Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Visualising Learner
Development
Table of Contents
Visualising Learner Development: An Introduction . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 2Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University
Darren Elliott, Nanzan University
One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2
University Classroom. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 7Tanya McCarthy, Kyushu Institute of Technology
The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection . .  .  .  .  .  .  . 25
Mathew Porter, Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Nursing University
Scott Hilton, Kure Miyahara High School
Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

44

Luciano Mariani, Freelance, Milan, Italy
Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-Directed Language
Learning . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 62
Mayumi Abe, Waseda University
Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 78
Yoshifumi Fukada, Meisei University
Tetsuya Fukuda, International Christian University
Joseph Falout, Nihon University
Tim Murphey, Kanda University of International Studies
Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling. .  .  .  . 94
Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson, University of Helsinki Language Centre
Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on Visualizing Learner Development. .  .  .  .  .  .  . 114
Alice Chik, Macquarie University

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 20171

INTRODUCTION
Visualising Learner Development:
An Introduction
Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University
Darren Elliott, Nanzan UniversityWe began editing this first issue of the journal with a shared interest in metaphors forlearning. Darren locates his interest in his current research focusing on learners’
metaphors for learning, and ways in which learners’ metaphors connect to autonomous actions and beliefs. He writes, “… when this theme was suggested I saw an instantconnection. Of course, metaphor is just one way of “visualizing.” I wanted to see how otherteacher-researchers in different contexts interpreted the theme. I am really happy with thediverse range of ideas and voices we will be presenting in the first issue.”
Hugh connects the theme of visualising learner development to his awareness of learning
environments as new worlds that he needs to imagine fully in order to navigate and understand them. He recalls, “I am remembering first my work with elementary school children
who lived in the neighborhood of the church my family attended in Washington, D. C. in the
1960s. We had moved to D. C. from rural Maine, so acting as a reading and writing tutor (as ajunior high school student myself) with mostly 8 to 10-year-old African American boys constituted a challenging and engaging introduction to the complexity of the world. My second
shaping experience began just after I graduated from high school, when I started training tobecome a mountaineering instructor. Those experiences took me back to the woods of myearly childhood, but also triggered efforts on my part to link the physical, conceptual, andleadership challenges of working in outdoor education to ideas of an intuitive sense that mynatural way of framing learning and teaching questions is essentially kinaesthetic. Having
later become a professor of American literature and cultural history, I see all of the key issues
in learner development as part of a great interdisciplinary continuum, where, just as for Darren too, the centrality of metaphor is fundamental to the journeys we undertake as learners
and as teachers.”
From these shared perspectives, as we worked with the teacher-researchers whose work iscollected here, we became increasingly aware of the complexity of the puzzles we all face intrying to share our understandings of autonomy. For some writer-researchers, for example,
the importance of metaphor may be thought of as a way to represent abstract concepts, while
for others metaphor may entail more concrete images. In other cases, narratives combinedwith images—such as The Language Learning Tree in Porter and Hilton’s paper (in this issue),or in the free drawing learner self-portraits Alice Chik has used with Hong Kong learnersof English—provide the basis for reflection and feedback, in which learning and language
learning selves are transformed into artifacts for reflection and dialog on learning practiceand learner identity. This is the same process (and struggle) we enter into as researchers andwriters, as we build bridges between our teaching worlds and our professional communities ofpractice as academics and/or administrators of language learning programs.

2

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

Our views have been shaped by our individual experiences of learning, researching, teaching, and writing and by the communities to which we belong—especially the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Learner Development SIG, and sister communities ofteachers and researchers around the world who endeavour to understand and promote holistic
learning. In seeking to encourage curiosity and empathy with communities of learners andteachers, we unashamedly align ourselves with the principles of Exploratory Practice (EP) andother models for participatory research and practice. We thus face many of the same dilemmas that Judith Hanks (2017, p. 1) identifies when she states that “it has become axiomaticthat research into classroom language learning and teaching should be participatory, egalitarian, and empowering.” How to reach those aims remains open to lively discussion, as Hanks
also notes. This led us to several recurrent puzzles that we asked the authors and ourselves tocontemplate as we worked on the papers in this issue:ʶʶIn what way does visualising learner development advance the principles that learningand teaching should be “participatory, egalitarian and empowering”?

ʶʶHow, in turn, does this mesh with what we perceive as our institutional responsibilities(i.e., to adhere to a curriculum and to assess learners)?

ʶʶHow can we envision our institutional constraints differently, thus transforming theminto affordances for learning and research?

ʶʶHow can we picture identities, our learners’ and our own, differently? Similarly, how
can we learn to see our research field otherwise and make connections with neighbouring disciplines and ways of knowing?

ʶʶ

ABeAnd, importantly in the inaugural issue of a journal seeking to promote exploratory
practices in research and writing, how can we visualise the writing of research in newand engaging ways?

Using metaphor, narrative, and visualization innovatively, the contributors to the first issueof The Learner Development Journal each try different ways to make the invisible aspects oflearner development (more) visible. Four of the papers were written by Japan-based individuals or author teams. It is our pleasure too to share papers from the Italian teacher/researcher Luciano Mariani and a pair of language counsellors working together at the University of
Helsinki, Fergal Bradley and Leena Karlsson. We are also delighted to include a final reflective
commentary from Alice Chik, who, looking back over the whole issue, draws our attention to
the issue’s fundamental thematic puzzle: “… how do we explore different ways for learners
and their development to be seen?” Using visualisation of identity and learning, Alice’s research has grown out of her studies of children in Hong Kong who deepened their interest in
English outside of school. The research featured in this issue, however, comes from puzzles
that arise in school and university classrooms, which brings us to how learners and teachers
within different institutional settings may conceptualise learning and autonomy, and visualise learner development.
In the first paper, “One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of ‘Independent-Mindedness’ in the L2 University Classroom,” Tanya McCarthy reports on her use of an Independent
Learning Scale (ILS), adapted from Toyota’s Kanban Board Technique (KBT), to help her students visualise their “thoughts and feelings” about learner autonomy and their independent
learning abilities. McCarthy notes that autonomous learning, viewed as essential for learnerengagement and achievement is being assessed in relation to Japan’s Ministry of Education,
Sports, Science, Culture, and Technology’s (MEXT) policy of goal of increasing “indepenLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 20173

