teaching. Action
research also tends to require a lot more planning and adherence to an academic researchmodel, compared to exploratory practice, which seeks to tackle “puzzles” in the classroom increative and practical ways that involve and benefit learners (Allwright & Hanks, 2009). So
exploratory practice focuses less on the action per se and more on understanding. But bothtypes of research require teachers to engage in reflection, which, in turn, can lead to greater
teaching expertise.
Rob: I see. I wrote about teacher development too. And I also discussed the need for teachers
to focus on self-reflection as a way to continue to grow and develop throughout their careers.
In my paper, I wrote about one goal of teacher education programs being the fostering ofprofessionalism and life-long development in teachers, and about the central role that selfreflection plays in accomplishing this. In teacher training courses, novice teachers usually study
a variety of core subjects, such as second language acquisition, grammar, and phonetics andphonology, among others, which can be extremely useful in developing a knowledge base thatallows teachers to better understand the subject they are teaching. However, this is only one
part of the picture. There must also be a focus on how teachers can adapt this knowledge tobetter suit the needs of their teaching contexts and then continue to refine their understanding
to meet the changing dynamics of their classrooms. With the understanding gained throughself-reflection, teachers can improve their teaching methodology and create more learning
opportunities for students. An added bonus of this is that, in being reflective practitioners
themselves, teachers may become role models for their students, encouraging them to develop
their own reflective practices and find strategies that might help them become more eﬀective
language learners.
Jackie: So, while both of us have looked into reflective practice, I’ve approached it throughaction research and exploratory research as ways to understand and solve problems of learning,whereas you come at it from the point of view of enhancing teachers’ professional
development.

Before the Conference: Reflections on the Planning StageAs the date of the Realizing Autonomy Conference drew nearer, we put our heads together tocome up with issues that interested or puzzled us about critical reflection.
Rob: So, what kind of things did you think about when we started to plan our presentation?
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Jackie: I thought about the constraints and limitations that reflective practitioners have todeal with. From personal experience, many teachers don’t get much opportunity or
encouragement at work to engage in reflection. Professional or personal self-development issomething that tends to occur, for many of us, outside of our teaching jobs. In my case, thisstarted with my MA For others, it may be through involvement with a group like the Learner
Development SIG. So, with little or no guidance or support from our places of work, an initialproblem is knowing where or how to start.
Rob: I agree it can be a pretty overwhelming task. As teachers today seem to be becoming
busier and busier, they might think they really don’t have the time to look critically at theirteaching practice and the context in which they work.
Jackie: And then, on the other hand, some teachers do have the time, but may not have theawareness that what happens in their classrooms could be improved as a result of taking time
for reflection. So a basic aim of our presentation was to highlight that critical self-reflection
requires relatively little time, but can oﬀer substantial rewards.
Rob: I know that we were both excited about sharing the knowledge we had gained fromreading the literature on reflective practice. Let me just read this quote from Brookfield (1995),
which I’ve found very helpful as a way to think about the benefits of reflection:
Reflection becomes critical when it has two distinct purposes. First is to understandhow considerations of power undergird, frame and distort educational processes andinteractions. The second is to question assumptions and practices that seem to makeour teaching lives easier but actually work against our own best long-term interests. (p.
8)
Jackie: That’s a pretty powerful statement. I think that it takes a lot of courage toacknowledge the constraints of power. It’s easier to take for granted the conditions of ourteaching context, for example, an uncongenial arrangement of desks in the classroom or a
restrictive curriculum, rather than questioning and, perhaps, seeking to change them. Similarly,
relating to Brookfield’s second purpose, many of us may feel that questioning our own beliefs iseasier to forego than to face. In fact, if we don’t reflect deeply, it may sometimes be because weare too attached to our beliefs and don’t want to consider the possibility of changing them—even when changing them would clearly be beneficial.
Rob: That’s right. Brookfield, again, gives some good examples of the danger of being too
attached to our own and others’ beliefs. I like his example of how student journals and learning
logs are now all the rage (Brookfield, 1995, p. 13). Because it is such a common practice, ateacher may believe that logs must be beneficial to all their students across the board. But, forsome students who don’t feel they have such interesting lives, writing a journal may become an
activity that just makes them feel even more inadequate, instead of being a positive means to
express themselves in English. This example shows the need for teachers to try to get inside
the heads of their students, and avoid just sticking to “accepted” methods and procedures. I

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feel that digging deeper to understand our practice better is something that can evolve overtime.
Jackie: Yes, becoming a critically reflective practitioner is something that doesn’t happen
overnight. So, I think that we should always remember to question what we are doing with ourlearners and why, and encourage our students to do the same.
At the Conference: Reflections on How the Events Unfurled
On the day of the conference, we looked forward to presenting and discussing these ideas withparticipants. We set the scene with a brief review of the literature on autonomy, teacher
autonomy, critical reflection and how these concepts are interrelated. Then we invited the 12
participants to form groups and brainstorm answers to the following questions: What isreflection? What are the reasons for engaging in reflection, and what are the reasons we often
don’t? How should we go about reflection? When is a good time to reflect? After
brainstorming, the participants made posters of their ideas.
Rob: I like how we staged our roundtable presentation. The participants appeared to share
our enthusiasm for the subject and were very receptive to what we had to share.
Jackie: Yes, that worked well, but I think we both felt that we could have cut down on sometime spent on the review of the literature, so that we could have moved more quickly on to thediscussion.
Rob: You’re right. I also think we were a bit overambitious. But what did you think of theposter-making section?

Figure 1. Poster with ideas about how we should reflect as teachers.
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Figure 2. Poster with ideas about when we should reflect as teachers.

Figure 3. Poster with ideas about how we should reflect as teachers.

Jackie: When I had a look at the video of the presentation, I could see that the postermaking session was a productive activity and everyone was engaged in animated conversations
about their reflection topic. Of course, we did have a number of distinguished participants,
which definitely helped.
Rob: Many of the comments on the posters were very intriguing, and some touched a personalnote concerning certain limitations in the way I reflect now. For example, one of the posters(Figure 1) simply stated, “Comments later don’t make sense.” I recalled how many of theSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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jottings in my notebooks fit that description perfectly. This has encouraged me to try to be
more systematic about my reflections to avoid such random jottings in the future. I also
thought the poster that depicted reflection as a cycle of moments before, during, and after
teaching was eﬀective (Figure 2) because it tied in with Schön’s (1987) ideas of reflecting-inaction and reflecting-on-action. That’s to say, thinking on your feet and reflecting on thesedecisions afterwards can be an important part of teacher development. It’s good to remind
yourself that reflection is a process, and not just a point in time. What did you discover, Jackie?
Jackie: The comments “Don’t fill the vacuum” (Figure 3) and “detachment” (Figure 1) hit home
especially for me. Personally, I feel that these two concepts are always wrestling with eachother. When I set aside time for reflection and try to detach myself to see the bigger picture, I
find that the pressures of time and the desire to do other things (making materials, researching
the literature, etc.) are pulling me in the other direction. This, I have realized, is to someextent a time-management issue. Also, I feel that I need to be mindful of how I spend my timeand cultivate new habits of reflection without turning that practice into a mechanical routine.
I think one way I can do this is to remind myself of the immense benefits reflection could
bring to both my students and myself.
Rob: The posters and discussion were really the highlight of the session, but I’m glad we got to
fit a survey into the final few minutes (see Appendix A). We got a lot of interesting comments,
didn’t we?
Jackie: We certainly did. Both the survey and the round table discussions reinforced mysuspicions that, although we are well aware of the need to reflect, many of us fail to do so for anumber of reasons. I’ll just review what some of the participants said. Perhaps not surprisingly,
everyone who attended the session said that they do reflect on their teaching. On a scale of 1
to 5, ten people wrote 5, that it was very important to engage in self-reflection, and two people
wrote 4. However, although most participants said they engage in reflection, when asked “whatfactors might keep you from reflecting on your teaching?” one person stated they “have no one
to reflect with”, while another commented they “don’t see the value in it”. Moreover, twopeople wrote that they have “work overload” and seven people said that they “don’t have time”
to reflect. This suggests that we need to find creative ways to tackle these obstacles that,
despite our best intentions, prevent us from engaging in self-reflection. I understand that thismay be easier said than done, but feel that if we don’t make the time to detach and reflect fromtime to time in both a professional and personal capacity, we are going to miss out on
opportunities for discovery and development.
Rob: I was thinking about this a bit, Jackie, and there are lots of ways that teachers can tackle
the problem of being busy and having a limited amount of time to reflect. Like many people, I
find that discussing various teaching issues at lunchtime or during breaks at work has beenreally rewarding.
Jackie: That’s a good point, which relates to the answers we received from another question
we asked: “What form of self-reflection do you engage in?” Most people replied that theySpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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engaged in peer discussions or journal writing. I personally prefer dialogue to written journalreflections, as the objective voice of a peer can really help push the boundaries of my own
perspectives. Also, these kinds of reflective discoveries can emerge from a spontaneousconversation or a preplanned meeting with a colleague or peer. At my university, my colleagues
and I have decided to invite full- and part-time English teachers from the International
Culture Department to take part in bimonthly, informal meetings where we can reflect on our
teaching and exchange ideas about our practice.
Rob: Yes, monthly or regular get-togethers would be a good place to have reflective discussions
with our peers. One thing we didn’t really have time for in the session was the booklet that we
had prepared (Appendix B, downloadable at http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/moreau-suginagaAppendixB.pdf).
Jackie: Yes, it was too bad that we didn’t manage to get feedback from the participants. The
booklet was a tool that we developed from our own struggles to get started with self-reflection.
For example, when I first started writing journals, I felt, after a while, that I was just writing
for the sake of it. I never really looked at the reflections again and it became another thing on
my to-do list rather than a productive exercise. So I had to rethink this process and realizedthat I needed more guidance in what to reflect on and how to do it critically. This was one
reason why we made the booklet, wasn’t it, Rob? Our aim was to give teachers something towork with and adapt to their teaching contexts based on materials we have created ourselves
and adapted from the literature.
Rob: Yes, in preparing the booklet, I could also see the benefits of the various approaches forkeeping track of reflections.
Jackie: We included some worksheets like Planning for the Classroom, so teachers can reflecton questions relating to lesson planning. There’s also a worksheet with a list of issues inteaching, including error correction, homework, testing, and so on, so that teachers can write
about their current beliefs. It’s only by becoming more aware of our beliefs that we can start totransform them gradually. Then a couple of worksheets focus on student reflections. On one,teachers can write general observations about their students while the other is a student
feedback form, where students can list all the class activities and make notes about what theylearned, didn’t understand, or want to know more about.
Rob: Actually, I personally felt that the booklet contained too much information. For my own
use, I would take only the key points of what we put together and create an A4-sized reflection
template that could be used on a daily basis without taking up so much time. The small items
of information that I could collect over a period of time may allow me to create a fairly
detailed picture of my teaching and having this information recorded in a consistent fashion
might take the randomness out of my current notebook-based approach. I guess that was thepoint of the reflection-materials handout anyway—to adapt the ideas to best suit our needs.

