RESEARCH PAPER
Classroom-Based Independent Study andLearner Identity
Caroline Hutchinson, Nihon University College of Economics
This paper describes a one-semester project aimed at developing first-year university students’ capacity to study
English autonomously. Students participated in five independent study workshops in which they chose, tried andreflected on learning activities suggested by the teacher. Research aimed to establish what effect the intervention
had on student motivation, agency, and ability to study outside the classroom. Questionnaire data showed littlechange in motivation to learn English, which was consistently high. Measures of student agency rose significantly,
but student confidence in their ability to study without a teacher showed no change. The paper argues that theability to study alone should not be the aim or measure of learner autonomy development, and concludes by suggesting that students with limited experience of making choices in the classroom may benefit from teacher- andpeer-supported in-class experimentation and reflection as a way to build their metacognitive awareness.
本稿は大学１年生の自律的学習能力を向上させるための一学期のプロジェクトについて説明したものである。学生が５つの自己学習ワー
クショップにおいて、先生に推薦されたアクティビティの中から一つを選択し、その活動の省察を行った。本研究は、この教育方法が英語学
習意欲、自主性と学外の学習能力に対してどのような影響を及ぼしたかを目的とする。アンケート調査によれば、学習意欲が一貫して高かったである。自主性の測定が顕著に上昇したが、一方、学外の学習能力に対して変化が見られなかった。学外の学習自体は自律性の発達に対して不適切な目的または尺度と考察する。そして結論として、教育における選択の自由を行使する経験が浅い学生に関して、教師と学生同士を助け合いながら経験的学習と省察がメタ認識能力を高める方法として効果があるとする。

Keywords
learner identity, reflection, autonomy, independent study, agency, motivation

キーワード
学習者のアイデンティティー、省察、自律性、独立した学習、エージェンシー、学習に対する意欲I

f we define identity as “the way we view ourselves in relation to specific contexts andgroups” (Williams, Mercer & Ryan, 2015, p. 49), it seems likely that transitions in thosecontexts and social groups can occasion profound changes in our identity, and a loss,
hopefully temporary, of confidence in our sense of who we are. Entering university is one
such transition, with its new balance of freedom and responsibility. Students are often awarethat a great deal is expected of them, but unsure as to what the expectations are and how best
to fulfil them.
In order that students can hit the ground running, institutions and instructors have a great
deal to gain from easing this transition by making expectations clear and helping learners develop their identities as competent university language students. Part of this involves
cognitive aspects, helping students develop familiarity with the new learning context andstrengthen skills needed to do well in it. Another aspect is social: how can instructors facilitate the develop of social groups which support students in their learning and adaptation totheir new context?
The present study arose due to my participation in a curriculum project group at Kanda
University of International Studies. The group was updating the materials for the initial “Orientation Unit” of the first-year Basic English Proficiency Program (BEPP) curriculum, around
20 class periods. We decided to focus explicitly on the transition from high school to univerLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 201945

Classroom-Based Independent Study and Learner Identity

sity, taking it as a topic for discussion and using the unit as a chance for students to experience the kinds of learning activities and processes that they would be expected to carry out
during their degree program.
I revised the Independent Study lessons, aiming to introduce students to a range of English
study activities in class, allowing them to choose activities individually or in groups and thento reflect on their value to them. I hoped that by enabling students to experiment with learning activities in a sheltered context, their confidence, knowledge, and metacognitive awareness of the learning process would grow, and they could create new identities as competent,
agentic, reflective learners while building a supportive group dynamic.
This paper will describe a semester-long project carried out with one class of 19 students, ofwhich I was the classroom teacher. Students followed a cycle of choosing study activities froma range suggested by the teacher, trying them out and reflecting on what they had learned. A
thorough description of the activities suggested is beyond the scope of this paper, but all are
standard practice within communicative language teaching (see the Methods section for further details).
Through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures, the research aimed to understand what the process meant to students, and what impact it had on their skills, motivation,and self-beliefs. As an instructor, I experienced transitions of my own regarding my beliefs
about the learning process and how it appears to students, and became much more aware of
the importance of the social dimension of learning.