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

dent minded learning.” Interestingly, the MEXT policy documents link “independent-minded learning by individuals” to the achievement of greater “independence, collaboration andcreativity” in Japanese institutions and in society as a whole. Universities, McCarthy observes
drily, “have tried to adopt new measures in the L2 classroom...with mixed results.” Our familiarity with Japanese university settings, and the pressure to adhere to MEXT guidelines
elicited a nodding empathy on our parts, and a strong measure of respect for McCarthy’s efforts to research with her students, rather than on them.
The second article, by Mathew Porter and Scott Hilton, explores the use of a visual metaphor, The Language Learning Tree, to help students—at a Faculty of Nursing and a high school
respectively—reflect on their language learning goals, practices, and attitudes, in two different institutional settings. Their paper discusses the challenges and discoveries the teacher/researchers made with their respective groups of students, and also provides readers with anarrative of collaborative professional development across institutional boundaries, the benefits of which Porter notes towards the end of their paper with this observation: “Although it iseasy to see how learning a complex system such as language can be represented by a growing
tree, discussing how the tree could be used to introduce a growth mindset added a new dimension to my understanding of the metaphor.”
Then Luciano Mariani’s “Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language
Learning” reports on a survey conducted with Italian secondary school students studying avariety of foreign languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. Mariani is particularlyinterested in what students mean by “knowing a foreign language” and how they see, i.e.,
what they understand as the processes, the how-to(s) of learning a foreign language in theirschool (institutional) settings. Participants were asked to visualise their learning through theuse of metaphors, in their L1, Italian. Mariani uses this analysis to identify key metaphorsthat leaners use to represent their language learning experience—and to uncover what he defines as “aspects of the ‘hidden curriculum’”—students’ attitudes and beliefs about language
learning and how those beliefs affect learning outcomes.
In the fourth article, Mayumi Abe’s “Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in
Self-Directed Language Learning” returns us to Japan and reports on a case study conductedwith two students enrolled in a Self-Directed Learning course Abe teaches. Her goal is to help
learners develop a greater metacognitive awareness of their learning practices in an effort tohelp them more effectively plan and reflect on their learning goals. Her work also highlights
the inevitable tensions teachers and learning advisors will struggle with as they formulate
and reflect upon their efforts to help their students acquire more expertise in taking controlof their own learning, or, in becoming more successful, more effective in defining and meeting their next language learning goals.
Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, and Tim Murphey—although based at
different Tokyo-area universities—research and write as a collaborative team. Their paper,“Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others,” takes a multi-faceted approach to “collaborative, self-reflective research” in working and researching with students imagining idealclassmates and themselves as more collaborative possible L2 selves. Their collaborative arrangement has allowed them to explore inter-institutional peer feedback systems, giving
them a learning experience that in some ways parallels those of their students. They explore
these interconnections through reflective discussions and shared narratives of their classroom
lives as teachers and researchers.
Our sixth research paper, by Fergal Bradley and Leena Karlsson, returns us to two key
themes introduced in previous papers—learner metacognitive awareness, i.e., “learning how

4

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

to learn,” and learner advising as a mode of helping learners to plan and evaluate their own
learning. Bradley and Karlsson describe their learner advising work (language counselling) as aparallel journey, in which their conceptualization of their counsellor selves is the counterpart
to the work they encourage their students to do as they conceptualize “learning and themselves as language learners.” One intriguing aspect of Leena and Fergal’s work is that while
the language is primarily conceptual and abstract, rather than explicitly visual, the metaphorsof learning, research, and writing as “journey” link the inherently emotional, intersubjective
experience of working and learning with others to the reconstruction of understandings inmore formal (academic) senses.
All of the papers collected here serve as touchstones: testimonies to an inescapable conclusion as we struggle yet again to re-construct the fundamental questions and tentative understandings at the heart of the learning-teaching relationship. They help us to remember that
we need to be reminded from time to time—especially when we are under the pressure ofcurricular requirements, course content, assessment rubrics, notions of language as a technical skill, grade and ranking systems, and so on—not to draw conclusions about our learners
without ensuring that they have been given the opportunities to fully tell their own stories.
And that also brings us to the story of how the two of us as editors visualised working—andworked—on this inaugural issue of The Learner Development Journal together. We tried to offer
writer-researcher-practitioners a chance to collaborate much more closely than they would
on a regular journal. We, therefore, worked fairly closely with the writers of each paper, andat various stages, each of the writers has read and commented on other papers submitted to
the first issue. A couple of the papers we received were almost complete, but have been rewritten after commentary from other writers. Some of the papers started off as research notesor proposals and have taken a lot more work to build into the final versions we are now publishing. We also looked to members of the journal’s Review Network who responded to later
iterations of each paper and gave yet more useful feedback. In the end, each paper was seen
by at least half a dozen people, all of whom have made astute observations, before completion.
Our aim was to develop papers, rather than accept or reject submission. The paper weworked on the most was one that came to us as a proposal rather than a piece of completed research. For various reasons, the research didn’t go entirely to plan... but the processof reworking the goals was really interesting. It is actually rare that research does work out
exactly as intended, of course. What was particularly interesting from an editorial perspective
was assisting the “writer-researcher-practitioners” in repositioning themselves within thedata they had, and discussing with them how they could come up with a paper quite different
from the one they had originally proposed. It has been a great pleasure for both of us to work
together with teachers who are committed to research writing that grows out of their exploration of the dynamics of the teaching-learning relationship as they have engaged with visualising learner development in quite different ways.
In the end, tantalizingly, the deeply puzzling and mysterious aspects of trying to visualize
learner development often seem as opaque and resistant as ever. Perhaps this comes with theterritory, given that efforts to answer questions about how people learn things and what any
of us can do to help are so difficult to resolve coherently. We therefore hope, in sharing thiscollection of writing in the inaugural issue of The Learner Development Journal, to inspire bothcontributors and readers to puzzle out new understandings of visualization in language learning and teaching for, by, and with both learners and teachers.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

5

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

References
Elliott, D., Nicoll, H., & Stewart, A. (2017, in press). An interview with the co-editors of
issue 1 of The Learner Development Journal, “Visualizing learner development.” Learning
Learning, 24(3).
Hanks, J. (2017) Exploratory practice in language teaching: Puzzling about principles and practices.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Editor bios
Darren Elliott (MA ELT, DELTA) has taught at universities in the United Kingdom and Japanand currently teaches at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. He has published and presented
internationally on learner autonomy, teacher development, and reflective practice, particularly guided by internet technologies. In his current research he is exploring connections between metaphor and learner beliefs.
Hugh Nicoll (American Studies, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, USA) retired as professor of English and American studies at Miyazaki Municipal University in March2015. He has been teaching in Japan since 1983 and been an active member of the Learner
Development SIG since 1994. He currently teaches at Miyazaki Municipal University, Miyazaki
International College, and the University of Miyazaki as a part-time lecturer, exploring, withhis students and like-minded friends and colleagues, academic literacies, learner autonomy,
and critical pedagogies in language education.