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Jackie: So, when we revise the booklet for our next conference, we could think about theorganization. It might be good to separate the materials for teachers and students, and maybe
add some examples of reflections from our students, and some personal perspectives fromteachers who have used or adapted their own reflective materials.

From Reflection to Action
With the conference behind us, it’s back to business as usual in our classes. So what were themost significant things we learned from reflecting on our session, and, more importantly, howwill this change our own practice?
Rob: Well, we talked about the problem of having too little time in which to present all of thethings we wanted to at the conference, but I think that, at the end of the day, the presentation
provided an opportunity for people to talk about reflection and get excited about it. As a next
step, it would be good to do a workshop where we could create a space to get people’s feedback
based on the worksheet activities and how these could be adapted more specifically to various
teaching contexts. The opportunity would be there for us to talk about some of the techniquesand methods that we have developed in our own practices as a result of the reflection we’ve
done before, during, and since the Realizing Autonomy Conference.
Jackie: That sounds good. We could also talk about some of the assumptions that we havequestioned in relation to our practice. For example, I would like to review my assumption thatgroup work is always the best way for all students. I think some less extroverted students
might be more productive if they engaged less in group work. I have many other ideas toexplore. And I agree that our next workshop should move beyond highlighting the long-term
benefits of critical reflection, and give people an opportunity to explore some practical ways toincorporate critical reflection into their individual contexts.
Rob: One final thing I’d like to mention is that doing the presentation really reinforced, forme, the idea that we don’t have to be in search of any one specific method of reflection. The
most important thing is to develop what works for us individually at the time and then adapt it
as the need arises. It seems to me that, as we develop as teachers, we need to constantly
reevaluate the ways that we look at our practice. Sharing thoughts with our participantsbrought home the fact that reflection on teaching is a complex activity. It is important to keep
trying new ways of delving into our individual practices and our individual belief systems. Any
final thoughts, Jackie?
Jackie: Well, Rob, I think that in teaching, and in life in general, it’s good to stop and take alook around; otherwise, we might miss out on something important. In both our professional
and personal lives, critical self-reflection is a transferable skill that can be used to help us gain abetter understanding of any experience. We’re always reshaping existing knowledge and beliefs
to become better teachers and also better people. Our lives as teachers are often very

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demanding, so in order for us be able to tackle challenges and deal with constraints, we need tobe ready and equipped not just professionally but in a holistic sense, as human beings.

Robert Moreau teaches at International Christian University High School and The University ofElectro-Communications. His research interests include genre-based instruction, teacher self-reflection, andteacher and learner autonomy.
Jackie Suginaga is a fu$-time lecturer at Komazawa Women’s University and a graduate -om
Columbia Teachers Co$ege, Tokyo. Her research interests include learner and teacher autonomy, criticalreflection, and learner aﬀect.
To cite this article: Moreau, R., & Suginaga, J. (2012). Exploring and transforming: A dialogue on self-reflective
practices for teacher development. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development
SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 60-69. Retrieved from http://ldsig.org/LL/19two/moreau-suginaga.pdf

References
Allwright, D. (2003). Exploratory practice: Rethinking practitioner research in language
teaching. Language Teaching Research, 7, 113-141.
Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to exploratory
practice. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching autonomy. Harlow, U.K.: Pearson.
Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a critica$y reflective teacher. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley andSons.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Intrinsic motivation and eﬀective teaching. In J. L. Bess (Ed.),
Teaching we$ and liking it: Motivating faculty to teach eﬀectively (pp. 72-89). Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Graves, N., & Vye, S. (2006). Professionalism is personal: How teachers in Japan help
themselves through development of self-reflection practices. In M. Kohyama & E. M.
Skier (Eds.), More autonomy you ask! (pp. 155-173). Tokyo, Japan: Learner Development
Special Interest Group of the Japan Association of Language Teachers.
Murphey, T. (1993). Why don’t teachers learn what learners learn? Taking the guesswork out
with action logging. English Teaching Forum, 31 (1) 6-10.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Appendix A
SurveyExploring and Transforming:
Self-Reflective Practices for Teacher Development
Jackie Suginaga and Robert Moreau

Please help us out by doing this quick survey! Thanks!!
1. Where do you teach?
University
High school
Junior High school
Elementary school
Kindergarten
Special needs
Conversation School
Other
2. How long have you been teaching?
0-1
1-2
2-5
5-10
10-15
15 plus
3. Do you reflect on your teaching?
No
Yes
Not sure

4. Reflecting on teaching helps teachers in theirdevelopment. To what extent do you agree withthis?

6. When do you reflect on your teaching?
After a lesson
Before a lesson
During a lesson
Once a week
At the end of the term
At the end of the year
All of the above
Other

7. What form of self-reflection do you engage in?
Journal writing
Post lesson reports
Voice recordings
Peer discussion
Observation
Video recordings
Other _________________________________

8. What is your gender?
FemaleMale

9. Do you believe that our personal life and what we
do in outside teaching hours is related to our0---------------------------------------------------------------- teaching?
No – why5
Not important
Very Important

5. What factors might keep you from reflecting on
your teaching?
Yes - howI don’t have time
I don’t see the value in it
I’m not sure how to
I am an experienced teacher and don’t need too
Other _____________________________
10. OPTIONAL - If you have any comments on the topic of reflection to aid teacher development,
please write in the space below.
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SELF -TA L K O F A TU RT L E : AU T O N O M Y I N
C R E ATING A C HA P T E R
Naoko HaradaThis essay explores the psychological journey that I undertook as a writer of a bookchapter in Realizing Autonomy: Practice and Reflection in Language Education
Contexts. The key to completing the chapter in my case was balancing the two
dialectical elements, independence and collaboration, under the framework ofautonomy. Inspired by an image of a turtle in Tim Murphey’s plenary session at theRealizing Autonomy (RA) Conference in October 2011, I reflect on my own mental
process in the writing project.
Realizing Autonomy (RA)の一章を完成させる過程においての書き手としての自律性と執筆グループの一員としての協調性の大切さに焦点を当てたエッセイである。２０
１１年１０月のRA Conferenceの基調講演でティム・マーフィー氏が提示した亀に関する謎かけを踏まえ、肯定的な独り言の効用について考察する。

A Turtle Trying to Fly
At the Realizing Autonomy Conference, Tim asked the audience at the beginning of his lecture
to think of ways to fill the blanks in the following sentence:$

Why is a _____ trying to fly more beautiful than a _____ sitting in a tree?

The audience came together in small groups to discuss possible answers to this and other gapfill questions, but no one around me came up with Tim’s answer, “Why is a turtle trying to fly
more beautiful than a bird sitting in a tree?” COBUILD’s Advanced Dictionary of American
English defines a turtle as “any reptile that has a thick shell around its body, for example atortoise or terrapin, and can pull its whole body into its shell” (pp. 1405-1406). It is a creaturethat has the capacity to either walk or swim, but it cannot fly by itself. Tim’s question made us
realize that even with little possibility of flying, the sight of a turtle making every eﬀort tofulfill its dream is beautiful.
On hearing Tim’s answer, I thought, “Certainly a turtle with strong motivation can make aneﬀort night and day. It will impress its friends. But some of its friends may think it issomewhat ridiculous and call it reckless.” However, by the end of the presentation, I came toSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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like the idea of the turtle. Murphey (2010) states, “…we become excited with our creative
agency (autonomy, independence) to increase control over our world. The fun of increasing it ismore exciting than getting there (p. 10).” In other words, the process of working toward a goal
autonomously has value by itself. If I were the turtle, even if I could not succeed in my mission
to fly, I would have learned something new. By practicing step by step
continuously, I might someday be able to collaborate with the crane, my dance
partner in Noh. Turtles, representing longevity and prosperity, are deeply
rooted in the Japanese cultural context, as in the example of the Nohplay, Tsurukame (Crane and Turtle) and as an image on congratulatory
messages (Sugiura & Gillespie, 2004). In line with this, the turtle thatlives 10,000 years, according to the Japanese legend, may find a way to
fly with the help of birds, technology, or merely by luck.
In his lecture, Tim also told us about the importance of continuing to be curious and of getting
students to use a lot of self-talk to ask questions and think. Morin (1993) defines self-talk asverbally identifying self-information that is inherent to the individual (p. 230) and suggests thatit shapes our thoughts, feelings and behaviors in a great variety of ways (p. 223).
Self-talk was one of the themes of my poster presentation during the afternoon of theconference. In the following sections, I would like to explain the background of how using theHarry Potter series in my chapter and in the presentation led me to think about self-talk andits role in learner autonomy.
The Entertainment Hook
In November 2008, I was sitting at the LD SIG display table at the JALT National Conference
chatting to Ellen Head about my forthcoming presentation, Learning Identity in Harry Potter’sClass and Mine, which was to take place in a few hours. I told her how much my students, who
had already read the Japanese translation, wanted to read the Harry Potter series in English
and how their passion motivated me to show scenes from the movie followed by reading
passages from Rowling’s book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in the original English
in the classroom. My teaching idea was to focus on the scene in which Harry’s classmate,
Neville, the least confident student in Professor Lupin’s class, succeeds in performing a spell infront of the class to chase away a shape-shifter that embodies his fears. On hearing this, Ellenremarked it had both the entertainment hook and a bit of interaction analysis of how people
learn to control their fear.
My decision to use the Harry Potter series as an entertainment hook for students is not without
precedent. Belcher and Stephenson (2011) introduce the story of Allegra, a third-year special
education teacher in a middle school in the United States, who has used audio books of Harry
Potter with her students. One of Allegra’s students had similar feelings of alienation from her
foster family to Harry. The connection with Harry provided a strong hook for this student,
motivating her to read ahead at home (p. 129). This student was described as a person who felt

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedingsthat Harry Potter had relevance to her life and she showed a keen interest in reading the book,in spite of the fact that her usual performance in other activities in class was far fromoutstanding. Such a reaction is not surprising, as it resonates with my experience of becoming
an adult fan and making it my major research theme, and reflects the popularity of the series
worldwide.
In August 2010, the New York Public Library was oﬀering nearly 7,000 copies of Rowling’s
books mostly in English but also in languages ranging from Arabic to Japanese. In addition, theU.S. publisher Scholastic’s website, as of December, 2011, stated that the seven novels of the
Harry Potter series had been translated into 68 languages and had sold over 400 million copies.
These numbers provide a glimpse of the global Harry Potter phenomenon.