Literature Review
The committee began with a broad definition of what might constitute the identity of a competent learner at our university and beyond. Classes within the English Language Instituteare learner-centred, and successful learning is felt to depend on the “activity, initiative andengagement of the learner” (van Lier, 2008, p. 163). Kanda also has a Self-Access Learning
Centre allowing students to access learning resources and a community of other language
learners. This speaks to a belief in the value of learner autonomy, or students’ “ability to takecharge of [their] own learning” (Holec, 1981, p. 3). Autonomous students may be better able
to learn in the language classroom as they develop the capacity to relate new information totheir existing knowledge and experience (Little, 1991), and in a broader sense are empoweredto think and act as free individuals.
Our learners would also need to believe themselves to be capable of functioning effectively at our university (perceived competence; see Elliot & Dweck, 2007), developing confidence
in their ability to tackle learning actively, to plan and direct their own learning. Part of thismight involve their metacognitive awareness of the process of learning: their ability to understand and reflect on language systems and skills, and their knowledge of strategies, defined by Cohen as “thoughts and actions consciously chosen and operationalized by language
learners, to assist them in carrying out a multiplicity of tasks from the very onset of learning
to the most advanced levels of target-language performance” (2012, p. 136). It would also involve understanding how to succeed within their new context.
In order to thrive within Kanda’s communicative English-only classrooms, students are
expected to develop and express their identities in the target language (Ushioda, 2011). This
includes not only their classroom-based identities, but also what Richards (2006, p. 60) calls
their “transportable identities”, as rounded individuals with interests beyond the classroom.
Engaging these identities seems to have a motivating effect, and to contribute to a positive group dynamic. Kanda students are also expected, and explicitly trained, to work well ingroups and support the efforts of others to contribute.

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While many of these behavioural competencies are considered fairly standard goals of higher education, our research group felt that few of our learners come to the classroom fully
equipped to learn autonomously; more commonly, we encounter “learners who are not yet
autonomous but are involved in the process of acquiring the ability to assume responsibility for their learning” (Holec, 1981, pp. 25-26). As Brophy (2009) argues, socializers, suchas teachers and other students, play an important role in steering students towards adaptive
identities and demonstrating the affordances given by a particular context or activity.
We also felt that it was important for students to experience actively making autonomous
decisions in the classroom. Ushioda (2011, p. 223) argues that there are two main senses inwhich the word “autonomy” has been used:ʶ

Autonomy in the sense of taking responsibility for, managing and regulating one’s
learning.

ʶAutonomy in the sense of a psychological need to experience behaviour as self-determined.

Ushioda argues that the former sense of autonomy is indeed dependent on a learner’s level of motivation, because learners are unlikely to exercise meta-cognition without the willingness to do so. On the other hand, classroom experience and research such as that of Dam(1995) suggests that promoting autonomy in the latter sense—empowering students to makedecisions in the classroom—can be a powerful motivating factor.
Further, Ushioda suggests that encouraging students to make autonomous decisions in theclassroom can help them to take ownership of their learning, and to engage more fully withthe demands of the learning context, promoting their “willingness to take responsibility for
regulating their motivation and learning behaviour in line with inevitable constraints anddemands” (2011, p. 224). Perhaps this experience of autonomy is a necessary precursor to themotivation required to become a capable autonomous learner?
Also important to understanding student decision-making and identity formation isthe context in which it takes place. Students are not “autonomous actors processing language-related information and skills”, but rather “social beings that have... a dynamic, reflexive and constantly changing relationship with the social context of learning” (Gao, 2010,
p. 18). Social relationships can either help or hinder the development of collective agency,
the sense that individuals are empowered and willing to work together to achieve collective
goals (Bandura, 2000). Through engaging in a shared learning process, learners and teachers
can create shared ways of communicating and learning, known as “communities of practice”(Wenger, 1998), and a shared identity which has a powerful impact on each individual in thegroup.

The Curriculum Context
This paper describes research into a semester-long independent study project undertakenwith low-tier first-year university English major students (CEFR A1 or A2). It was undertaken
at Kanda University of International Studies, a medium-sized specialist languages university
in Japan known for its self-access learning centre.
Acting as a member of the Basic English Proficiency Program curriculum research group,a group of six teachers responsible for maintaining and updating materials for the first-year“Freshman English” course, I had expanded the “Independent Study” section of our introductory “Orientation Unit” from a one-off series of lessons to a course component that ran
throughout the academic year. This component required students to set goals, identify relevant learning activities (with the help of teachers and learning advisors), try the activities andLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 3 • December 201947

Classroom-Based Independent Study and Learner Identity

write a reflection on them (Hutchinson, 2014). The aim of the course component was to foster
the skills needed for more autonomous learning, by giving students experience of selecting,trying out and reflecting on a range of study activities, and also to give students a greater
sense of ownership over their learning.
The research described here is a follow-up study; feedback on the previous year had foundthat many students were struggling to identify relevant activities, especially at lower levelsof English proficiency. Teachers had also identified the workload associated with supporting
each student individually as an issue. The curriculum group decided that before setting goals,
many students needed experience in choosing and trying out learning activities. As a result,a “sheltered” model was introduced, in which teachers pre-selected activities for students
to choose and try in class, before completing a reflection (Hutchinson, 2014). This also encouraged students to try a range of activities, where previously some had made conservative
choices which precluded them from comparing the advantages and disadvantages of multiple
activities.
Throughout the semester under consideration here, five independent study workshops were
held, in which students chose activities from a range suggested by the teacher and worked on
those activities individually or in groups depending on the activity type and their own preferences. Activities included group discussions, grammar and vocabulary games, shadowing,
dictation, and pronunciation software, and were based on activities recommended by the university’s self-access centre, and ones that previous students had felt to be beneficial.
Once students had chosen an activity and negotiated groups, they worked together to understand how to do the activity using instructions in English, their L2. The teacher was on
hand as a consultant where needed, but otherwise students worked without teacher supervision. Learners then reflected on what they felt to be each activity’s benefits and drawbacks
and identified a goal for the next session.
The committee believed reflection to be an essential part of the learning process for students. For one, it provided teachers with a way of understanding what students had done, andwhat meaning they had drawn from their study. More importantly, however, reflection wasseen as a way of students developing their metacognitive awareness of what they were doing
and why, “a bridge between practical experience and theoretical conceptualisation” (Kohonen,
2007, p. 1).
Reflection questions aimed to provoke thought on the following aspects of the decision-making process, and were drawn from Nunan’s (1997) framework proposing levels of
encouraging learner autonomy through classroom materials:
ʶAwareness: were students aware of the skills they practised in the activity they selected?