Acknowledgments
We would first like to thank the writers for their contributions, and also extend an especially big thank you to the members of the Learner Development Journal Review Network—Paul
Beaufait, Steve Brown, Paul Collett, Dexter Da Silva, Chika Hayashi, Ann Mayeda, FumikoMurase, Jo Mynard, Diane Nagatomo, Ted O’Neill, Colin Rundle, Akiko Takagi, and Katherine Thornton—and the members of our Learner Development SIG Translation Team—Chika
Hayashi, Tokiko Hori, Yoshio Nakai, and Koki Tomita. Additional thanks are due the membersof The Learner Development Journal Steering Group—Tim Ashwell, Andy Barfield, and Alison
Stewart—for their encouragement and support in helping us arrive at the end of a very long
journey indeed. And, finally, a big thanks to Malcolm Swanson for the invaluable skills hebrought to the layout and design stages of publishing this first issue of the journal.

6

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

RESEARCH PAPER
One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of“Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University
Classroom
Tanya McCarthy, Kyushu Institute of Technology
Over the past two decades, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Sports, Science, Culture and Technology (MEXT) has
proposed several action plans for curricular reform which state that upon graduation from tertiary institutions,students should be able to function effectively, in English, in an international setting. Each year, there has been an
increased emphasis on “independent-minded learning.” This study examines whether students, after one year of
tertiary education, could reflect on their current situation, visualize changes in their development, and consider
what it meant to be “independent minded” in their approach to learning. An Independent Learning Scale (ILS) was
introduced to students as a horizontal line drawn across the whiteboard, with the numbers one to five evenlyinterspaced along the line. The number one represented a learner dependent on teacher instruction, while thenumber five represented a proactive, independent learner. Students were asked to choose the number which best
represented their perception of themselves. Data showed students’ perceptions at each of the five levels. Interpretation of the findings suggests that learners were indeed capable of reflecting on learning, but felt they needed
training in how to learn in order to become more “independent-minded.”
過去20年にわたり、文部科学省は、高等教育課程修了段階で、学生が国際的な舞台や状況において英語で不自由なくコミュニケーションがとれるようになることを明言したカリキュラム改革に対するさまざまなアクションプランを策定してきた。その中で、年々、高等教育レベル
での「主体的な学び」の必要性が高まりを見せている。本研究では、高等教育を１年間受けた学生が、現況を省察し、自己成長過程における変化を視覚化し、自身の学習の「主体性」の意味に関して考察できるかを検証する。調査手法として「主体的学習指標（Independent
Learning Scale: ILS）
」を用いた。ホワイトボードに描かれた横線に１から５までの番号を等間隔に振り、１は教師の指示への依存を示
し、５は自発的、自律的な学習者であることを説明した後で、学生には学習者としての自己について最もよく当てはまる番号を選ばせた結果、回答は５段階のレベルそれぞれに分かれた。本研究結果より、学習者は学習を省察する能力を身につけているが、より主体的になるために学習方法のトレーニングが必要だと感じていることが示唆された。

Keywords
learner autonomy, visualization, reflection-on-learning, independent-mindedness, EFL

キーワード
学習者オートノミー、視覚化、学習の省察、主体性、外国語としての英語学習

Being an independent learner assumes a readiness to be proactive about one’s learningor as Holec (1981, p. 3) defines it, “the ability to take charge of one’s learning”. In an
English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, this idea of independence in the L2 classroom is considered to be beneficial in empowering learners by helping them to understandtheir stage of development, reflect on their capabilities, adopt strategies that would best suit
their specific skill-set and learning style, evaluate their progress, and visualize their future
selves based on their reflections. This is the kind of learning environment that many higher
education teachers strive to achieve; however, as is the case in many L2 situations, there are avariety of approaches to learning.
Learner Autonomy (LA), or the idea of becoming a self-reliant learner, has its roots inwestern cultures and is in many ways in direct conflict with the Asian concept of collectivism(Wu & Rubin, 2000). Studies around the world have shown that there is a definite relationship between the mainstream cultural practices in a particular society and to what extent LA
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 20177

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

is accepted as a part of institutional culture (see Palfreyman & Smith, 2003). After working for several years as a teacher in various secondary institutions in Japan, I found that theconcept of “taking charge of one’s learning” was largely non-existent at the secondary level,
due to teachers preparing students (typically using a grammar-translation methodology) forthe competitive university entrance exam tests rather than engaging learners in practices ofself-efficacy. Participants in this study also mentioned the lack of training in learning how tolearn while in high school. Students further reported that trying to cope with this new expectation of independent-mindedness in university was not only difficult in their language
learning classes, but also a challenge in their Math and Physics classes.
Over the past decade, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Sports, Science, Culture and Technology (MEXT) has proposed several action plans for curricular reform. With regard to English
education, MEXT (2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015) states that upon graduation from tertiary institutions, Japanese students should be able to function effectively, in English, in an international environment. Each year, there has been an increased emphasis on independent-mindedlearning. In MEXT’s 2015 Basic Plan for the Promotion of Education, they state:what is truly needed in Japan is independent-minded learning by individuals in orderto realize independence, collaboration and creativity. (MEXT, 2015)
As a result, institutions have been charged with adapting curricula to reflect MEXT guidelines. In order to facilitate this change, tertiary institutions have tried to adopt new measuresin the L2 classroom—but with mixed results.
The notion of being an independent learner has been around for decades, but it is still a novelidea within many Japanese institutions. I became interested in understanding this phenomenon
after changing jobs from an advising position in a private university to a teaching position at aprestigious national university in Japan. At the time, the university was undergoing extensive
curriculum reform which saw Learner Autonomy in the classroom as one of three main principles underpinning the new curriculum. The underlying philosophy was that students would
take ownership for their learning by making decisions about their study plans, plan their learning, monitor progress, and evaluate outcomes (Yasuda, 2015). Interviews with instructors at theinstitution post-curricular change found that, in particular, older instructors who had researchexperience and training in fields outside of TEFL methodology struggled somewhat with not
only the new concept of “independent learning,” but more so, with how to incorporate it into
their current teaching practices. On the other hand, the instructors who had recently completed
a degree in TEFL, and therefore had some training in and knowledge of current TEFL theories,
found it less challenging to adjust their teaching to fit within the new curriculum. As such,
efforts to assist learners in becoming more active participants in their learning were varied, depending on teacher training and practices. Thus, one of my aims in doing this research was tocreate a snapshot of students’ visualization of their stage of learner development so that I could
form a clearer picture of the degree of autonomy that students were realizing under the current
curriculum.