Think-Aloud
It is worth noting that including self-talk in our activities is regarded as a useful strategy to
reduce pressure and anxiety. Experiments conducted by the California Institute of Technology
suggest that sound can actually change vision (Highfield, 2002). When participants were showna single flash accompanied by several beeps, some of them wrongly perceived them as several
flashes. This study indicates that the brain processes information from each sense separately
and builds up a picture of events around us, allowing us to see what we hear (p. 157). If we canuse our voices more beneficially, it could help us to be more productive in accomplishing ourtasks. A good example is Hurd’s (2007) study of distance French language learners. During
think-aloud protocols, learners who uttered positive expressions, such as “OK good” or “I’mhappy with that” (p. 250), were better able to access their thought processes. The think-aloudprotocols also indicated the negative eﬀects of utterances expressing diﬃculty, uncertainty,
frustration and confusion.
These two studies suggest that we tend to listen to our own words almost subconsciously andthat, if we utter positive words to ourselves, they will influence our feelings and behaviors. I
will now focus on self-talk that leads to a positive state of mind.

Positive Self-Talk
In the course of writing up my chapter for Realizing Autonomy, I came to see that healthy selftalk was eﬀective when I needed a breakthrough. Since I was the sole author of the chapter, atfirst, I felt the burden of responsibility for completing my chapter was mine alone. The further
I dug into the research area of emotions such as anxiety, fear, or worry, the further I walked
into a psychological maze and let my feelings take the driver’s seat. When I came to a deadend, in other words, a writer’s block, my mind was full of can’ts and don’ts. I was focusing on
what seemed diﬃcult to accomplish and drifting further away from my goal of finishing thechapter. The editors of our group sensed the negative spiral I was in and advised me to focus
on my research question. They gave me timely advice by introducing useful references andSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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sending me words of encouragement. I was ready to explore answers to my research question
again.
A similar use of self-talk is seen in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the story that I usedwith my students. When the frightening sound of a boggart in the wardrobe caused sometension in Harry’s class, Professor Lupin reassured the students with the phrase, “Nothing toworry about.” In my chapter, I mentioned the example of a student in my own classroom who
uses the same phrase as a way of reducing tension and encouraging herself when she is alone(Harada, 2011, p. 203). This self-talk is important for this student for helping her to relax andconcentrate on her task.
During my poster presentation, Tim instantly identified my student’s tension-reducing activity
as positive hitori goto (self-talk). Psychology specialists writing in a Stress and Internal Self-Talk
section on the Stress Management for Health Course website point out that, among the 50,000
thoughts we automatically have in a day, a healthy internal self-talk ratio is around two positive
thoughts to every one negative thought, and this can influence our feelings and behaviors(para. 1 and para. 6). In other words, people tend to have twice as many positive thoughts asnegative ones. Experts also claim that under chronic stress, our thinking becomes morenegative. However, we can change our thinking by positive self-talk, which is more realistic andoptimistic, and this can help reduce our stress (para. 12). Thus, encouraging ourselves to do
positive self-talk and lowering our stress will ultimately contribute to our mental health.
Looking back, I sometimes experienced negative thoughts and anxiety while drafting mychapter for the book. I was putting pressure on myself at times when I needed to relax. To
improve this situation, I tried out two things. One was to vocalize “Nothing to worry about”
while facing the computer screen on a day when I had made only a little progress. Saying thisto myself provided me with an opportunity to detach myself from a chain of negative thoughts.
It reoriented me toward my aim of completing my draft.
The other was to entirely trust my two editors. I said to myself, “If my editors believe that thischapter will be completed and if they are planning to send the drafts to the publisher, I should
trust them rather than my present negative feelings.” This worked to some extent, since I
could clearly picture them sending out a package of all the chapters to the publisher when
everything was ready. I realized my hope was to share with my readers the joy of introducing
Harry Potter into classrooms and to explain how the movie scenes and paperback books could
create the flow moment, the state in which people are involved in an activity where nothingelse matters to them (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999/2008, p. 4). All I had to do was write.
Collaboration in Reviewing
While each author wrote their chapter independently, when it came to reviewing the drafts, all
the authors worked cooperatively. This activity helped to create a balance between theindividual autonomy of the writers and collaboration of peers in suggesting revisions to eachother’s drafts. I benefitted greatly from reading my colleagues’ drafts and learned how to makeSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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clearer comments through this experience. Moreover, I felt privileged to have my initial drafts
read by my colleagues in the Learner Development SIG research community. While Joseph P.
Siegel gave insightful comments and taught me what reader-friendly writing means, Stacey Vye,
exercising her experiences as a writing teacher, annotated one of my initial drafts with words
that energized me.
Through interaction and comments from both colleagues in this project, I found myself in theposition of my students who wait for their assignments to be returned with their teacher’scomments. I had much to learn from my fellow writers’ professionalism in analyzing, advising,praising, and sharing. Casanave (2009) writes that, in our development as teachers and as
researchers, the ability to see our classes as our students do, and the ability to see our writing
through the eyes of our readers are two important perspectives we should try to take (p. 5). I
was lucky to experience both in this writing project.

Balancing Autonomy and Collaboration
Through the book project, I managed to learn how to write a chapter solo. If I had notexperienced and overcome my writer’s block with the careful support of the group editors andcolleagues, my paper would not have reached the point of completion. If I had not experienced
the collaboration with my colleagues through peer reading each others’ drafts, I would nothave improved my skills in giving feedback to my students. Consequently, I have learned theimportance of balancing autonomy and collaboration. I would like to conclude this section by
thanking the editors in our group for guiding me throughout the writing process, theconference organizing team for their Herculean work organizing the RA conference, and allother members supporting us to publish the book. Through this project, we have realized
stronger ties in our educational community. With a pioneer spirit, a willingness to collaborate,
and positive self-talk, even turtles might fly.

Naoko Harada teaches at the Senior High School Affiliated with Japan Women’s University. Her
academic interests lie in the areas of EFL materials development and global issues. She has been studying
the application of the Harry Potter books and movies in classes to promote confidence in learning English.
Related to the Realizing Autonomy book chapter, an article in the JALT2010 Conference Proceedings
highlights an episode -om the sixth Harry Potter volume on luck and eﬀort.
To cite this article: Harada, N. (2012). Self-talk of a turtle: Autonomy in creating a chapter. In K. Irie & A.
Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, [Special
issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 70-75. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/harada.pdf

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References
Belcher, C. L., & Stephenson, B. H. (2011). Teaching Harry Potter: The power of imagination in
multicultural classrooms. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Casanave, C. P. (2009). Perspective taking. The Language Teacher, 33(7), 3-6.
Collins COBUILD. Advanced dictionary of American English. (2007). Boston: Thomson.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper
Perennial.
Harada, N. (2011). “Nothing to worry about”: Anxiety-reduction strategies in Harry Potter’sclass and mine. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Realizing autonomy: Practice and reflection inlanguage education contexts (pp. 196-209). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Highfield, R. (2002). The science of Harry Potter. New York: Penguin.
Hurd, S. (2007). Distant voices: Learners’ stories about the aﬀective side of learning a language
at a distance. Innovation in Language and Teaching, 1(2), 242-259.
Murphey, T. (2010). Creating languaging agencing, The Language Teacher, 34(4), 8-11.
Murphey, T. (2011). Autonomy, agency, and social capital: Surfing the altruistic coral reef cafes! Handout
at Realizing Autonomy Conference, October 29, 2011.
Morin, A. (1993). Self-talk and self-awareness: On the nature of the relation. The Journal of Mind
and Behavior, 14(3), 223-234.
Montesfinise, A. (2010). Harry Potter: The boy who lives on. Huﬃngton Post, August 6, 2010.
Retrieved from http://www.huﬃngtonpost.com/the-new-york-public-library/the-boy-wholives-on_b_673380.html
Rowling, J. K. (1999). Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic.
Scholastic (2011). THE STACKS. Retrieved from http://harrypotter.scholastic.com/
series_information/
Stress Management for Health Course. (n.d.) Stress and internal self talk. In Stress Managementfor Health Course. Retrieved from http://stresscourse.tripod.com/id101.html
Sugiura, Y., & Gillespie, J. K. (2004). A bilingual handbook on Japanese culture. Retrieved fromhttp://www.japanlink.co.jp/ka/cdobfr.htm

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OPENI N G R E M A R K S T O T H E P L E N A RY TA LKBY RI C H A R D P E MBE RT ON A ND M IK E N IX
Andy Barfield
It was a great honour to be asked by Alison and Kay in July 2011 to introduce Richard andMike at the Realizing Autonomy Conference. We were close friends and had worked on many
diﬀerent projects together. The SIG had originally extended the invitation to Richard toparticipate in the conference in full knowledge that he had been diagnosed with cancer in July
2010. It was a wonderfully supportive act of friendship by the SIG, and we were all hoping that
Richard would be able to make it from the UK to Japan for the conference. That was Plan A.
Unfortunately, from August 2011 onwards Richard was able to travel no more than locally in
Nottingham. Plan B was for Richard to take part in the conference with Mike through a live
video feed, but we started to realize that wouldn’t be easy to do. Other options were exploredand discussed, and eventually we came to Plan C: Mike and Richard would make an audio orvideo recording via Skype, and Richard’s participation would be prepared in advance and thenplayed in 2-3 minute audio clips with Mike talking his part of their joint lecture directly to theaudience. And that’s how it turned out in the end.