ʶInvolvement: were students aware of the positive and negative aspects of the activity,with relation to their own goals?

ʶIntervention: were students able to modify their choice of activities, or the details of
those activities?

Students were given teacher feedback on their written reflections, which formed the basisof discussion at two individual consultations held during the semester.

Research Methods
While the materials described above were made available to teachers of the entire first-year
cohort, the present research was conducted in one class, taught by the author. There were 19
students in the class, of whom three were male. Unfortunately, it has not thus far been possi-

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ble to repeat the study on a larger scale, but I hope that the qualitative data collected provides
insights into how the process appeared to students, how they made their decisions, and at
what points they encountered challenges in the selection, study and reflection process.

Research Questions Were as Follows:
RQ1: Does experience of choosing and conducting language learning activities in class, andreflecting on those activities, affect student motivation?
RQ2: Does experience of choosing and conducting language learning activities in class, andreflecting on those activities, affect student awareness of metacognitive aspects oflearning?
RQ3: Does experience of choosing and conducting language learning activities in class, andreflecting on those activities, make students more able to study outside the classroom?
A questionnaire on attitude and agency (based on Williams, Burden & Lanvers, 2002) was
administered before and after the project. The questionnaire, included in Appendix 1, was entitled “English Language Learning Questionnaire”, and consisted of 32 questions drawn fromthe 16 areas identified by Williams, Burden and Lanvers (2002) in their research into student
perceptions about learning foreign languages. All items and instructions were provided bilingually. This questionnaire was chosen to capture a wide range of possible factors affecting
student motivations and beliefs, in particular:ʶStudents’ attitudes toward English

ʶStudents’ perceptions of their own ability in English

ʶStudents’ perceived control over the learning process (sense of agency)ʶStudents’ perceptions of the role of external influences on their learning

Williams, Burden and Lanvers (2002) further subdivide these categories into subcategories,
as set out below.
Table 1. Questionnaire Items and Focus Categories
Category

FactorSample questionnaire item

Aspects ofAttitude

Liking, enjoyment,interest

I enjoy English lessons

DesireI want to learn to speak English wellNeed, importance

It will be important for me to know English in the
future.

Integrative orientation

I’d like to meet English-speaking people

Intrinsic motivation

I’d want to learn English even if I didn’t have to

Perceived success,Competence

I am confident I can achieve my English learning
goals

Perceived ability

I think I’m good at English

Aspects of
Identity

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Category

FactorSample questionnaire item

Feelings ofAgencyEffortI work hard at English

Result of effort,
Learned helplessness

I believe that anything can be achieved, if I work
hard enoughInternal locus (responsibility)

Doing well in English is up to me

Awareness of strategies I know which things I need to study to improve myEnglishExternalfactors

Metacognitive awareness

When I get good marks in English I usually know
why

Metacognitive strategies

I try to set myself goals when I study English

Teacher

My teacher is helpful to me in learning English

Parents

My parents encourage me to study English

The group

The students in our English class work together as agroup

Students were asked to rate their agreement with each item on a 5-point Likert scale, with
“5” signifying that the statement was “very true for me”, and “1” signifying “not at all true
for me”
At the end of the project, selected students were invited for recorded interviews about theindependent study project as a whole, focussing on the process of selecting activities, understanding how to do them, reflecting, and their perceived ability to study without a teacher.
There were limitations with the research methods used, beginning with the small numberof participants. Questionnaires were administered only twice, and therefore could not capture the daily fluctuations that can accompany student motivation. The numbers derived fromthe questionnaires are self-reported, and each student may have a different understanding of
how the concepts relate to them. Further, and perhaps most crucially for a qualitative study,
student interviews were reliant on students’ ability to express themselves in their L2, although this was not part of the research design.
I am a proficient speaker of Japanese as L2, and provided all items relating to researchbilingually. I also explained the project in Japanese in class, and encouraged students to use
Japanese where they were unable to express themselves in English. Nevertheless, students’
recourse to their L1, Japanese, was vanishingly rare, and usually concerned individual words.
On the one occasion where a student made a sustained utterance in Japanese during the project, it did suggest a level of metacognition beyond what the student could express in English.
Having worked in other contexts where Japanese students are more willing to communicate
in their L1 than in English, I can only speculate that this stemmed from the university’s strict“English-only policy”, which I regularly reminded students of during class time. Students
clearly saw the independent study project as part of the ethos of “learning English by usingit” rather than as a time to consider the process of learning from a metacognitive perspective, using L1 as one tool to do so. When questioned about this in interviews, students defended their use of English, citing as reasons that English use provoked thought, engendered
teamwork, improved their skills, and that it was the target language of our classroom and, in
regular classroom interactions, verbally encouraged by the teacher.

