Newsletter	  of	  the	  JALT	  Learner	  Development	  SIG	  	  Greetings	  from	  Learner	  Development	  SIG	  Members	  	  L D	 SIGのメンバーより	 	 自律学習は初めて？	 	 
LD	 SIG会員紹介：Steven	 Paydon	  	  New	  to	  Learner	  Autonomy?	  	  Steven	  Paydon,	  Tokai	  University	  	  I

recently joined the Learner Development
Sig after becoming intimately interested inlearner autonomy. At first, I thought I was
new to this idea of putting the learner in controlof their own learning - but now I am not so sure.
Years ago my family moved to a station, whatAmericans
would call arather
bigranch, on theedge of theKimberly
regioninoutbackAustralia. It was remote and isolated, but thatis actually an understatement. Our nearest
neighbor, literally the house next door, was12km away. The nearest town was 182km
away, along 120km of unsealed, rough roads
that were often made impassable by flooding
rivers. In fact, the town was so far away, andso difficult to get to, that we would only go
shopping about four times a year - in a big
truck! We were so remote that we even had
our own airstrip. The airstrip was vital for two
reasons. Firstly, we received our mail once
every two weeks by mail plane. Secondly, andmost importantly, if in case of an emergency
we needed a doctor, the only realistic way toget help was via the Royal Flying Doctor
Service (RFDS). Needless to say, there wereno schools anywhere remotely near where welived. Instead, my brother and I completed ourelementary school years in a pioneer versionof distance learning called School of the Air.
School of the Air derived its name from theteachers delivering their lessons via HF Radio,i.e. ‘through the air’ (schools.net.nt.edu/ksa/).

	  These radio sets were another essential part oflife for isolated communities. Built into arugged, army-green metal box, they came witha hand-held microphone and a long piece ofwire that you would tie to a stick and throw up
the nearest gumtree for an aerial. They weremainly used for the RFDS, but so long as there
were no emergencies at any given time, they
could be utilized by School of the Air - or the
odd communications between a very small
amount of people scattered throughout a very
vast region.
Other than that, about the only other thing you
could rely on picking up on the HF radio was
the Indonesian fishing boats chattering away atnight about 1000km to our north.
Each school morning we would sit in front ofthese radio sets listening intently to the staticin excited anticipation. Then eventually, wewould hear our teacher’s voice come over theradio and our class would begin. A typicalmorning roll-call would go something like this:“Good morning KSA Grade 6. This is Mrs.
Fitzgerald. Are you there? Over.”Suddenly the airwaves would burst to life! A
multitude of young little voices would say, notin quite the synchronized unison we come to
expect in a physical classroom, “Good morning
Mrs. Fitzgerald. Over.” The adrenaline rush
was almost too
much for a young
boy to stand.
From
that
moment on wewere in contact
with the outside
world,
andalthoughouryoungimaginations
couldn’tquite
grasp it, we knew that we were a part ofsomething big.
Reflecting back now, School of the Air seems
to be my first real introduction to learnerautonomy. Autonomy seems to me to be
having a freedom of choice. My brother and I
were free to choose how much we studied andwhen. Just so long as we kept up to scheduleand got our work finished before the mail planearrived with our next set of lessons, mum didn’t
really care what we did. This was both aliberating and motivating experience for us.
Writing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT),
Deci and Ryan (2000) identify threeLEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	   5	  JALT学習者ティヘロフメントSIGの会報	 	  psychological needs that, when met, lead tointrinsic motivation: relatedness, competence,and autonomy. School of the Air helped fulfill
these needs for us. Although we couldn’t see it,
School of the Air gave us a sense of belonging
to a community. We would check in with ourteacher every school day, and we could hear
the voices of other little kids experiencing thesame wonder as us. We had a sense ofcompetence because we were learning frommaterials designed to be at just the right levelfor us (optimal challenge). Moreover, seeing as
there were no other kids, no TV, no video, noclubs, no shops…absolutely nothing, we were
free from distractions and totally focused oncompleting our lessons. Not surprisingly, wealso finished them in haste. And finally, we
also had ample autonomy because, apart fromhaving to be present for our morning roll call,
we could study whenever we wanted.
Deci and Ryan (2000) also postulate thatstudents in autonomy-supportive environments
show higher levels of motivation and learn
more than students in controlled environments.
My brother and I can vouch for this, too. We
were proactive and engaged. We used to burnthrough those materials so fast that we would
finish two weeks’ work in one week. There
were no school rules for us, no sitting incrowded classrooms waiting for a bell to ring,either. In fact, there was no watching a clock atall. We were interested, excited, confident, andthis translated into performance, persistence,and creativity. In fact, we were so creative thatonce we had finished all our materials, wewould just check in for roll call in the morningand then knick off down the creek catchingsnakes and lizards until the next lot ofmaterials arrived.
Now I find myself here in Japan. My neighborlives only inches away from me, I have over ahundred channels on my TV, and aconvenience store is always in walking
distance. Like everyone else teaching in Japan,
I also find myself bound by various institutional
constraints. These controls are often anecessary fact of life as a teacher, but learnerautonomy seems to me to offer us somebalance in regards to overbearing control. That,
combined with my own learning experience,
makes me think that we can use learnerautonomy to motivate our students to reachhigher and achieve more. If we can give ourstudents a sense of belonging, then they will
work hard for their community. If we can givethem a sense of success, then they will gain
the confidence to push their boundaries. And if
we can give them a sense of choice, then they

6	   LEARNING	  LEARNING	  19(1)	  	  will be motivated to take control. My brotherand I thrived on the ability to take control of ourlearning. We ended up being sent away toboarding school in our high school years.
However, my School of the Air experience set
me up to thrive at distant learning when doing
my Masters as an external student. The ability
to take control of my learning was a motivating
experience that I hope I can pass onto mystudents.
References
Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (2000). Self-determination
theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development, and wellbeing. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
Katherine School of the Air. Retrieved fromschools.net.nt.edu/ksa/.	  	  Greetings	  from	  Learner	  Development	   SIG	   Member	   Bill	  Mboutsiadis	  LD	  SIG 会 員 紹 介 ： Bill	 
Mboutsiadis	 	  Hello everyone. My name is Bill
Mboutsiadis. I have been asked tointroduce myself since I’m a recent LD
SIG member and to discuss myunderstanding of learner development. I hope
to meet more of you during the various events
that are now being developed. As LD
programme chair, I’ve had the pleasure toconnect with some of you via emails and so
I’m looking forward to meeting you in person
this year. In this introduction I will also explain
my ongoing understanding of learnerdevelopment by specifically discussing whatlearner autonomy means for me and how it isrealized with my learners in our sharedlearning environment.
I arrived in Japan in March of 2010 with myfamily to teach at Meisei University in the WestTokyo area of Hino City. I have been teachingin ESL environments for most of my career
though my initial experience was teaching at auniversity in Bratislava, Slovakia. Turning
down a JET teaching offer back in 1996, I
started teaching English for Academic
Preparation at the University of Toronto’s
English Language Program. Since then I’ve
always wondered how things would haveturned out for me if had chosen to go to Japan.
Coming here has thus fulfilled a long-time goal
to have a Japanese EFL teaching opportunity.