Contextual Overview
Prior to this study, I had disseminated a questionnaire (see Appendix A), which sought specifically to identify transitional difficulties between the high school and university L2 classroom,
to approximately 400 non-majoring English freshman students (135 females and 268 males)at the end of their first semester as freshman students. Students across eight departments(Agriculture, Design, Economics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, AeronauticalEngineering, Literature, and Medical Sciences) participated in this study. Based on student
responses, I perceived the three main adjustment difficulties to be:

8

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

1.	 Poor language skills to cope with university-level classes (45.35%)
2.	 Lack of independent learning skills (30.52%)
3.	 Lack of ability to reflect on learning (20.93%).
In this current study, students in each language class were of mixed-proficiency levels andtook two mandatory 90-minute English courses per week: A Writing/Speaking class and a
Reading/Listening class over a 15-week semester for a total of 22.5 hours of teaching instruction per semester. Students changed English instructors each semester as a way of exposing
them to different teaching styles, accents, and nationalities. Although there was a core curriculum, creating a culture of autonomy in which each teacher introduced a centralized concept of independent-mindedness proved to be challenging. In essence, this was because timely meetings between faculty members and the mainly adjunct instructors could not be easilyorganized as adjunct instructors were each teaching on different days and times during theweek.
The current study thus follows up on the earlier questionnaire-based research and examines whether students, after one year of tertiary education, could reflect on their current situation, visualize changes in their development, and consider what it means to be “independent-minded” in their approach to learning.

Methodological Framework
Participants in this study were 125 male and female freshman students at the end of theirfirst year of tertiary education. The participating students were purposefully selected as they
had already been involved in a study I had conducted previously. In the previous study, they
had identified Learner Autonomy as one of their major challenges in transitioning from highschool to university. As participants came from different faculties, had learned from various
language instructors with varying teaching styles, and had mixed levels of English proficiency
and attitudes towards language learning, I was able to get a wide cross-section of views.
Students were asked to take part in a reflective activity in their final English class of theirsecond semester. The aim was to identify to what extent students’ understanding or personalvisualizations of learner autonomy had developed at the end of one year in a tertiary L2 environment. As the collected data were to be used for research purposes, I asked the students not
to write their names or any other personal information that could be used to identify themselves. The three questions the students reflected on were:ʶʶ

What knowledge have you gained in your language learning after one year at university?

ʶʶHow do you visualize your development as an independent learner?

ʶʶ

What action can you take to be a better learner in your second year?

Students answered the first question in the format of an open-ended written response andthen compared responses in groups. The third question was answered as a whole class activity
to raise awareness of the various services and resources that students could access for self-directed learning. For the second question, students were first given a worksheet (Appendix B)
with examples of a Level 1 student and a Level 5 student transcribed from interviews in theprevious research in order to clearly understand what was expected of them. Students first responded to the prompt in written form in English on the worksheet before participating in theteacher-facilitated discussion. The discussion was prompted by using a student-centred Kanban Board Technique (KBT).

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 20179

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

The KBT (Ohno, 1978) emerged early in the 1940s as the Toyota brand restructured theirapproach to their manufacturing and engineering production systems. The KBT was intended
to help employees visualize their work (using coloured paper to differentiate task importance),
work effectively in their limited time, focus on flow, and practice continuous improvement. I
decided to use the KBT style of data collection as visuals (such as charts, graphs, mind maps,
photos, drawings or diagrams) have typically been used in research to represent concepts thatare difficult to explain. Students were thus asked to visualize their thoughts about their feelingsof autonomy in language learning.
Due to its highly visible nature and ability to facilitate communication, the modified KBTworked as a quick and effective method to help students:
1.	 understand the meaning and importance of learner autonomy in learning
2.	 reflect on what it means to be an autonomous learner
3.	 become aware of how each student is unique in his/her visualization of themselves as
autonomous learners
4.	 visualize their current situation and future goals
5.	 think about how to take action to improve their current or future situation based onshared experiences.
Using the visual format of the KBT, an Independent Learning Scale (ILS) was then introduced to students to gauge their developmental level. In practice, a horizontal line was drawn
across the board, with the numbers 1 to 5 evenly interspersed along the line (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Independent Learning Scale.
The number 1 was representative of a learner who perceived himself or herself to be largely dependent on teacher instruction, while the number 5 represented a learner who considered

10

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

himself/herself to be a proactive, independent learner. The students were then asked to choose
the number which they felt best represented their perception of themselves as an independent
learner. They were given Post-it notes in different colours representing the five numbers, asked
to write the reasons why they had chosen the particular number, and then place it next to thenumber on the board. This exercise worked as a meaningful visualization tool for students’
perceptions of what it meant to be an independent-minded learner.
Students were given time to walk to the board and read the other students’ ideas and thenreturn to their groups to discuss the results with the following prompts:
1.	 Which number were you on the Independent Learning Scale?
2.	 Why did you choose that number? Give examples.
3.	 How do you think you can improve your English in the future?
Visualizing these insights was a critical step in order for students to deepen their reflections
about their current developmental state as well as their progress as independent-mindedlearners. ILS data were collected and compiled in a table format to identify students’ perceptions of Learner Autonomy at each of the five levels. Results are discussed below.

Students’ Personal Visualizations of an Autonomous Language LearnerStudents’ personal visualizations of themselves as autonomous language learners were separated into five distinct levels ranging from one to five. For each level, it was found that students were indeed capable of reflecting on their learning. Level 1 learners tended to be more
self-deprecating of their language skills and write surface reflections (McCarthy, 2013), while
Level 5 learners, although critical of some aspects of their learning, had a more positive outlook for the future and concrete ideas of how to improve their language skills. For all learners,
it appeared that more support and training from teachers were needed to see further development.
The following descriptions indicate how students rated themselves in each category during
the reflective activity.