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This is one way in which my dual role as teacher and researcher may have impacted theresearch process. I am also aware that as the students’ class teacher, there were times where I
became frustrated with students whose conceptions—of effective study habits, desired behaviours and interpretations of skills studied—did not always match my own. On the positiveside, however, this dual role forced me to reflect on my own beliefs about effective language
learning, and in many cases to revise them.

Results
Questionnaire
A mean score was calculated for all students for each item (5 indicates strong agreement, 1
indicates strong disagreement). Items were combined into the four motivational strands discussed earlier, and negatively coded items converted into positive items, giving the following
results:
Table 2. Four Motivational Strands at the Beginning and End of the Semester
Beginning of semester

End of semester

Attitude

4.63

4.65

Identity

2.87

2.79

Agency2.93

3.43

External

3.86

3.97

Student attitude towards English was consistently positive with little change on any item,
perhaps to be expected of students selecting English as their major at a foreign languages
university. Nonetheless, this was an interesting finding, as students did not always appear tobe especially motivated. The slight rise in score can mostly be accounted for by a rise in item
17, “I enjoy English lessons”, and in item 6, “It will be important for me to know English in
the future”. Returning to our research questions, the intervention appears to have had no discernible effect on student motivation (RQ1).
Student identity, or belief in their own competence or ability, was substantially lower, andagain showed little change. In terms of perceived competence, students had greater belief intheir ability to succeed in class (item 28: a score of 3.8 once positively coded) than confidence
that they could succeed in their learning goals, and their belief in their ability to achieve thosegoals actually fell over the course of the study (item 3: from 3.1 to 2.8). In terms of perceived
ability, the lowest scores were due to strong agreement with item 15, “My English is not as
good as I want it to be”. As this item also contains a future desire to be better at English, it
may be this aspect that students are responding to.
All items targeting the role of external factors rose, whether positively or negatively scored,
resulting in a slightly increased overall total. This may indicate that student beliefs regarding
the role of others in their learning became more strongly held.
The most significant change in student beliefs was in their sense of agency, where the following results were observed. These are the mean scores, with negative items unadjusted;a high score indicates agreement with the statement. Positively coded items are marked +,negatively coded items are marked “-”.

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Table 3. Items Relating to Agency

Sub-sections relating to agency

Pre-semester

Post-semester

Agency: Effort
7+

I work hard at English

3.94

3.89

29-

I could study harder if I wanted to

4.5

4.67

Agency: Result of Effort
8+

I believe that anything can be achieved, if
I work hard enough

4.17

4.28

14-

However hard I try, I’ll never do well in
English

1.72

1.39

Agency: Responsibility
2+

Doing well in English is up to me

4.72

4.67

20-

I cannot study effectively on my own

3.5

3.5

Agency: Awareness of Strategies
30+

I know which things I need to study to improve my English

2.72

3.06

25+

If I do badly at English, I usually know how to
do better next time

2.72

3.28

Agency: Metacognitive awareness
12+

When I get good marks in English I usually know why

2.83

3.06

10-

I don’t know which ways to study English
work best for me

3.83

3.72

Agency: Metacognitive strategies
18+

I try to set myself goals when I study English

4.06

3.83

23-

I don’t often measure my English study
progress

1.61

1.5

The largest changes can be seen in student awareness of learning strategies and the learning process, suggesting that the intervention may have had a positive effect on student
awareness of metacognitive aspects of learning, our second research question (RQ2). However, it is worth revisiting Cohen’s definition of learning strategies as “thoughts and actions
consciously chosen and operationalized by language learners, to assist them in carrying out amultiplicity of tasks...” (2012, p. 136), as students gave little self-reported evidence that they
were consciously using strategies, either in their reflections or their interviews.
This may be a function of the difficulty of self-reporting in students’ second language, or
it may suggest that, rather than becoming aware of strategies, students had become morefamiliar with the nature and expectations of their new learning context. The questionnaire
items could perhaps be better worded to precisely target strategy use, although this would be
hard to do unless students were familiar with relevant metalanguage. A greater confidence

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in how to do well is reflected in the rise in item 12, and the fall in item 14, but as discussed
above, items relating to students’ identity as competent learners did not rise.
The third research question focussed on whether students would be more able to study
outside the classroom as a result of the intervention (RQ3). In spite of the overall rise inmeasures of agency, item 20 (“I cannot study effectively on my own”) showed no change,
remaining relatively high with a 3.5 agreement rate. Another item that was expected to rise
was 18, “I set myself goals when I study English”, but this in fact fell from 4.06 to 3.83. Before conducting interviews, I had speculated the intervention might have made students more
attuned to the wide range of possibilities, and hence potential difficulties, involved in setting
goals. However, interviews offered a different perspective, namely that students valued thefreedom to choose without the narrow focus of a goal.