From his home in England Richard did take part and, with customary humour, recorded his
participation in the conference on his blog later the same day: “Today I managed to give a copresentation at the Realizing Autonomy Conference in Nagoya, Japan. All the while safely
tucked up in bed at home. Very relaxing! I’d very much been looking forward to attending theconference at first, but realised after the trip to Jamaica that it wasn’t on. Plan B was for me topresent ‘live’ to the conference from here, but that would have meant being online in the
middle of the night—we all decided my sleep was more important. So we went with Plan C—a
pre-recorded version. It seems to have gone well: many thanks to Mike Nix for putting it all
together.” This is a typically modest representation on Richard’s part: just a week before in
Nottingham he had got home from hospital where he had been having a bit of a rough time, tosay the least. To prepare his audio clips for the conference in the very week after leaving
hospital, Richard showed incredible strength of mind and courage, creating with Mike a truly
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original plenary session for the benefit of everyone at the conference. Taking part meant
everything for Richard.
Until a few hours before the plenary, I was still unsure about how to introduce Richard andMike. There was hesitation and uncertainty. What should be said? How might things be put?
What line—personal or professional?—would it be appropriate to take? All of a sudden, it
became clear. I could see Richard smiling and hear him laughing. “You’ll know what to say,
Andy,” I remembered Richard telling me just a few days before. It would be about friendship,
personal and professional commitment, and it would start with a joke, not an apology, and thisis what I said:
I quite understand if, like me, you’re feeling a little confused. This is, after all, theconference of the book, and there’s a film being made of the conference of the book for abook after the film from the conference of the book…that’s going to be published in a
newsletter. Perhaps that’s why some people say: those who can, do; those who can’t,teach, and some of those who teach start to learn, and those who start learning enjoy
life and learner autonomy conferences (and the books and films that go with them).
Which brings me to Richard and Mike, our joint plenary speakers this afternoon.
A friend of the Learner Development SIG even before it started, Richard was one of thedriving forces behind the landmark 1994 Taking Control conference in Hong Kong. He
then co-edited the proceedings from the conference, published in 1996, in between
setting up a self-access centre at his university in Hong Kong and starting his PhD.
(Richard and I did the same PhD programme, and we’ve been close friends for many
years.) Ten years later Richard was instrumental in organizing the Maintaining Control
conference in Hong Kong, co-editing the proceedings again.
Both conferences were extraordinary events in the learner autonomy field.
It is difficult to appreciate the lasting contribution Richard has made in the developmentof learner autonomy in different contexts in Asia and Europe. He’s the quiet guy, modest
and always good-humoured, working behind the scenes with teachers and learners,
never claiming the spotlight. More than a few people, though, will say: “It’s Richard
who got me started in learner autonomy and saw me through. He supported me andmade me believe my learners and I could do it.”Richard has long been a friend of the Learner Development SIG: an invited speaker of
the SIG in 2002 to the JALT international conference; a contributor to Autonomy You
Ask! (I’m not trying to sell the books—in fact we don’t have any copies of AYA left!),but perhaps his greatest act of friendship comes in his taking part in the conference
today. Under extraordinary personal circumstances Richard’s participation is a triumphof courage, grace, generosity, and commitment to others.

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And, of course, Richard’s participation today would not have been possible without theabsolute dedication and friendship of Mike these last few months. Mike knows Richard
from 2002 when Richard came over as the SIG’s invited speaker, and in Learning
Learning later that year they produced together an exploratory discussion of developing
learner-friendly evaluation systems. So, Mike and Richard have a history ofcollaboration going back a long way.
Mike has been actively involved in the Learner Development SIG since the 1990s, andwe work together at the same faculty at Chuo University in Tokyo. Like Richard, Mike isa very close friend and wonderful colleague to work with.
So, let’s celebrate friendship, commitment, and generosity of spirit today.
It really is a great honour and pleasure to welcome Richard and Mike for their uplifting
friendship for the Learner Development SIG.
Please welcome our friends and colleagues Richard Pemberton and Mike Nix.

To cite this article: Barfield, A. (2012). Opening remarks to the plenary talk by Richard Pemberton andMike Nix. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing
Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 76-78. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/
19two/rp-welcome.pdf

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PRAC T I C E S O F C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G,
CRIT I C A L I T Y A ND LE A R N E R AU T ONOM Y
Richard Pemberton & Mike Nix
In this paper, we explore the development of critical thinking and criticality, and how
they connect with learner autonomy, in two contexts. Richard discusses the developmentof critical thinking skills by student teachers taking an MA in Teaching English to
Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the University of Nottingham, and Mike
considers the role that criticality plays in the self-directed academic literacy ofundergraduate law students at Chuo University. We then use Ron Barnett’s model ofcriticality (Barnett, 1997) and a social practices approach to consider some different
forms that criticality takes and how these relate to understandings of autonomy.
本論では、二つの事例を通じて、クリティカルシンキングとクリティカリティの発達について、そして、どのようにしてこれらが学習者自律性（オートノミー）と関連づけられるかを考える。Richardは、ノッティンガム大学のTESOL（英語を母国語としない人に対する英語教育）修士課程で学んでいる英語教師によるクリティカルシンキ
ングの能力の発達について論じ、Mikeは中央大学法学部生の自律的なアカデミック・
リテラシークラスにおいてクリティカリティが果たす役割について取り上げる。そして、Ron Barnett のクリティカリティのモデル(Barnett, 1997) とsocial practices
approachを用いて、クリティカリティの取る様々な形態とこれらがどのように学習者
自律性（オートノミー）の理解と結びついているかを考察する。

Introduction
Criticality and learner autonomy are both widely seen as desirable educational goals, and often
understood as interdependent or even mutually indispensable attributes. Raya, Lamb andVieira (2007), for example, claim that, “The competence to think critically is coextensive with
the notion of autonomy and self-suﬃciency” (p. 43). And in a well-known characterisation,
Little (1991) describes autonomy as a capacity “for detachment, critical reflection, decisionmaking, and independent action” (p. 4). We share this belief that it is important for students todevelop both their criticality and autonomy and we have both been exploring ways to help
students achieve this in the two quite diﬀerent contexts in which we work: a postgraduate MA
TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programme at the University of
Nottingham in the UK, where Richard teaches and Mike did some research during his
2010-2011 sabbatical year; and a programme to develop students’ academic literacy in English
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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedingsin the Law Faculty at Chuo University in Japan, where Mike teaches. Reflecting on this workourselves, and discussing it together, has raised many questions for us about criticality, criticalthinking, and autonomy: What do we mean by criticality and critical thinking, and is it useful
to distinguish between them? How do they help the development of learner autonomy, andhow does learner autonomy support the growth of criticality and critical thinking? Do
diﬀerent approaches to learner autonomy encourage particular understandings of criticality?
Does, for example, emphasizing “the conceptual link between autonomy and rationality” (Rayaet al., 2007, p. 43) imply criticality is the application of logical thinking techniques? If, like
Little (1991, p. 4), we take learner autonomy to be a “particular kind of psychological relation
to the process and content of…learning”, do we then approach critical thinking as a matter ofindividual cognitive development? Or do we need a more socially situated understanding of
criticality and autonomy, and to recognise, as Esch (2009) suggests, a choice between tworoads: “the road giving prominence to individual personal autonomy or the road giving
prominence to autonomy as the capacity to exercise critical thinking about learning as a participant in asocial milieu” (p. 33, italics in the original)?
These questions become more important for advocates of learner autonomy to address as the
top-down pressure to develop students’ ability to think critically increases in educational
contexts around the world. Criticality has already become a key requirement in courses andevaluation in higher education in the UK, where Richard currently works. In Hong Kong,
where Richard worked previously, the development of critical thinking often appears as astated aim of educational policy documents, and many teachers agree with its importance but
have diﬀering views of what it means and how to facilitate it (Stapleton, 2011). In Japan, where
Mike works, education policies to promote criticality at a national, or even local, level are notyet significant, but there seems to be a growing belief amongst language teachers in thenecessity of promoting students’ critical thinking, a trend reflected in the recent formation ofa Critical Thinking SIG in JALT (the Japan Association for Language Teaching) as well as thelonger-term existence of a similar SIG in JACET (the Japan Association of College English
Teachers). Importantly, there are divergent conceptions of criticality in educational policy (andpedagogy) in various countries, including Japan and the UK. These include:• a liberal arts emphasis on the role of critical thinking in the rounded intellectual growthof the individual;• a civic-minded association of criticality with active and informed participation indemocratic citizenship; and• a more instrumental focus on critical thinking skills as one of a range of capacities
demanded of the workforce by the rapidly changing, information-based economy of theearly 21st century (Barnett, 1997; Johnston, Mitchell, Myles, & Ford, 2001, pp. 97-100).
Whilst autonomy will likely continue to be an educational buzzword (Little, 1991), criticalthinking is clearly now another very important one (Stapleton, 2011) and the insistent, andSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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discordant, noise in educational policy and practice around the need for diﬀerent forms of
criticality will probably also impact upon thinking about the development of learner autonomy.
Claims about the interrelatedness of autonomy and criticality focus on capacities for, or statesof being, autonomous and critical. There seems, however, to be little research that investigates
the actual dynamics of how learners become more autonomous and critical in specificeducational contexts, or of the synergies and tensions that pedagogy for criticality andautonomy might encounter in practice. In this paper, we explore some of these questions forour two contexts. In what follows, Richard explains, in response to questions from Mike, hiswork developing critical thinking with student teachers on the MA TESOL programme at
Nottingham. Mike then discusses, also in a question and answer format, the development ofcriticality and autonomy with undergraduate students in the Law Faculty at Chuo. Finally, we
use Barnett’s (1997) work on criticality and critical being, as well as the idea of literacies associally situated practices, as frames to make sense of criticality and autonomy across contexts.

Richard: Developing Critical Thinking with
MA TESOL Students at the University of Nottingham
What Is the Context You are Working in?
The teaching context is a one-year MA TESOL programme at the University of Nottingham.
This caters mainly for overseas student teachers, some of whom have fairly limited teachingexperience: the minimum requirement is only two months. The main elements of the
programme are three 20-credit core modules, four 15-credit electives, and a 60-credit
dissertation. (The modules and electives are listed on the course structure page of the
programme website). The assessment for the programme is very academic: there are essay
assignments for each module (of 4,000 words and 3,000 words) and the dissertation is
12,000-15,000 words.
At the same time, we are very much trying to help students relate the academic input theyreceive to their own teaching contexts, so that they apply theory to practice throughout thecourse. This is emphasized in the main stated aim of the course: “to develop your criticalunderstanding of recent developments in TESOL theory and practice and to stimulate you toreflect on your own teaching” (see the programme website). So, as well as the combination oftheory and practice, it’s important that “developing critical understanding” is fronted up quite
clearly as the key aim of the course. Critical thinking therefore plays an important role
throughout the programme at Nottingham.
Why Focus on Developing Critical Thinking Rather than Learner Autonomy?
One of the reasons for the focus on critical thinking is that learner autonomy is, to a large
extent, a given in the course. It underpins the whole approach to postgraduate study so that,for example, the students have control not only over where and when they study, but also overwhat and how. The topics for assignments are normally chosen and developed by the students,
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and the whole content, structure and approach of their writing is also decided by them. So
these elements of freedom and choice, which are obviously central aspects of learnerautonomy, are also crucial in postgraduate study. These are supported, of course, by teaching
and tutorials, and also by learning circles, small study groups that we have set up, that are a key
way for students to develop learner autonomy collaboratively and therefore an important partof the course. Overall, then, the importance of learner autonomy in the programme is verymuch assumed.
Unlike learner autonomy, however, critical thinking is an overt part of the assessment
framework at Nottingham and other UK universities. For example, as Table 1 shows, one of
the marking criteria at merit level (equivalent to a B grade) for Masters courses in the School of
Education at Nottingham states that students should be able to critique research and practice,so that is a criterion we look out for when we mark assignments. As a result, it is important for
students to develop their criticality if they are to do well on the course.