Level 1
A Level 1 learner showed characteristics of a learner lacking confidence. Of the 125 participants, there were seven students who considered themselves to be lacking independence intheir language learning. Specifically, students showed negativity through the vocabulary theychose to express themselves:
I do not study outside of class
I only do homework
I only want credit
I think that I do not need English in my future. I regret now.
Words such as “do not,” “only” and “regret” are a good illustration of stereotypically unengaged students. For a few, there was little effort to do more than simply the basics to gain
the course credit. Others felt a sense of frustration that they did not possess the required
skills to participate actively on their own in class. Level 1 students in general thus showed apreference for full teacher instruction.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201711

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

Level 2Of the 125 participants, 50 students considered themselves to be Level 2 learners on the ILS.
This was the largest grouping. These students showed some aspects of negativity. Like the Level 1 students, some were concerned mainly with passing tests or doing only enough to gain thecredit required to graduate. Lack of interest in learning English or using any English-relatedresources was also a point raised by several students. However, underlying the negativity, there
were usually some ideas of how to improve specific aspects of their language learning:
I can’t speak, listen or read, but I enjoyed presentation
I am not good at English, but I study at home and look back after class
It was difficult for me to write an essay, but after the teacher taught me structure, I was able to
make it.
I am not interested in English, but I think I can learn English very well through watching movies.
I cannot communicate with anyone, however, I visited SALC and listened to English songs. I
don’t have English skills, but I will make effort in the future.
Looking at the language itself, many students added “but” or “however” as a way of showing that they were aware that they had the capacity to develop further. In many instances,
there was the realization that they should study, but there was no concrete action planningeven though they had some idea of their future goals. As such, these students found it difficult to make improvements in their language learning:
I should study more
I should have done new things and been more active
I have a plan that I want to do in the future, but I do not try to achieve it
I want to study with more potential
Although I know to speak English is advantage in the future, I reject learning English.
Learning how to learn seemed to be the biggest challenge for Level 2 students as they hadreceived little training during their first year as freshman students:
I want to learn but I don’t know what to do
I think we can learn “how to study” and “what to study” from our teachers
One of the main problems identified was students’ anxiety in and outside of the language
learning classroom, which affected their participation and overall performance:
I don’t like English class. I feel painful in English class. I have a sleeping disorder so I can’t wakeup. I’ll try more.
I do my homework certainly, but I always don’t study by myself. I want to go to SALC but I
couldn’t go there.
Trying to speak I get upset and can’t say anything.

12

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

Having worked with Japanese students for over a decade, I have learned that talking to theteacher was found to be a cause of anxiety for some students (mainly due to the language
barrier), thus opportunities during class time and also in the final 10 minutes were always
provided for students to communicate with friends in their L1. The social-interactive dimension of LA has been explored extensively by Dam (1995), Brown (2001), Richards (2006), Little(2007), La Ganza (2008), and Benson and Cooker (2013). They suggest that the learner’s capacity, as well as willingness to be an active participant in their learning, depends not only on
individual-cognitive thinking, but interdependence through cooperation with others. I foundthat whereas only a few students in each class chose to work alone, most students considered
their friends as a major source of academic and emotional support:
I don’t ask the teacher or friends for help
I often ask my friends to tell me the contents of the class
I am not good at speaking, but I am able to notice my mistakes in my presentation when myfriends listen to it and tell me.
Despite many students mistakenly believing that becoming an independent learner meant
studying alone (an idea reinforced by being instructed to complete the independent learning
CALL course in isolation), student reflections illustrated the importance of having some formof support on the road to becoming an independent learner.
In essence, Level 2 learners, although showing a preference for teacher instruction, expressed an interest in receiving some guided instruction as well as learner training in how to
be more autonomous rather than simply being told what to do.

Level 3
Level 3 was the third largest grouping on the ILS behind Level 2 and Level 4 respectively. Of
the 125 participants, 29 considered themselves to be Level 3 learners. In this group, student
motivation for language learning was higher and there was some recognition of the necessityof improving English skills for future purposes as well as efforts to set goals and make plansto achieve them:
I do English for a long time however I cannot speak English well. I have a little plan that I want
to do in the future. I am going to clarify my plan.
I think my language skills are not good. I know I should learn English for my future so I startlearning these days
In the future I will need English skills, so I want to learn English now and in the future.
Having a future goal was thus important in helping such students to become more passionate and responsible about their learning (McCarthy, 2011). Personal responsibility in completing assignments on time and asking others for help when needed also played an importantrole in helping students become more independent-minded in their thinking:I often have my homework done before the deadline
I can communicate at the minimum. I often ask teachers only when I cannot find the answers bymyself such as specific vocabulary
I study for tests, presentations and essay in English by myself. I also study points I cannot underLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201713

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

stand in my house
I am sometimes dependent on my friends, but I always finish by myself
I cannot speak English well and have little time to study English, but I submit my reports on time.
I can achieve with effort.
In this way, Level 3 students demonstrated a good understanding of their language learning
strengths and weaknesses, which can be taken as evidence of having the capacity for autonomous learning. Not only did they recognise areas of weaknesses, they also had concrete ideasof how to learn, knowledge of useful resources connected to their interests and motivation to
be more active in their learning:
I don’t like to read English, but I like to watch movies in English
I like to read books for example Harry Potter, so I sometimes read such books that are not directly
concerned with English classes. However, I don’t speak English good so I do not practice it.
I cannot speak with foreign students but I like to watch TED videos every week
I’ve been interested in English for several years, but my English skills still leaves much to do.
However, my friends and I enjoy talking in English in LINE so it helps us to get accustomed toEnglish.
Here again we see a level of anxiety about communicating with others. At the same time,
being able to use applications such as “LINE” (a free social networking application) was
viewed as a means through which students could experience authentic English with peers.
This idea of encouraging out-of-class learning that is directly connected to students’ realworld interests is an area that the researcher felt could help to foster a culture of autonomy
within the institution.
Students at this level, although having some feelings of anxiety about their lack of language
skills, were in general somewhat active in their language learning and were in most cases
willing to ask friends and the teacher for support:
I can communicate at the minimum. I often ask teachers only when I cannot find the answers bymyself
I couldn’t ask the teacher for help before I started university, but now I can ask the teacher forhelp.
For Level 3 learners on the ILS, although they were motivated to do some self-study andhad a learning goal and ideas of how to achieve their goal, similar to Level 2 learners, they
seemed to need teacher instruction on specific areas to complement their self-study:
I cannot speak English well so my homework is very hard, but my English teacher is friendly andexplains good. I want to be better so I need my effort and teacher’s advice
I think advice of the professor and professionals is necessary to acquire a right scientific learning
method, but I think that to learn by the method of talking with foreign student in English byoneself is also important
I would like to study at my own pace. However, I can’t understand contents of class for example
Philosophy and I don’t know where I make mistakes in essay. Therefore I need my teacher’s help.