Student Interviews
Five students were interviewed, for 20 to 30 minutes each. Interviewees were chosen at random from those who had completed the majority of independent study sessions and reflections and had sufficient communicative ability to carry out the interviews in their L2, English,
since students had proved unwilling to use Japanese in consultations.
The aim of the interviews was to shed light on how students experienced the process of
selecting, trying and reflecting on activities, with a view to understanding the value of the
independent study course component and revising the materials for future implementation.
I also hoped to shed further light on the rise in student agency (RQ2), and students’ feelings
about their ability to study independently (RQ3).

Awareness: Selecting Activities
Question 1: How did you feel about choosing the activities? Why did you choose each activity?
Four of the five students interviewed said that choosing activities was difficult (the fifth
failed to understand the question). This difficulty was borne out by teacher observation: students frequently took upwards of 20 minutes to choose an activity, and initially needed encouragement to actually make a choice, rather than simply starting work on the first activity
listed. All four students explained this by saying that they wanted to try a number of activities, with the sense that choosing one meant missing out on others. Student B went further
and saidFirst I want to do… all kinds of activity so I don’t think which activity is important for me… I don’tknow what activity is doing, maybe all of these is very important but I want to brush up my skill,all, so I’m difficult to choose…
Three students of the five identified specific skills they had wanted to improve, and activities that they had chosen to practice these skills. Students sometimes demonstrated a different understanding of skills practiced to that of the teacher (student E: “I choosed shadowing
because I want to improve listening skills”). Although I initially interpreted this as a failurein student capacity to effectively manage their own learning, over time I came to see that students were actively engaged in making sense of the affordances available to them.
Three students chose activities because they were “fun”, while student A identified the following criteria:
Which is easy to me. And many other students want to do activity.

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This bears out classroom observation that students tended to negotiate choices with their
existing friendship groups, rather than gathering a group of students who wanted to choose agiven activity.

Awareness: Understanding and Describing Study Activities
Question 2: Was it easy to understand the instructions? Was it easy to explain what you did in your reflection?
Of five students interviewed, two said that understanding instructions was difficult, andtwo that the difficulty depended on the activity. The fifth student did not directly answer thequestion. Student C stated that group members had helped her to understand the activity.
Once the instructions had been understood, however, four of five students felt that it waseasy to explain. Student A stated that it was “easy. I wrote only verbs that I did.”Indeed, many students essentially copied down the instructions in their reflections, whichperhaps could be rectified by introducing activities in a different form, such as whole classdemonstration. However, one student stated that explaining was difficult, because “any activity had very detail 1234, so I… it’s difficult to write in detail” (Student D).
These findings suggest that students find approaching learning activities through L2 instructions alone to be quite challenging, and benefit from the presence of a teacher or peers
who can explain the activity to them. This clearly has implications for our third researchquestion, suggesting that many students would struggle to understand and carry out new
study activities unsupported outside the classroom, but that they may benefit from teacher
and peer support when trying out activities for the first time.

Intervention: Modifying Activities
Question 3: Did you change any of the activities at all? If yes, how? If no, did you want to change them?
This question proved extremely difficult for students to answer, which was expected basedon student reflections. Initially, four students misunderstood the question to mean “Did you
try different activities from week to week?”, rather than “Did you modify the instructions of
the activities themselves?” Once clarified, all five students asserted that they had not changed
the activities that they did in any way. In fact, they seemed upset that their teacher would
ask them such a question, perhaps suggesting that they saw activities as fixed entities between which they could choose, or that they did not want to change something suggested byan authority figure, their teacher. This came despite repeated assurances, in both spoken andwritten feedback, that modification was both appropriate and desirable.
When pushed, all five were able to identify some negative points with the activities thatthey did—primarily that they were boring, too long, or too short. Student D ventured...when I did Word Map, I’m confused choose word so if there are box, in the box, for example tenwords, we can choose from this box
Rather than modifying the activity, she was suggesting a way in which the teacher could
improve the activity by providing suggested words. In fact, she was suggesting that theteacher reduce an element of learner autonomy in the classroom by providing more scaffolding.
Student C gave one interesting criticism:
Taboo... it is too fun to study in English. We say only word... only word. We couldn’t say sentence.