Table 1
Grading Criteria for Masters Level Courses (Evison & Pemberton, 2009, p. 32)
DISTINCTION

MERIT

PASS

Analysis,
Demonstrates ability to Shows evidence ofDemonstrates somereflection and analyse and critiquestrong analytical ability; evidence of analyticalcriticality
theory, research and able to critiqueability and capacity
accounts of practice research and practice for reflection

Another reason for this focus is that critical thinking is key to the development we want
students to make during the MA. By the time they finish the programme, we want them to feelthey are part of an academic teaching community and able, for example, to pick up an ELTJournal article and take a critical position on issues that they read about which aﬀect their own
teaching context. So by the end of the MA, we would like students to be able to take critical
positions on issues that impact on them.
Which Parts of the Programme Support Students in Developing Their CriticalThinking?
There are two main parts of the programme which support critical thinking. The first is thelearning circles, the small study groups which meet every week outside of regular class time. In
these, students have the opportunity to discuss theories and research that they have been
introduced to in class, and come across in their own reading, and then relate these to their own
diﬀerent contexts. So the learning circles are an important arena for students to startdeveloping their own positions within a very safe and supportive group environment.

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The second type of support involves a series of curriculum features that my colleague, Jane
Evison, and I introduced specifically to prepare students to develop the ability to critiqueresearch and practice, on which they are assessed during the course. As well as a workshop on
critical reading, this support includes two mini-assignments in the first semester. The first is acomparative literature review in which students are expected to show their own stance at somepoint. The second is a critique of the methodology of a particular paper in which they need to
be able to identify methodological strengths or weaknesses of the paper. An extreme exampleof the latter might be to question how sound it is to draw statistical conclusions from a surveyof five people. These assignments are supported by group tutorials that take place before
students begin individual reading and writing for the assignment, where we model the type ofwriting that is expected and students discuss example papers in groups. Students often surprisethemselves actually by the insights they can come up with when working together in thesetutorials.
What Are the Aims in Supporting Students to Develop Their Critical Thinking?
There are four main aims we have in providing students with help for improving their criticalthinking. The first is for students to feel they can critically evaluate the academic work theyread. This is something that, very understandably, they find diﬃcult when they start thecourse, especially if they have limited knowledge or experience. Many will think, “What righthave I got to critique published work?” But we want them to learn to see that they do have thisright—that everyone can express an opinion. Second, of course, opinions by themselves are notenough. We expect students to be able to support their position with reasoned argument, todevelop a justified stance. Thirdly, we hope that students will express themselves in their own
way, without feeling that they have to closely follow a formula, and that they will be able todevelop their own voice.
And our last aim in supporting critical thinking–and this may appear a very grand aim—is forstudents to become producers rather than reproducers of knowledge. Of course, to an extent, allof us reproduce knowledge, but we want to move students away from merely repeating what X
and Y have said, and to be able to add something of themselves. Again, we would like to reachthe point where the reader can see something of the student’s own position in their writing.
What Kinds of Development Are Students Making as a Result of This?
The following four quotes from interviews with students on the programme are representativeof the kinds of progress we see from students in developing their critical thinking.
Rebecca: For me critical reading is a lot more useful than I felt before. I think I used to treat
it like a task that our tutor pushed us to do this. Now I think I felt the necessity... I try to findthe support from the materials for my assignment… I actually enjoy challenging myself.
Samantha: I expected to come in and this guy or this woman would tell me “OK this is how
it’s supposed to be done and this is the right way”, or whatever, but then you realise there isno right. Initially it’s frustrating but then you soon learn that it’s better when you get tochoose, you know and you justify those choices, so I like the way that in class we always had
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to discuss our point of view, our experiences, bring them in, compare them, use them, use thetheories that we’re learning, and I think by explaining our opinions, we realise “OK this iswhere I stand, this is the way I see it.”Deborah: I felt what we read in books are not 100% correct. That’s what I learned. I foundonce we are reading books we will believe everything which is written in the book, we
believe the author’s beliefs, but I felt it’s incorrect and this kind of stuff may be notappropriate or suitable to my teaching context. So after nine months I know how to decide
what is right and what is wrong depends on his evidence and whether this is applicable in
my context. This is what I learned.
Susan: Before I was just a receiver, a passive receiver, I would read whatever I have andjust accept it for what it is. Never occurred to me that—well even if it occurred to me, I feltthat it wouldn’t be right to question, I mean if something’s published, you have theimpression that it’s published, it’s everywhere, it’s right, it can’t be wrong. But now I feel like
“No, you can argue, you can say what’s on your mind”, I mean before I used to say “Howcan you argue a person like that, a really well-known writer or whatever”, but now I feel“No, you can do it”—as long as you’re arguing with reason. I feel like I have a voice now.
In each case, we can clearly see development from the start to the end of the course. For
Rebecca, the first student, there is a clear movement from a very externalised motivation in
the first assignment to a much more internalised motivation by the end of the course. In
Samantha’s case, we see the clear development of a justified stance. Deborah shows thedeveloping ability to read critically in terms of applicability to her own context. And with
Susan we have the development of her own voice. Obviously, students develop at diﬀerent
rates, but this kind of development is something that we see in almost all of the students
taking the MA TESOL programme at Nottingham.

Mike: Developing Criticality and Autonomy in English
With Law Students at Chuo University
What is the Context You Are Working in?
I teach in the Taught-in-English programme in the Law Faculty at Chuo University (see theprogramme website for more information). The Faculty has three divisions—Law, Politics, andInternational Business and Law—which means students have a range of interests, not just inlaw but in politics, international relations, human rights, development issues, trade, business,and globalization. In the Taught-in-English programme, we want to give students opportunities
to explore these academic interests in English by developing their self-directed academic
literacy for engaging with content in English. By that, we mean students being able to choose
issues of interest to them to research, discuss with other students, and present on or write
about, so that they can learn together about these issues in English.

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Two examples of the courses in the programme—and the kind of issues students look at on thecourses—are Basic Research and Discussion and Multicultural Japan (see Table 2 below). Basic
Research and Discussion is an intermediate-level course in which students look at any social,legal, political or global issues they are interested in. Multicultural Japan is a more advanced
class in which students focus on a particular area of study over a year and choose a number ofissues to investigate to build their knowledge and understanding of the field.

Table 2
Two Courses in the Taught-in-English Programme and Examples of Research Issues Chosen by Students
BASIC RESEARCH AND DISCUSSION
1st & 2nd year, Intermediate

MULTICULTURAL JAPAN
3rd year, Advanced• Japan & Tuna Fishing• Buraku Problem in Japan• Junk Food

• Voting Rights for Korean Permanent Residents• Developing Countries’ Education• Japanese Identity

Students research the issues they have chosen, in cycles of three to four weeks. Outside class,they find sources of information for their issue, usually online, and read and make research
notes. Each week in class, they explain their research using those notes and discuss it withother students in pairs. They reflect on the development of their understanding throughtalking with other students but also by writing research diaries. And they also try to focus theirresearch on specific questions which will help them build their knowledge of the issue and,very importantly, develop their understanding of it. At the end of this cycle, they give a
presentation with a poster, flip chart or Powerpoint slides to other students.
In contrast to the MA TESOL programme at Nottingham, the development of criticality is
not a formal requirement or criterion for grading in the Law Faculty at Chuo, although manymembers of faculty see it as important. In the Taught-in-English programme, full- and parttime teachers have identified criticality as an important element of students’ engagement with
content, and this has become an area of discussion in faculty development workshops (alsoknown as teacher retreats) for teachers in the programme. Helping students to develop theirunderstanding of an issue, not just gather information about it, has become a crucial part ofthe programme. We want students to recognise and reflect on their own views on an issue, toengage with diﬀerent viewpoints that they encounter through research and discussion, and soto develop their own thinking about an issue with other students. This is the notion ofcriticality that we are working with.
Why Focus on Developing Criticality and Learner Autonomy?
To think more about the development of criticality and autonomy in the Taught-in-English
programme, I will draw on interviews with four students, starting with Saori, a first-year
student in the Basic Research and Discussion class. Explaining her research in one cycle of theSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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course, Saori brings out some of the ways that learner autonomy relates to development of a
critical understanding about an issue.
Saori: I’m interested in the fourth project about farmers of tobacco leaf. There are many
farmers of tobacco leaf in Tanegashima, Kagoshima—my hometown… At that time, theDemocratic Party of Japan said they will raise the price of tobacco. The topic, tobacco tax
is very close to us, so that is very interesting for me… Following the connections, I
researched various things: first, the danger of tobacco, second, the tax of tobacco and third,
JT [Japan Tobacco] and tobacco farmers… I learnt many things but first tobacco tax is very
high because half of the price of tobacco is tax. At first I thought simply tobacco farmer isunfortunate. During the project I think to protect tobacco farmers is a very good thing butthat makes foreign people’s health bad. In my presentation, I said, “There’s a contradiction
there. I’m not on one side or the other”. That was interesting for my audience.
Three points are important here. One is that Saori brings her own interests—concerns that are
literally very local—into the classroom and into her research. The second is the way she
actively self-directs the development of her research not just to develop her knowledge, but tobring in new viewpoints and see this issue from diﬀerent perspectives. And the third point,
very interestingly, is that Saori is not rushing to give her own opinion, or to present anargument, in the way that is advocated in some approaches to critical thinking. She is holding
the issue open, and presenting it from diﬀerent sides, an approach that she finds is interestingfor the students listening to her presentation. Saori’s case suggests, then, some ways thatlearner autonomy and criticality intersect that are useful to consider more.
What Are the Connections Between Criticality, Learner Autonomy and Identity in
the Taught-in-English Programme?
Let me take up the crucial question of interest first. When students on courses such as Basic
Research and Discussion or Multicultural Japan self-direct their work in English in terms of theirown interests and experiences, we start to see what Douglas Barnes has referred to as theinteraction between school knowledge (“the knowledge which someone else presents to us”) andaction knowledge (“that view of the world on which our actions are based”) (Barnes, 1992, p. 81).
So, when students bring their own concerns and questions to the knowledge they encounter inuniversities, they can start to make that knowledge their own, to use it to author their own
understandings of the world. As David Little (1991, pp. 11-12) has suggested, this engagement
between action knowledge and school knowledge is at the heart of learner autonomy.
Two other principles of language learner autonomy also support criticality as students develop
their understandings of the world in the Taught-in-English programme. One is that students
are not just language learners but are also active users of the language for learning andcommunicating about issues of concern to them (Little, 2000, pp. 15-16; Benson, 2002, pp.
15-17). The other principle is part of the political approach to learner autonomy (Benson, 1997)
and emphasizes the right of learners to decide the content of their learning, and to use
language for their own reasons and purposes. This quote from Yuto, a third-year student on theSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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Multicultural Japan course, gives a good sense of how his active, purposeful use of English relates
to the development of his thinking about an issue.
Yuto: I’m very interested in the environment. In [Taught-in-English classes], we can choose
topics relatively freely, so we can pick up interesting topics and I enjoy researching…. For
example, I researched about developing countries’ environmental and human rights. Before
researching that, I didn’t think it was a serious problem. After researching that I felt it wasvery, very serious problem in developing countries. About air pollution, almost every air
pollution country is a developing country…. So how to solve this problem? What’s the roleshould developing countries play? And developed countries? What should developed
countries do to solve that? I researched about law related to the environment.
Notable here is the way that Yuto identifies problems for himself, focusing on areas andquestions that will drive his knowledge forward, and suggesting that problem-setting isimportant for this kind of criticality. Douglas Barnes captures well this relationship between
developing our understandings of the world and a purposeful, autonomous approach tolearning: “We educate children in order to change their behaviour by changing their view ofthe world. We want to change the way they perceive the world they live in, not so they will
carry out our purposes, but so they can formulate their own purposes, and estimate theirvalue” (Barnes, 1992, p. 80).
Questions of identity are also salient here. As learners bring school knowledge and action
knowledge together in learning about issues of interest to them, they are also integrating theiridentities as students with their identities in the wider world outside the classroom. And they
are developing identities as language users who can decide the content of their own learning inthat language. The importance of this sense of their own interest, purpose and control inlanguage use is made clear—by its absence—when we consider ways in which autonomy may
not promote the development of criticality.
In What Ways Can Learner Autonomy Limit Criticality?
When students do not have an active and purposeful engagement with an issue, their learnerautonomy may become instrumental. They make choices about issues to research and sourcesof information to read because they are required to by the teacher, rather than in terms of
their own interests and concerns. So, under these conditions, their choices lack motivation andmeaning. Students are being autonomous because they are required to be, completing tasks forthe course rather than exploring their interests in the world. The result is often a recycling ofcommon knowledge about a topic. Students researching smoking, for example, often gather
information about its harmful eﬀects on health, confirming what they already knew, but notgoing beyond this in the way that Saori did, in her research on tobacco farming and tax, toencounter new problems and perspectives. As a result, this instrumental autonomy does notencourage or support criticality as an engagement with alternative perspectives and thedevelopment of new understandings about the world.