14

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

Level 3 students thus showed a preference for a balance between taking responsibility for
their own language learning and relying on the teacher for specific training.

Level 4The second largest grouping on the ILS was Level 4 students at 34 of 125 students. In thisgroup, students had a strong awareness of language strengths and weaknesses and showed
more effort and motivation in trying to achieve goals. Like Level 3 learners, there was recognition of the necessity of improving English skills for future goals, however for these students,
there was a stronger connection between future goals and motivation to learn (McCarthy, 2011):
I study for what I want to do in the future. Sometimes the teacher advises me about subjects or
how to study, but usually I plan my schedule and study by myself
When I entered university, I made some goals. First, doing my best at learning English. Second,
communication with many people. Third, having my own opinion about every event. I achieved
these goals.
In addition, class participation for Level 4 learners was quite strong and students actively
tried to learn outside of the classroom:
Before and after class I review work to become interested
I am independent from teacher’s support I think. For example, I find interesting areas myself andresearch
My English level may be average but I got able to speak English words more exactly. These days
I care about overseas news not only Japanese news. I want to be more active to English movie,
TV, music.
My English skill is not high however I did my homework hard. Of course I faced many problems
at home, but I achieved my task by myself. I got confidence.
Although Level 4 learners in many cases considered themselves to be lacking in English
ability, they had a positive attitude to language learning and were thus able to improve. For
many of these students, the idea of being an independent learner was a novelty which they
tried to embrace:
I study liberal arts more harder now, not enforced by teacher or parents than when I was a highschool student. Now I haven’t become a completely independent learner because I’m lazy andnot active. Recently I speak what I should do in order to improve myself, so I am becoming more
independent
I can learn Physics very efficiently when I realize theories of it. It is true that you listen to theteacher, however I think the most important thing is realization by myself in learning
In my high school, my homeroom teacher told me everything we should do. I don’t like to be told
to study so I was frustrated by the system. In university, there is no homeroom teacher, so I canmake my schedule on my own and study the things I want. It is a good situation for me now.
This self-awareness, reflected in the students’ abilities to make plans and find appropriate
resources to achieve learning goals, is indicative of a good independent learner. The comments below are examples of how students participated actively in the learning process:Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201715

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

I watch TED during my part-time job. Although I don’t understand it all, I can scan it
I am learning German and I enjoy comparing the grammar and pronunciation to English
I think my style is independent learning because I know how to do “active learning.” Active
learning focuses on “metacognition” which is for example writing a mindmap
I watch TED and listen to podcasts. If I improve my skill more and more, I can go abroad by myself! It has been 10 months since I have entered this university and I think I have become more
independent. For example I research the meaning of words, listen to music and study IELTS bymyself.
Part of these learners’ success was actively seeking help from others or offering help to those
who needed it. This is a crucial point to note when trying to create a culture of autonomy within an institution. In situations where the learner could not get assistance, it sometimes led tofrustration:
My problem is Mathematics. Almost all teachers consider it as independent study and I get nohelp at all
I always know what I should do, but I sometimes need others’ help and advice. For example,
I want to be an engineer. Although I should study Math and Physics, it is difficult for me to dothese subjects by myself. I need others’ help for theseI teach my friends about how to write an essay in English
When I do my homework, I do it by myself, but sometimes when I don’t know how to do it, I ask
the teacher or my friends for help
When I can’t solve the problems, I searched websites, asked my seniors at club and emailed theteachers. I don’t like to leave questions unsolved. I sometimes meet with my friends to study.
To see evidence of these behavioural attributes in students who state that they have experienced little or no learner training (Ellis & Sinclair, 1989; Sheerin, 1989; Dickinson, 1992) is agood argument for encouraging peer-support, active learning and knowledge-sharing.
Examining the language of Level 4 learners, we can see a more critical awareness of various aspects of language learning, including not only linguistic but also affective and social
concerns. Level 4 students thus recognised the necessity of applying themselves more rather
than depending solely on the teacher. In general, they showed a preference for teacher-facilitated instruction in that they would take on more responsibility for their learning with timely
teacher feedback.

Level 5
As might be expected with a group of freshman students still in their first year of tertiary education, only 5 students of the 125 participants rated themselves at Level 5 on the ILS. Thesestudents had the most confidence and for them, the key points were similar to Level 4 learners in the effort they put in to improve their skills and in having a clear goal for their future.
What distinguished these students most from the others was their interest and curiosity inlearning new things:
For the first time I wrote an academic essay and was able to learn many new things

16

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

My goal is to become a diplomat. To achieve my goal, I try to put in my maximum effort into
English work. To improve my English work, I always try to fix every problem that was pointed
out by my teacher
I entered this university because I wanted to study by myself. If I need a teacher individually, I
will contact with someone who can advise me
University itself is not how we only get education. I am an active learner because I am inquisitive
about everything.
This intrinsic motivation in their learning led to social and academic empowerment as students could find enjoyment, interest and relevance in their learning activities. By satisfying
these three needs, students were able to create meaningful connections with their language
learning and social grouping in class as well as feel comfortable in the knowledge that they
were able to self-regulate their learning. In essence, Level 5 students had developed the capacity to work both independently and interdependently depending on the situational context.
Table 1 summarizes students’ personal visualizations of what it meant to be an autonomous learner.

Goal-setting
planning

Asking for
supportSelf-control

How to learn

Be active /effort

1

o

50

2

o

o

29

3

o

o

o

o

34

4

o

o

o

o

o

o

o

5

5

o

o

o

o

o

o

Curiosityand interest

Anxiety(affective
issues)7

Knowledgeof resources

Total
N=125

Level

Table 1. Summary of Students’ Personal Visualizations of an Independent LearneroDiscussion
As the notion of learner autonomy continues to play a major role in MEXT discussions, it isimportant that studies continue to be conducted to show whether training students to be
more reflective and goal-oriented about their future is beneficial or not. My interpretation of
the findings indicates that learners were indeed capable of reflecting on learning, some morecritically than others, but there was a general consensus that some level of training in learning how to learn was required in order for students to become more “independent-minded.”This idea is in line with a previous study conducted by the author (McCarthy, 2013).
In this study, students reflected on their independent-mindedness using the simple
prompt:How do you visualize your development as an independent learner?
Because students had been taught by a variety of teachers during their first year, exposure to autonomous principles differed. As such, it was difficult to know how much influenceprevious instructors had had on student development. Interestingly, student ideas about what
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201717

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

constitutes an autonomous learner were similar to concepts found in widely-read research
articles about LA from the last 30 years or more:ʶʶ

Recognizing strengths and weaknesses, setting goals and/or achievable targets andmaking plans to achieve targets (Holec, 1981)

ʶʶ

Understanding language learning styles and strategies and selecting appropriate materials (Skehan, 1989; Oxford, 1990)

ʶʶ

Working individually, without supervision (Geddes & Sturtridge, 1982; Brookes & Grundy, 1988; Nakata, 2014)

ʶʶWorking collaboratively with peers and teacher (Brown, 2001; Richards, 2006)

ʶʶ

Asking for support (Little, 1994; Dam, 1995; Littlewood, 1999; Umeda, 2004; Benson &Cooker, 2013)ʶʶ

Affective issues such as anxiety and motivation (Benson, 2001; Cohen & Dornyei, 2002;
Dornyei, 2002)

ʶʶ

The need for learner training (Ellis & Sinclair, 1989; Dickinson, 1992).