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In fact, “too fun” had been a theme in student reflections, with other students using phrases like “we enjoyed too much” to think about grammar, and also “it’s too fun to look aroundus”, which turned out to mean that students in the group had been too noisy while playing
and had not realized that they were disturbing others.
Before writing reflections, students were encouraged to share their feelings about activities with their group. In this process, certain interpretations of what constituted positive andnegative study behaviour seemed to become fixed, creating a kind of informal class code of
conduct. While I initially found such comments to be contrary to the spirit of communicative
learning activities, it became clear that students wanted to use the time given to communicate
deeply and accurately, while respecting the learning of others.
Question 4: How did you feel about reflecting?
This was intended as a more general question to elicit student comment on the process ofreflecting on what they had studied. In terms of the usefulness of reflections, one student feltthat they constituted a useful record of what he had studied:
if we didn’t reflecting, I also forgot activities, what activities I decide or I doing. (B)Three students said that they had found reflection difficult, focussing especially on the difficulty of identifying negative points of the activities that they tried, and on identifying what
they wanted to study next time. Teacher observation bore out the fact that answers to the final two reflection questions, on negative aspects of the activities and what to study next time,
were harder for students to complete, and answers were often short or vague. If students hadenjoyed an activity, they frequently answered that it had no downsides.
The curriculum committee had hoped that reflections would have a future-oriented effect,with students using the positive and negative points of the activities to identify their next
focus for study. In reality, however, most students answered the final question either with “Iwant to do this activity again” or “I want to do something different”, depending on how positive their assessment of the activity had been. One student did mention that “By writing thisportfolio I could... next I want to do. Is good point.” (C)However, this assessment seemed to have little impact on what students actually chose to
do in subsequent sessions, including student C. This may have been partly because students
tended to choose from the new activities introduced each session, or to choose what theirfriends were choosing. There were instances, especially towards the end of the semester,where students chose to revisit an activity from a previous session, but it was less common
for students to identify a different skill that they wanted to study. There was no evidence thatstudents used the perceived negative aspects of an activity to decide their next study target.
Since these two questions target things that students have not yet actually done, they are
somewhat more abstract than the foregoing questions. If reflection is “a bridge between
practical experience and theoretical conceptualisation” (Kohonen, 2007, p. 1), we can speculate that most students in this project had yet to conceptualise of language study as a systemof possibilities and needs beyond the activity they were reflecting on. They were aware ofwhat they had done and what they had learned but were less able or willing to relate this to adefined target or goal.
One student articulated a degree of resistance to any goal-setting structure being imposedon the task, which was particularly interesting as the previous year’s project had explicitly
involved setting goals and identifying activities which would target the chosen skill. When
discussing the connection between the final reflection question and the subsequent choice ofactivity, student B stated that . . .
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Classroom-Based Independent Study and Learner Identity

Reflecting, I want to choose same, but next time I change my mind. I think we have… if I have acorrectly goal I have to choose the activity to lead to the goal but if I haven’t goal I choose everything I think.
When I asked “is having a goal important for you?” student B clarified his position:
I don’t. I think we are doing a lot of activities and find own goal is better.
This position, taken in combination with students’ desires to experience all possible activities articulated in response to question 1, may go some way to explaining the decreasein students reporting that they set themselves goals in the post-study questionnaire (item
18—see Table 3). This was somewhat of an outlier within items measuring agency, and was
initially interpreted as disappointing given that the course materials arose with the aim ofsupporting students to set study goals. However, for students who may have little experienceof decision-making in their learning, it is valid to want to build experience before developing
metacognitive strategies such as goal-setting and self-evaluation, which are the only metacognitive strategies considered in the questionnaire.
Question 5: Do you feel able to study effectively without a teacher (for example over the summer vacation)?
This question was initially conceived as a measure of the success of the project, and a direct
response to the third research question. If students said yes, it was felt, the project had succeeded in creating independent learners. Seen in this light, the results are less than positive.
Three of five students felt that it was difficult to study at home, citing reasons such as thelack of a teacher to motivate them, and the fact that they do not speak English at home.
Having teacher we should study I think, we have to study, but without teacher if I doing otherthing there is no teacher so I can do anything (B)
No! In summer vacation I... maybe I don’t speak English in home. Family home. (C)Other students felt that the different context afforded different types of study:
Case by case. I can’t study same things in class, but I can study easy things, for example listening
to music, Western music, and I can learn grammar” (D)One student was confident that she could study without a teacher, although that did include
completing homework assigned by a teacher:
I will do Next Stage textbook homework and I’m able to learn grammar and vocabulary alone,
so I feel able to study effectively without a teacher (A)Interestingly, while student B felt that there were things he was able to do without a teacher, these did not really qualify as “study”:
B: I think… I want to study but real is I think I go to SALC [Self Access Learning Centre] andwatching movie or reading books or comics, and don’t study English.
Teacher: Isn’t that study?
B: Read books in English… if I know the book’s or tale’s story, I think I don’t have to read all
through the difficult words, so it is not study. I would just read, not check words. I want to enjoy.
As with the issue of “too much fun”, this was a conception of “study” that differed frommy own as a teacher, and my instinct was to challenge it. Nevertheless, students were correct

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Caroline Hutchinson

in identifying that their home environment did not offer the same affordances as the classroom, especially considering the social nature of the independent study workshops.