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How Can We Help Students Engage With Alternative Ways of Thinking?
On the Taught-in-English programme, we have tried to provide research resources that enable
students to encounter diﬀerent viewpoints and arguments about an issue. Many teachers stressthat students should consider the interests and perspectives of diﬀerent actors involved in anissue. Like some other teachers, I have also tried giving mini-presentations that raise awarenessof diﬀerent approaches to a topic. But, whilst students generally find all of these interestingand helpful, what they say is most useful for developing their understanding of issues is talking
with other students, exchanging ideas, hearing about other research. In other words, it is aprocess of co-constructing ways of thinking that is important for the development of theircriticality. Central to this is “exploratory talk” (Barnes, 1992), the kind of talk that explores
issues, looks for diﬀerent angles, brings in diﬀerent opinions, rather than trying quickly toreach a conclusion or just demonstrate knowledge. It also involves “interthinking” (Mercer,
2000), thinking with other people, rather than just inside our own heads. This then relates
clearly to another principle of learner autonomy, that of interdependence. So there aresynergies between criticality and autonomy in forms of discourse—exploratory talk andinterthinking—and kinds of relationships—interdependent and collaborative—which support
each other. Satomi and Midori, third-year students on the Multicultural Japan course, highlight
this:
Satomi: It’s important to have a discussion with classmates not just report back on researchbecause it helps finding new points of the research, another viewpoint, or another aspect for
the issue. For me it’s useful–thinking together and talking together.
Midori: “What does this mean to you?”,“Why do you choose this topic?” From thesequestions, I can consider why I choose this issue, how it relates to my interest, I can find myfocus point and I can tell the stories from my experiences.
Satomi suggests how interthinking—“thinking together and talking together”—can help
students move beyond their current understandings to new ones. Midori talks about the waythat exploratory talk, in the form of questioning, can help her not only to think about andfocus her research but also to tell the stories of her experience. She is researching Japanese
identity and thinking back to her experiences during a homestay in Australia when people
asked her what it meant to be Japanese and she started to wonder about that issue. And sothese stories can now come into her critical understanding of the world.
Interestingly, Satomi and Midori told me that their way of talking together, and questioning
each other, had actually developed in classes in their first and second years, in which theteachers had emphasised the importance of critical thinking and particularly of asking eachother critical questions. We see here then how the kind of criticality we aspire to in theTaught-in-English programme may develop out of a more specific kind of critical thinking
when students use it as part of their own self-directed, interested, and purposeful engagementwith content.

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Criticality, Critical Thinking and Autonomy Across Different Contexts
To continue, we want to bring in a more theoretical framework for thinking about criticality,
critical thinking and autonomy in diﬀerent contexts. By contexts, we are referring both to theprogrammes at Nottingham and Chuo, but also to the way that specific academic practices,such as assignment writing, constitute microcontexts for criticality and autonomy withinprograms and institutions.
Forms of Criticality
The first approach we find useful is taken from Ron Barnett’s work on criticality in UK higher
education (Barnett, 1997; see also Johnston et al., 2011). Barnett has identified three kinds ofcriticality, or three ways of being critical, that relate to formal knowledge, the self, and theworld:• Critical reason—being critical about formal knowledge = critical thinking?
• Critical self-reflection—being critical about our own beliefs and ideas, experiences andpractices.
• Critical engagement (action)—being critical about the world and our place in it.
For Barnett, critical thinking is a form of critical reason because it is concerned with formal
knowledge. He suggests that a broader form of criticality, critical being, involves theintegration or interaction of all these ways of being critical. Here, there are clear parallels with
the interaction between school knowledge and action knowledge. There are also echoes, in
Barnett’s work, of the concern from Henri Holec and the Council of Europe, during theformative period for autonomy in language learning in the late 1970s, that learner autonomy
should carry over from formal education into other areas of life (Little, 1991, pp. 6-7). Barnett’s
approach, then, not only helps to make sense of the diﬀerence between critical thinking andcriticality, but enables us to see that we have a common concern at both Nottingham and Chuowith developing critical thinking into a broader kind of criticality, in which students integrate
formal knowledge with other teaching contexts and the world beyond the classroom.
Levels of Criticality
The second approach that may be useful for thinking about criticality and autonomy isconcerned with levels of criticality and students’ development in terms of those. Barnett’s
model involves four levels of criticality, but it is useful to focus on one here: the instrumental
level. The key point about this is it is other-directed, with tasks imposed on learners, not selfdirected. These tasks might require learners to reflect on themselves in terms of criteria set by
their teacher not by themselves, or to do an assignment in which they have to be criticalbecause the teacher tells them to. This instrumental kind of criticality is often related to using
certain skills or techniques, so Barnett would locate critical thinking skills very much in thisarea. Here we can see a parallel with instrumental autonomy, in which there is a similar lack ofSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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purpose and control on the part of learners who make choices because that is what is requiredof them. Again, there is a common concern at Nottingham and Chuo with moving beyond
instrumental criticality to a kind of criticality that involves control and agency—elements of anactive, purposeful learner autonomy—as well as critical stance and voice, as a way of students
expressing their own view of the world.
A framework of types and levels of criticality, based loosely on Barnett, oﬀers, then, a way tounderstand a process of development from critical thinking around formal knowledge into a
broader criticality that also addresses the self and the world, as well as a parallel developmentfrom an instrumental level of criticality to a more agentic one. But we should also ask if thedevelopment of criticality is really a linear development, a smooth path that students movealong in a predictable pattern.
Criticality and Autonomy as Social Practices: Learning Circles, Classes andAssignments
We want to suggest that an alternative might be to see criticality and autonomy as sociallysituated practices. This approach to criticality and autonomy draws on the New Literacy
Studies and its understanding of literacies as historically and socially specific practices (see, forexample, Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000). It foregrounds the ways that criticality andautonomy—and the kind of identities, discourses and relationships that they involve—will takediﬀerent forms in diﬀerent social contexts. The contexts we are thinking of here are thelearning circles at Nottingham that Richard has mentioned, as well as the taught classes for themodules and electives, and the written assignments on which they are assessed. The learning
circles are significant because this is where the students get together in groups, and ask
themselves: What is this all about? What does this mean to me? Here, they can really workthrough issues from the course and try to relate them to diﬀerent contexts. So the learning
circles are a very important part of the programme and one that does not exist in other MA
TESOL programmes that we know of.
Learning circles consist of three to five students meeting without a teacher present, so thestudents are in control of the pace and structure of their discussions. In contrast, in the classes
that students take, especially the required modules, there are about 20 students and theteacher structures the class, usually around a Powerpoint presentation with short breaks forstudent discussion. One issue that the students raise is their ability to relate formal knowledge
to their teaching contexts and practices in these two contexts. Whereas they feel they can dothat quite eﬀectively in learning circles, in classes, especially early in the course, they feel they
have less chance to do that so well. According to one student, Betty:
Betty: In our class, we just talk academic things. [But in learning circles] we have to talkabout the theoretical part and discuss about our experiences in learning and teaching …So
it’s like between daily and academic talking…first we have to express it academically andhelp each other if there is misunderstanding or unclear part. Then we move to ourexperiences.