After discussions about the ILS, the students were once again reminded that learning was ajourney, that at each step of the way there would be successes and pitfalls and also that theywould possibly move upward and/or downward on the ILS several times over the course of
their studies. Further, understanding the developmental process was instrumental in helping them to become more aware that each student was unique and that everyone had specificstrengths and weaknesses. It was thought that through this reflective activity students would
be more cognizant of the effort that would be required of them if English is to become a partof their future professional life.
Based on students’ written visualizations, the following figure (Figure 2) was created toreflect their ideas of the role and responsibility of the learner and teacher:

Figure 2. Students’ Personal Visualization of the Breakdown of Responsibilities in the L2
Classroom.

18

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

I found the results of this study interesting as research into Learner Autonomy in the Japanese context has largely presented students as being passive or teacher-dependent due tocultural factors of “oneness” (Dore & Sako, 1989; Holliday, 2003). However, many of thesestudents showed a strong capacity for independent-mindedness without having experienced
much (or any) training in the way of reflection-on-learning or in learning how to learn.

Further Considerations
Three main areas lacking in data collected from the student reflections which might be examined further are:1.	 How students evaluate progress and revaluate goals based on evaluation
2.	 How perceived level of language proficiency correlates with perception of independent-mindedness
3.	 How students transfer independent-minded skills to new situations.
As previously stated, students at the university in which this research took place changed
instructors each semester. As such, creating an institutional culture of autonomy remained
a challenge. Having a core definition of learner autonomy and ideas of how to implement it
within the classroom should therefore be a careful consideration in future curriculum development. This would help to guide instructors in helping students to set goals and learn how
to self-assess growth. Having students reflect on language proficiency using a framework
such as The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council ofEurope, 2017) would help both instructors and students to see if there is a relationship between language level and autonomous practices. This could then serve as a springboard forclassroom discussion on how to develop into a more independent-minded individual. Most
importantly, if students could understand how skills learned in university classes connected
to other situational contexts as well as their future lives, they would be more cognizant of therelevance of classes and feel more motivated to participate actively.
As the role of support and training was a central theme in student reflections, this is thecore area that could be built into how teachers manage their classrooms. By connecting
more closely to Japanese cultural practices, such as the senpai/kohai (senior/junior) bond, it
is possible to engage students further in learning. This could also reduce anxiety about asking teachers for help. Another consideration in how to encourage out-of-class learning is toassign points to English learning connected to student interest such as LINE. Although theuniversity’s Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) offered language services to help students,
texting seemed to provide a bridge for students not yet ready to engage in conversation. The
CALL program which instructed students to work independently would need to be discussed
further to see how it could be adjusted to encourage more collaboration and to evaluate progress. As intrinsic motivation (through enjoyment, interest and relevance to future goals) was
the main factor connected to the development of Level 5 students, how to cultivate this within
the classroom should also be considered.

Final Thoughts
This research has shown a snapshot of 125 students’ personal visualizations of their autonomous stage of development at a top national university in Japan. For students who hadreceived no formal training from the university in how to take more responsibility for their
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201719

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

learning, the fact that over half the students identified as Level 3 or above was quite positive. This is particularly surprising for two reasons: First, although Japanese students usuallytend to select the middle point (3) in a scale (Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995), results showed amixed distribution (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Distribution of Students’ Perceived Level of Autonomy.
Second, in the “training” students received from the university to facilitate autonomous
behaviour upon arriving as freshman students, a CALL programme was introduced to students only twice—once during their orientation upon entering the institution and once again
through flyers distributed at the beginning of the semester during an English class—and donein isolation.
There are two factors that could have led to these surprising results. First, since 2011, MEXT
has made significant efforts to introduce conversational English into primary educational institutions, which may be contributing to students’ confidence, language gains, and ability to reflect
on learning progress. The institution in which this research took place was considered to be oneof the top universities in the country, and, as such, the students entering had already developed
strong study habits. Replicating this study at a lower-ranked tertiary institution would possibly
have very different results as motivation and attitude to learning might be lower.
A second factor could be students’ exposure to a larger number of external influences
through smartphone technology. Having constant access to the outside world may be one of
the factors which influences students’ ability to be more autonomous in their approach tolearning. As students in this study reported reading world news through other news outlets
than Japanese outlets, learning about interesting topics through resources such as TED Talks
and engaging in casual English talks through smartphone applications such as LINE can be
encouraged. There has been a considerable amount of research focusing on the connection
between student interest and motivation to learn (Guilloteaux & Dornyei, 2008), which canbe explored further. In particular, student ideas can be passed on to SALC staff as a means ofknowledge-sharing to assist other students.
It can thus be assumed that if top universities in Japan continue to accept high-performing
students, the current trajectory of students with the capacity to be independent minded will

20

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

continue. For students who did not achieve the results to get into top universities, it is important that out-of-class learning be incorporated into existing curricula in order to tap into
student interest and increase motivation. As the main change agents in curricular reform, it isimportant that clear guidelines and definitions of autonomy-in-practice be decided by teachers in order for the change to be meaningful. It is only by fostering a culture of learner autonomy within an institution that any progress in turning students into “independent-minded
individuals” will be seen.