Conclusions
Considered in terms of the three research questions, the results of the study were mixed.
Student motivation did not change, although this may have been due to the fact that it began
relatively high. Measures of student agency rose, suggesting that students felt more empowered to take control of their learning, but both questionnaire data and students’ interviewssuggest that this did not translate directly into student confidence in their ability to study
alone. Perhaps, however, this reflects a misconception that learner autonomy necessarily
entails articulating goals and following solo study plans, and that it can be measured by theextent to which students engage in such behaviours.
In terms of socialising students to the skills and expectations accompanying study at Kanda
University, I believe that the intervention was effective. Students’ belief in their own agency—especially in terms of their awareness of how to learn, and the learning process—hadrisen significantly, and this was mirrored by the increasing depth of student reflections.
While it is impossible to isolate the five cycles of the project from the other things happeningaround students in their first semester at university, most students had developed significantly in their ability to select, negotiate, carry out and reflect on learning activities in English. These abilities continued to develop in the second semester of the year, when activities
expanded to include those available to students outside the classroom, which were usuallycompleted in pairs or groups.
By bringing study activities into the classroom and allowing students to choose activities
without first specifying goals, the “independent study” sessions became more social than in
the previous year’s goal-focussed project, which most students completed individually due tothe difficulty of finding time to study together outside class. Not all activities on offer weregroup ones, but group activities were much more popular, and individual activities were overwhelmingly completed collaboratively. Students tended to choose activities with class friends,
but would also share information about activities and negotiate participation in them. Over
time a set of rules emerged that defined effective participation and could be termed a nascent“community of practice” (Wenger, 1998).
Removing the strict focus of setting goals allowed students to experiment more widely.
First-year university students in Japan have typically had little exposure to independent or
self-directed learning activities, and little opportunity to make their own meaning of those
activities. Student interviews supported classroom observation that selecting and understanding how to do the activities on offer represented a significant challenge to students. Likewise,
students were better able to express what they had done and what they had learned—concrete
aspects arising from experience—than abstract aspects such as what they had not done, how
they could improve an activity, and what, ideally, they would like to do in the future.
Working from example activity through reflection to understanding is likely to be moreaccessible to these students than travelling the other way. Exercising the autonomy to makechoices in learning may, as Ushioda (2011) suggests, be an important first step in increasing motivation, engagement and responsibility, and therefore in developing the capacity for
self-directed learning. This may assist students in developing an identity as competent university students who are responsible for their own learning, forming the basis of their further
development as learners, and in time enabling them to set meaningful future targets on thebasis of experience and reflection.

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Classroom-Based Independent Study and Learner Identity

References
Bandura, A. (2000). Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 9(3), 75-78.
Brophy, J. (2009). Connecting with the big picture. Educational Psychologist 44(2), 147-157.
Cohen, A. D. (2012). Strategies: The interface of styles, strategies, and motivation on tasks. In
S. Mercer, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.), Psychology for language learning: Research, theory,and pedagogy (pp. 136-150). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dam, L. (1995). Learner autonomy 3: From theory to classroom practice. Dublin, Ireland: Authentik.
Elliot, E. J., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Competence and motivation: Competence as the core ofachievement motivation. In A. J. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.), Handbook of competence andmotivation (pp. 3-14). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Gao, X. (2010). Strategic language learning: The roles of agency and context. Bristol, UK:
Multilingual Matters.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and foreign language learning. Oxford, UK: Pergamon.
Hutchinson, C. (2014). Redesigning an independent learning course component: Recognizing
the role of instructor as guide. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(4), 389-393.
Kohonen, V. (2007). Learning to learn through reflection: An experiential learningperspective. Retrieved from http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/Elp_tt/Results/DM_
layout/00_10/05/Supplementary%20text%20E.pdf.
Little, D. (1991). Learner autonomy: Definitions, issues and problems. Dublin, Ireland: Authentic.
Nunan, D. (1997). Designing and adapting materials to encourage learner autonomy. In P.
Benson & P. Voller (Eds.), Autonomy and independence in language learning (pp. 192-203).
London, UK: Longman.
Richards, K. (2006). Being the teacher: Identity and classroom conversation. Applied
Linguistics, 27(1), 51-77, DOI: 10.1093/applin/ami041
Ushioda, E. (2011). Why autonomy? Insights from motivation theory and research, Innovationin Language Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 221-232, DOI: 10.1080/17501229.2011.577536
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Williams, M., Burden, R., & Lanvers, U. (2002). “French Is the Language of Love and Stuff’”:Student perceptions of issues related to motivation in learning a foreign language. British
Educational Research Journal, 28(4), 503-528.
Williams, M., Mercer, S., & Ryan, S. (2015). Exploring psychology in language teaching andlearning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Van Lier, L. (2008). Agency in the classroom. In J. P. Lantolf & M. E. Poehner (Eds.),
Sociocultural theory and the teaching of second languages (pp. 163-186). London, UK: Equinox.