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Another issue here is students’ identities and their sense of their own ability to be critical. In
classes, students, especially those with limited teaching experience, often worry about theirright to be critical, wonder what expertise or authority they have for that, and feel nervous
because there are “experts” in the class—other students and the teacher who know more thanthem. But in learning circles they become quite critical with each other and see that as helpful.
Betty: While discussing in learning circles, if I have some misunderstanding about
theoretical part, other girls just warn me, “No, it’s not like this. It should be like this...” I
don’t feel myself sad or bad when they said something like that because, I don’t know, they
just try to help me.
One more comparison, which is really important, is between assignments and learning circles.
The programme at Nottingham is assessed entirely on assignments, and demonstrating
criticality in those assignments is therefore very important. But, again according to Betty, theform of criticality that is possible or necessary with a written assignment is very diﬀerent fromthat which develops in the learning circles.
Betty: While writing [assignments] I’m the only one who looks at the topic from one
perspective. Maybe I cannot see the other perspectives but in learning circles it is totallydifferent. If there are four people then it means in a learning circle there are four different
ideas or maybe one basic idea but we can all improve from different sides.
In this description of the learning circles, we get a picture of interdependence andinterthinking, and of new viewpoints and understandings developing through discussion, thatecho the accounts of the way that students develop their criticality through dialogue andquestioning in the Taught-in-English programme at Chuo. It is this kind of exploratory
criticality, which integrates knowledge, the self and the world, and that interacts dynamicallyand dialectically with the development of learners’ autonomy, that we are most interested insupporting. However, we also recognize that critical thinking concerned with formal
knowledge is valuable and can develop into broader forms of criticality, and that specificinstitutional contexts and academic practices, such as individual written assignments, may
require particular forms of criticality to be used. A social practices approach, which considers
the varying forms that criticality takes in diﬀerent contexts, addresses the kinds of diﬀerencesthat Betty points out. It raises questions about the intersections between the diﬀerent
practices of criticality in an institution, as well as about the relations between autonomy andcriticality in those practices. It is these questions that we turn to now at the end of this paper.
Questions for Further Research Into Practices of Criticality and Autonomy
We have seen that students on the MA TESOL at Nottingham report significant overall
development in their own critical thinking, in their ability to evaluate research in terms of
their teaching contexts, to take a critical stance, and find their own voice. We have also lookedat how criticality takes diﬀerent forms in diﬀerent academic sites and processes such aslearning circles, seminar classes, and written assignments. A key question, then, is how theNottingham students see the connections—or dissonances—in the development of their
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criticality across the whole programme and over the course of the year. Extending this kind of
inquiry to the Law Faculty at Chuo would mean looking at how the development of criticality
in the Taught-in-English programme relates to expectations within the Faculty about students’
being critical in the rest of their law, politics and business classes, some of which are seminartype classes that involve students making presentations and writing reports but most of which
are exam-assessed lecture courses.
The particular forms that criticality tends to take in the learning circles at Nottingham, andhow these relate to other parts of the programme, is a significant area for further research,
because the learning circles are a distinctive feature of the Nottingham course but not of other
MA TESOL programmes in the UK. And whilst it is perhaps easier to track the emergence ofa focused critical stance and a willingness to critique the “experts” in student assignments thanin learning circles, it is also useful to understand the contribution that more exploratory andcollaborative types of criticality can make to students’ capacity to reflect critically on theirown teaching practices and contexts. The emphasis on self-direction also makes the learning
circles a key site for investigating the interactions between learner autonomy and criticality.
Similarly, the Chuo programme raises questions about the synergies and tensions between
learner autonomy and an exploratory, independent type of criticality—but this time in aclassroom context and with undergraduate students—particularly between students selfdirecting their research and taking a critical stance to the knowledge that they encounter.
The importance of written assignments on the Nottingham programme provides an urgent
reason for students there to develop their criticality. At the same time, it limits to one
particular academic practice the formal assessment of students’ ability to take a critical stanceand reflect critically on their contexts. Recognising this, Richard has been considering thepossibility of expanding the assessment on the Nottingham programme to include digitalstorytelling, a genre that seems likely to encourage the development of a personally engaged
critical voice more than written assignments do. Here, then, an understanding of the diﬀerent
forms that criticality takes can feed back into practices of academic assessment, so that
diﬀerent, and perhaps more autonomy-friendly, forms of criticality can also be valued andevaluated. Mike and other colleagues at Chuo would also like to explore digital storytelling as away for students to present their own self-directed research about the world as well as toreflect critically on their own histories and experiences. How this emerging practice of digitalacademic literacy supports the interdependent development of learner autonomy andcriticality is one more question for future research.
Acknowledgement
As well as thanking Andy Barfield, Kay Irie and Alison Stewart for their feedback on earlier
drafts of this paper, Mike would like to express his appreciation to Andy, Kay, Alison, Darren
Elliot, Rich Silver and all the other organisers of the Realizing Autonomy conference for the
belief, commitment and support that made it possible for Richard to give his contribution to
the plenary. It was incredibly important to Richard to be part of this event.
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Richard Pemberton See p. 95-99.

Mike Nix works in the Law Faculty at Chuo University. His teaching and research there are focused on
helping students develop self-directed, critical and multimodal forms of academic literacy for learning in
English about social, political, legal and global issues of interest to them. He has also done research recently
at the University of Nottingham, with Richard Pemberton and others, on autonomy, criticality and theownership of English in the development of academic literacy by international MA students.
To cite this article: Pemberton, R., & Nix, M. (2012). Practices of critical thinking, criticality and learnerautonomy. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing
Autonomy Conference, [Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 79-94. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/
19two/pemberton-nix.pdf

References
Barnes, D. (1992). From communication to curriculum. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook- Heinemann.
Barnett, R. (1997). Higher education: A critical business. Buckingham, U.K.: SHRE & Open
University.
Barton, D., Hamilton, M., & Ivanic, R. (Eds.). (2000). Situated literacies: Reading and writing incontext. London: Routledge.
Benson, P. (1997). The philosophy and politics of learner autonomy. In P. Benson & P. Voller(Eds.), Autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 18-34). London: Longman.
Benson, P. (2002). Autonomy and communication. In P. Benson & S. Toogood (Eds.), Learnerautonomy 7: Cha$enges to research and practice (pp. 10-28). Dublin: Authentik.
Esch, E. (2009). Crash or Clash? Autonomy 10 years on. In R. Pemberton, S. Toogood, & A.
Barfield (Eds.), Maintaining control: Autonomy and language learning (pp. 27-44). Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press.
Evison, J., & Pemberton, R. (2009). TESOL Talk from Nottingham: Using podcasts to develop
criticality amongst postgraduate TESOL (Teaching English to Speaker of Other
Languages) students. In A. Sidorovitch (Ed.), Teaching for integrative learning: Innovations inuniversity practice (pp. 31-47). Volume 2. Nottingham: Centre for Integrative Learning.
Johnston, B., Mitchell, R., Myles, F., & Ford, P. (2011). Developing student criticality in higher
education: Undergraduate learning in the arts and social sciences. London: Continuum.
Little, D. (1991). Learner autonomy 1: Definitions, issues and problems. Dublin: Authentik.
Mercer, N. (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. Oxford: Routledge.

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Raya, M. J., Lamb, T., & Vieira, F. (2007). Pedagogy for autonomy in language education in Europe:
Towards a -amework for learner and teacher development. Dublin: Authentik.
Stapleton, P. (2011). A survey of attitudes towards critical thinking among Hong Kong
secondary school teachers: Implications for policy change. Thinking Ski$s and Creativity, 6,14-23.

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R I C H A RD P E M B E RT O N :HI S WO R L D O F WO R K A N D S E RV I C EAndy Barfield
Richard Pemberton died peacefully at home in Nottingham in the early hours of January 19th,
2012, just a few months after taking part in the Realizing Autonomy Conference, and barely 18
months after he had learned that he had metastatic prostate cancer that had spread to his
spine.
Richard was Associate Professor in TESOL in the School of Education at Nottingham
University. He taught at Nottingham from January 2006, after nearly 15 years at Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, where he had been responsible for setting up andcoordinating the Self-Access Centre, and integrating self-access language learning into the firstyear course that he coordinated. Before that, he taught ESL for eight years at secondary levelin the UK and Zimbabwe and tertiary level in Papua New Guinea (University of Technology)
and did one year of Voluntary Service Overseas in Lesotho between school and university.
At Nottingham, Richard was Course Director for the MA in English Language Teacher
Development teaching a wide range of modules for the MA ELT/ELTD courses. He alsosupervised the PhD research of a large number of students. With Paul Meara as his supervisor,
Richard had done his own doctoral research on the spoken word recognition of Hong Kong
students (Pemberton, 2004b). His own main research interests were to do with L2 vocabularyacquisition, L2 listening, learner autonomy, self-access/self-directed language learning,educational action research (changing one’s own practice and evaluating the process), andtechnology-assisted language learning (especially involving video or mobile devices). Thesewide-ranging interests were mirrored in the wealth of activities that he undertook at
Nottingham. He coordinated the Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy Group’s Language
Learning Research Seminars, which were held on a monthly basis in the School of Education
and aimed to give research students, faculty members and colleagues from other universities anopportunity to report progress, present findings, and raise problems in an informal andsupportive atmosphere. Richard also initiated with Jane Evison TESOL Talk from
Nottingham, a series of podcast discussions between Richard and Jane (http://
portal.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/SiteDirectory/TTfN/default.aspx) on diﬀerent TESOL topics intended
to engage graduate students and teachers on issues related to TESOL pedagogy and research.
TESOL Talk from Nottingham brought together several interests of Richard’s: hiscollaborative style of working, his devotion to using technology in innovative ways, and hisconcern for helping students and teachers develop new understandings of the world.
Richard similarly contributed to the learner autonomy field in many diﬀerent grassroots ways.
He had a profound eﬀect on the whole field, particularly as he was responsible for coSpecial Issue of Learning Learning, Volume 19, Issue 2, July 2012（学習の学習特別号）&

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedingsorganizing two landmark conferences: the 1994 Taking Control conference in Hong Kong andthe 2004 Maintaining Control conference in Hong Kong, co-editing the proceedings for bothconferences. In Hong Kong, Richard was also an active member of HASALD (Hong Kong
Association of Self-Access Learning and Development), and contributed regularly to
HASALD’s online newsletter (http://www.cityu.edu.hk/elc/HASALD/). Richard served asconvenor of the AILA Scientific Commission on Learner Autonomy from 2002 to 2005 (http://
ailarenla.org/) and was a plenary speaker at the Inaugural Independent Learning Association
Conference in 2003 in Melbourne, Australia. In the UK, Richard helped organize SWAN
(Sheﬃeld, Warwick and Nottingham University) one-day conferences on learner autonomy, andfrom 2008 to 2010 he was also an active committee member of the IATEFL Learner
Autonomy SIG (http://learnerautonomy.org/). Richard also took part in the Nordic Workshops
on Developing Autonomous Learning for many years. More recently, Richard was active in The
British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), serving on its executive committee andworking, as usual, behind the scenes for his colleagues. Shortly after Richard’s death, and intribute to Richard’s work, BAAL created a new annual award, The Richard Pemberton Prize,
for the best student presentation at a BAAL conference.
Specifically in connection with JALT and the Learner Development SIG, Richard was aninvited speaker of the SIG at JALT2002 and astute contributor to Autonomy You Ask! (2003). He
also provided feedback and review comments for Realizing Autonomy (2012) and kept in regularcontact with members of the SIG. Richard was a familiar face to a great many people in the
SIG, much loved for his good humour and sense of fun at diﬀerent conferences and events
where people would meet him. Some fond memories of Richard include:
Stacey Vye: Richard was so observant, caring, and damn funny! Because he could see
things in people that maybe others couldn’t? Well, he’d helped steer you where youneeded to be and was very supportive about that development for the whole team. To
Richard:If this world represents
one drop of dew
then the radiant drop
presents itself
because of you

Never forget your impact, Richard.

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Steve Brown: I am in shock. But I consider myself honoured and privileged to have
known Richard as a friend and colleague … A man who was an inspiration and support
to many, but who never had a bad word to say about any.
Kay Irie: Although I never met him in person, I am grateful I had the opportunity to get
to know him via emails and work for the Realizing Autonomy conference. His presence
and contribution were an integral part of the conference and, of course, of the field.
Jackie Suginaga: Richard is in my thoughts and prayers.
Greg Rouault: Maybe one of the SIG’s scholarships or travel grants could be named in
Richard's honor and bestowed on a candidate who best displays the way in which
Richard lived his life, creating with the award a perpetual link between reflections on
who and how he was.
Bill Mboutsiadis: After you mentioned him to me two weeks ago and the great work
you've done together, I started reading more of his work and writing about it for myAutonomy class. He is truly an inspiring scholar and educator. I’m honored to bearound those who knew him as a scholar, educator and good friend.
Steve Paydon: I second Bill’s sentiments. I didn’t know Richard at all, but I am very
moved by the respect you all show for him.
Robert Moreau: I didn’t get a chance to meet Richard, but I remember his keynote
contribution to the realizing Autonomy Conference. Reading the words to theintroduction to that address again, it is easy to see how much he was a friend to the LD
SIG and how important his contribution was to what we all work towards in our classes.
My thoughts and prayers go out to his spirit and his family.
Alison Stewart: I met Richard at a number of conferences around the world, then had
the privilege to work with him in planning a plenary talk that he gave in October in
Nagoya, Japan. Particular memories: a dinner in Hong Kong, gales of laughter comingfrom the next table where Richard was sitting, much to the envy and curiosity of
everyone on my table; walking back from a pub in Swansea, appreciating Richard’s
kindness and warmth as we talked; skyping about the plenary, admiring Richard’s
commitment and devotion of his precious time to the event; inspiration from his blog
and from the haiku he loved. My deepest sympathies to Richard’s family, friends andcolleagues.
Rich Silver: I’m very sorry to hear the news and my feelings echo those of others.
Masuko Miyahara: I never had the pleasure to meet Richard personally, but I haveread some of his work which were a great inspiration for me. Come to think of it now,

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one of Richard’s articles that I read almost a decade ago was how I got interested in theidea of autonomy! My deepest condolences to his family and friends.
Richard Pemberton’s Major Publications
Pemberton, R., & Cooker, L. (2012). Self-directed learning: Concepts, practice and a novel
research methodology. In S. Mercer, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.), Psychology for
language learning: Insights from theory, research and practice (pp. 305-27). Basingstoke,
U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pemberton, R., & Nix, M. (2012). Practices of critical thinking, criticality and learnerautonomy. In K. Irie & A. Stewart (Eds.), Learning Learning, 19(2), Special Issue:
Proceedings of JALT LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference, 79-94.
Pemberton, R., Toogood, S., & Barfield, A. (Eds.). (2009). Maintaining control: Autonomy andlanguage learning. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Pemberton, R., Toogood, S., & Barfield, A. (2009). Maintaining control: An introduction. In R.
Pemberton, S. Toogood, & A. Barfield (Eds.), Maintaining control: Autonomy and language
learning (pp. 3-10). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Pemberton, R., (2009). Acting on a hunch: Can L1 reading instruction aﬀect L2 listening
ability? In T. Fitzpatrick & A. Barfield (Eds.), Lexical processing in second language learners(pp. 141-153). Clevedon, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.
Toogood, S., & Pemberton, R. (2007). Support structures for self-access learning. In A. Barfield& S. H. Brown (Eds.), Reconstructing autonomy in language education: Inquiry and innovation(pp. 180-195). Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave.
Toogood, S., & R. Pemberton (2006). Scaﬀolding for self-access learning and the FocusedTransfer-General Practice Model. In T. Lamb & H. Reinders (Eds.), Supporting independent
language learning: Issues and interventions (pp. 171-202). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Pemberton, R., Noakes, N., & Lee, J. (2005). Through other eyes: Job interviews in English.
Retrieved July 1, 2012 from http://lc.ust.hk/TOE
Toogood, S., Pemberton, R., Ho, S., & Chan, R. (2005). Virtual English Language Adviser(VELA). Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Retrieved from http://vela.ust.hk/
Pemberton, R. (2004). Spoken word recognition in a second language: An investigation of the ability ofHong Kong learners to recognise the most -equent words of English when listening to news
broadcasts. Hong Kong: Language Centre, Hong Kong University of Science andTechnology.
Pemberton, R., Carmichael, S., & Lam, M. (2004). Developing learner motivation throughcurriculum innovation. In O. Kwo, T. Moore, & J. Jones (Eds.), Developing learning
environments: Creativity, motivation and co$aboration in higher education (pp. 105-136). Hong
Kong University: Hong Kong University Press.
Pemberton, R. (2004). [Review of the book Teaching and researching listening by M. Rost]. System,
32(1), 125-128.
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Pemberton, R. (2003). Learning and remembering vocabulary: A case study in spaced
repetition. In L. Miyares, C. Moreno, & M. Silva (Eds.), Actas do VIII Simposio
Internacional de Comunicación Social, Volume 1 (pp. 251-254). Santiago de Cuba: Centro de
Lingüística Aplicada.
Nix, M., & Pemberton, R. (2002). Grading, evaluation and autonomy. Learning Learning, 9(2),20-27.
Toogood, S., & Pemberton, R. (2002). Integrating self-directed learning into the curriculum: A
case study. In P. Benson & S. Toogood (Eds.), Learner autonomy 7: Cha$enges to research andpractice (pp. 65-84). Dublin: Authentik.
Pemberton, R., & Lee, J. (2002). Looking at others to see yourself: Promoting reflection
through video materials. In A. Jyu & M. Megan (Eds.), Reflecting teaching: Reflection andinnovation in language teaching and learning (pp. 189-206). Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology Press.
Pemberton, R., & Toogood, S. (2001). Expectations and assumptions in a self-directedlanguage-learning programme. In M. Mozzon-McPherson & R. Vismans (Eds.), Beyond
language teaching: Towards language advising (pp. 66-83). London: Centre for Information on
Language Teaching and Research.
Pemberton, R., Toogood, S., Ho, S., & Lam, J. (2001). Approaches to advising for self-directedlanguage learning. In L. Dam (Ed.), AILA Review 15. Learner autonomy: New insights (pp.
16-25). Huddersfield, UK: Catchline. Retrieved July 1, 2012 from http://www.aila.info/
download/publications/review/AILA15.pdf
Pemberton, R., Toogood, S., Ho, S., & Lam, J., (2001). Enhancing the quality of adviser support
for self-directed language learning. In D. Kember, S. Candlin, & L. Yan (Eds.), Case studiesof improving teaching and learning -om the Action Learning Project Volume 2 (pp. 143-160).
Hong Kong Polytechnic University: Action Learning Project.
Pemberton, R., & Kasten, K. (1996). Language learning in language exchange partnerships: an
exploratory study. In R. Berry, B. Asker, K. Hyland, & M. Lam (Eds.), Language analysis,
description and pedagogy (pp. 218-234). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University of Science andTechnology.
Pemberton, R., Ho, S., Lam, J., & Toogood, S. (1999). Developing a self-directed languagelearning programme for postgraduate students (pp. 1-24). In B. Morrison (Ed.),
Experiments and evaluation in self-access language learning. Hong Kong: HASALD.
Pemberton, R., Li, E., Or, W., & Pierson, H. (Eds.). (1996). Taking control: Autonomy in language
learning. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Pemberton, R., & Tsang, E. (Eds.). (1993). Studies in lexis. Hong Kong: Language Centre, Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology.
To cite this article: Barfield, A. (2012). Richard Pemberton: His world of work and service. In K. Irie &A. Stewart (Eds.), Proceedings of the JALT Learner Development SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference,[Special issue] Learning Learning, 19(2), 95-99. Retrieved from http://ld-sig.org/LL/19two/rp-work.pdf

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LD SIG Realizing Autonomy Conference Proceedings「学習の学習」原稿募集

Contributing to Learning Learning「学習の学習」は会員に興味あるつながりを構築する空Learning Learning is your space for continuing to makethe connections that interest you. You are warmly
invited and encouraged to contribute to the next issueof Learning Learning in either English and/or Japanese.
We welcome writing in diﬀerent formats and diﬀerent
lengths about diﬀerent issues connected with learnerand teacher development, such as:

間です。次号「学習の学習」への和文 (もしくは英文、及び二言語での)投稿を募集しています。形式や長さを問
わず、学習者及び教 員の発達に関連した以下のようなさ
まざま文章を歓迎しています:• 論文 (約4000字-10000字)• 報告書 (約2000字-4000字)• 学習者のヒストリー (約2000字-4000字)• 自律性に関する体験談 (約2000字-4000字)• 書評 (約2000字-4000字) • SIGへの手紙 (約2000字)• 個人プロフィール (約400字)• クリティカル・リフレクション (約400字)• 研究興味 (約400字)• 写真 •詩その他

これまでにない形式のもの、また新しい方々からのご投• articles (about 2,500 to 4,000 words)• reports (about 500 to 1,000 words)• learner histories (about 500 to 1,000 words)• stories of autonomy (about 500 to 1,000 words)• book reviews (about 500 to 1,000 words)• letters to the SIG (about 500 words)• personal profiles (100 words more or less)• critical reflections (100 words more or less)• research interests (100 words more or less)• photographs• poems... and much more...

稿をお待ちしております。内容について もぜひご相談く
ださい。みなさまのご意見やお考え、ご経験、そして学習者の発達、学習者の自律性と教師の自律性に関することなど、ぜひお聞かせください。
次号「学習の学習」は2012年10月に出版の予定です。
ご興味のある方は、最終入稿日2012年 9月1日よりずっと前に余裕をもってご連絡いただければ幸いです。受け

We would like to encourage new writing and newwriters and are also very happy to work with you indeveloping your writing. We would be delighted tohear from you about your ideas, reflections,experiences, and interests to do with learnerdevelopment, learner autonomy and teacher
autonomy.

付けは常にいたしており ますので、アイディアがまとまり次第、遠慮なくいずれかの編集委員にご連絡ください。
アリソン・スチュワート
stewart̲al AT MARK hotmail.com

We hope to publish the next issue of Learning
Learning in October, 2012. Ideally, we would like tohear from you well before September 1, 2012 – inreality, the door is always open, so feel free to contact
somebody in the editorial team when you are ready:

ジャキー・杉永jackiesuginaga AT MARK gmail.com

Alison Stewart&

マイケル・モンデジャー
mikemondoman AT MARK gmail.com

Michael Mondejar

stewart_al AT MARK hotmail.com

Jackie Suginaga & jackiesuginaga AT MARK gmail.com
mikemondoman AT MARK gmail.com

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