Review ProcessThis paper was blind peer-reviewed by members of the Learner Development Journal Review
Network. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

Author Bio
Caroline Hutchinson is an assistant professor at Nihon University College of Economics, Japan. She
has also taught in Hungary, Vietnam, and at Kanda University of International Studies, Japan,
where the present research was conducted. Her research interests include motivation and learnerautonomy, CLIL and Japanese history. She can be contacted at hutchinson.caroline@nihon-u.ac.jp.

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Caroline Hutchinson

Appendix
English Learning Motivation Questionnaire
英語学習に対するモチベーションについてのアンケート
The following questions ask about your motivation for and attitudes about learning English.
Remember there are no right or wrong answers, so please just answer as accurately as possible.
これはあなたの英語学習に対する姿勢やモチベーションを問うアンケートです。これには正解も不正解もありません。あなたの率直な気持ちを答えてください。

Use the scale below to answer the questions. If you think the statement is very true of you,circle 5; if a statement is not at all true of you, circle 1. If the statement is more or less true ofyou, find the number between 1 and 5 that best describes you.
各質問事項に5段階で回答してください。各問があなたに当てはまっていれば「５」に丸を、全く当てはまらなければ「１」に丸をつけてください。どちらでもなければ、
「１」
から
「５」
の中で1番自分に当てはまる数字を選んでください。

1. Most language learning can be done without a teacher

Not at all true

Very true

語学学習に教師は不要だ。

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

14

2. Doing well in English is up to me
自分次第で英語は上達する。

3. I don’t usually do well in English lessons
英語の授業は苦手だ。

4. I think I’m good at English
英語は得意だと思う。

5. I prefer to study English on my own, rather than in groups
グループワークより自分一人で英語を学ぶ方が好きだ。

6. It will be important for me to know English in the future
英語の知識は将来自分にとって重要になる。

7. I work hard at English
真面目に英語学習に取り組んでいる。

8. I believe that anything can be achieved, if I work hardenough2

3

5

一生懸命頑張ればどんなことでも達成できる。

9. I don’t mind if I’m not a fluent English speaker at the endof my degree

Not at all true

Very true

1

4

2

3

5

卒業時までに英語を流暢に話せるようにならなくても別に気にならない。

10. I don’t know which ways to study English work best forme

Not at all true

Very true

1

4

2

3

5

どの英語学習法が自分に一番合っているかわからない。

11. I don’t learn English for my own enjoyment

Not at all true

Very true

楽しんで英語を学んでいない。

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

13. I want to learn to speak English well

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

英語をうまく話せるように学びたい。

1

4

12. When I get good marks in English I usually know why
英語の成績がいいと、おおよそなぜだか理由がわかる。

2

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Classroom-Based Independent Study and Learner Identity

14. However hard I try, I’ll never do well in English

Not at all true

Very true

どんなに頑張っても英語をうまく話せるようにはならない。

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1

4

15. My English is not as good as I want it to be
自分が望むほど英語は上手くない。

16. I’d want to learn English even if I didn’t have to
必須科目でなくても英語は学びたい。

17. I enjoy English lessons
英語の授業は楽しい。

18. I try to set myself goals when I study English
目的意識を持って英語を学習している。

19. I’d like to meet English-speaking people
英語を話す人と知り合いたい。

20. I cannot study effectively on my own
独学では効率よく勉強できない。

21. My parents encourage me to study English
両親が英語学習を勧める。

22. English will not be an important factor in getting a job
就職に英語は重要項目ではない。

23. I don’t often measure my English study progress
自分の英語レベルの上達の有無にはあまりこだわらない。

24. English lessons are not interesting for me
英語の授業には興味がない。

25. If I do badly at English, I usually know how to do better
next time2

3

5

英語の成績が悪い時、次はどうすればよくなるかわかる。

26. My family are not interested in my English study

Not at all true

Very true

家族は私の英語学習に無関心だ。

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1

4

27. I have no interest in getting to know English native
speakers

2

3

5

ネイティブスピーカーと知り合うことに興味がない。

28. I am confident I can achieve my English learning goals

Not at all true

Very true

英語学習における自己目標を達成する自信がある。

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1
2
3
Not at all true

4
5
Very true

1

4

29. I could study harder if I wanted to
やる気さえあれば、一生懸命勉強できる。

30. I know which things I need to study to improve my English
何を勉強すれば自分の英語を上達させることができるのか知っている。

31. My teacher is helpful to me in learning English
教員は私の英語学習に協力的だ。

32. The students in our English class work together as agroup
このクラスの生徒はグループワークにおいて協調性がある。

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3

5