References
Benson, P. (2001). Teaching and researching autonomy in language learning. Harlow: Pearson
Education.
Benson, P., & Cooker, L. (2013). The social and the individual in Applied Linguistics research.
In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual: Sociocultural approaches to
identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 1-16). Sheffield: Equinox.
Brookes, A., & Grundy P. (Eds.). (1988). Individualization and autonomy in language
learning. ELT Documents, 131, 100-118.
Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. New
York, NY: Longman.
Chen, C., Lee, S. Y., & Stevenson, H. W. (1995). Response style and cross-cultural comparisonsof rating scales among East Asian and North American students. Psychological Science, 6(3),170-175.
Cohen, A., D., & Dörnyei, Z. (2002). Focus on the language learner: Motivation, style andstrategies. In N. Schmitt (Ed.), An introduction to applied linguistics (pp. 170-190). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Council of Europe (2017). Common European framework or reference for languages: Learning,teaching, assessment. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/common-european-frameworkof-reference-for-languages-learning-teaching/168074a4e2
Dam, L. (1995). Learner autonomy 3: From theory to classroom practice. Dublin: Authentik.
Dickinson, L. (1992). Learner autonomy 2: Learner training for language learning. Dublin:
Authentik.
Dore, R., & Sako, M. (1989). How the Japanese learn to work. London: Routledge.
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Teaching and researching motivation. Harlow: Pearson Education.
Ellis, G., & Sinclair, B. (1989). Learning to learn English: A course in learner training. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Geddes, M., & Sturtridge, G. (Eds.). (1982). Individualisation. London: Modern English
Publications.
Guilloteaux, M., & Dornyei, Z. (2008). Motivating language learners: A classroom-oriented
investigation of the effects of motivational strategies on student motivation. TESOL
Quarterly, 42(1), 55-77.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and foreign language learning. Oxford: Pergamon.
Holliday, A. (2003). Social autonomy: Addressing the dangers of culturalism in TESOL. In
D. Palfreyman & R. C. Smith (Eds.), Learner autonomy across cultures: Language education
perspectives (pp. 110-126). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
La Ganza, W. (2008). Learner autonomy-teacher autonomy: Interrelating and the will toempower. In T. Lamb & H. Reinders (Eds.), Learner and teacher autonomy: Concepts, realities,
and responses (pp. 63-79). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Little, D. (1994). Learner autonomy: A theoretical construct and its practical application. Die
Neuere Sprache, 93(5), 430-442.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201721

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

Little, D. (2007). Language learner autonomy: Some fundamental considerations
revisited. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1, 14-29.
Littlewood, W. (1999). Defining and developing autonomy in East Asia contexts. Applied
Linguistics, 20, 71-94.
McCarthy, T. M. (2013). Levels of reflection: The mirror, the microscope and the binoculars.
International Journal of Self-Directed Learning, 10(1), 1-22.
McCarthy, T. M. (2011). Achieving your GOAL: A case study of three learners. In B. Morrison(Ed.), Independent language learning: Building on experience, seeking new perspectives (pp. 103111). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
MEXT (2011). The revisions of the courses of study for elementary and secondary schools.
Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/elsec/title02/detail02/__
icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/28/1303755_001.pdf
MEXT (2013). Report compiled on the second basic plan for the promotion of education.
Retrieved from http://www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/1372663.htm
MEXT (2014a). National university reform plan (summary). Retrieved from http://www.mext.
go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/1372655.htm
MEXT (2014b). Special feature 1: Toward implementation of educational rebuilding. Retrieved
from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/hpab201201/detail/1344908.htm
MEXT (2015). The second basic plan for the promotion of education. Retrieved fromhttp://www.mext.go.jp/en/policy/education/lawandplan/title01/detail01/__icsFiles/
afieldfile/2015/03/06/1355571.pdf
Nakata, Y. (2014). Self-regulation: Why is it important for promoting learner autonomy in theschool context? Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(4), 342-356.
Nunan, D. (2000). Autonomy in language learning. Plenary presented at ASOCOPI 2000,
Cartagena, Colombia.
Ohno, T. (1978). Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production. New York, NY:
Productivity Press.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every teacher should know. Boston, MA:
Heinle & Heinle.
Palfreyman, D., & Smith, R. (Eds.). (2003). Learner autonomy across cultures: Language education
perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Richards, J. C. (2006). Cooperative learning and second language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sheerin, S. (1989). Self-access. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Skehan, P. (1989). Individual differences in second language learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Umeda, Y. (2004). 学習者の自律性を重視した日本語教育コースにおける教師の役割 gakusyuusya no
jiritsusei wo jyuushi shita nihonngo kyouiku ko-su ni okeru kyousi no yakuwari [Theteacher’s role in Japanese language with a focus on learner autonomy]: 学部留学生に対する
自律学習コース展開の可能 性を探る gakubu ryuugakusei ni jiritsu gakusyuu ko-su tennkai no
kanousei wo saguru [Searching for the possibility of autonomous learning toward foreigncollege students]. Aichi University Language and Culture, 12, 59-77. Retrieved from http://
taweb.aichi-u.ac.jp/tgoken/bulletin/pdfs/No12/04-Umeda.pdf
Wu, S. Y., & Rubin, D. L. (2000). Evaluating the impact of collectivism and individualism onargumentative writing by Chinese and North American college students. Research in the
Teaching of English, 35(2), 148-178.

22

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Tanya McCarthy

Yasuda, S. (2014). An overview of the university English curriculum: A conceptual framework
for curriculum innovation. Bulletin of KIKAN Education, 1, 102-117.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by the following members of the Learner Development Journal Review Network: Dexter Da Silva and Chika Hayashi. (Contributors have the option of open or
blind review.)

Author Bio
Tanya McCarthy is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Liberal Arts at Kyushu Instituteof Technology. She has earned a PhD in Linguistics from Macquarie University, Australia. Her
research interests are action research, learner autonomy, self-access, self-directed professional development, and curriculum development. She is currently researching the integrationof research-oriented learning into a Tandem Learning Scheme. Email: mccarthytanya.m@
gmail.com

Appendix A
Survey questions in first semester research [English translation]
1.	 What is your gender?
2.	 What is your major?
3.	 Which of these, if any, do you have a problem with in your university classes? [selectfrom the choices below]ʶʶTeacher’s speed of talkingʶʶTeacher’s accentʶʶTeaching styleʶʶComputer skills

ʶʶ

Language skill

ʶʶAmount of homeworkʶʶ

Course objectives

ʶʶ

Textbook content

ʶʶGroup work

ʶʶClass sizeʶʶIndependent learningʶʶEnglish-only classʶʶ

Reflection on learningʶʶ

Relationship with peersʶʶGive details for your choice: ____________________________________

4.	 What are the differences between your high school and university English learning experiences?
5.	 If there were a short English program to bridge the gap between high school and university, would you be interested in participating in it?
6.	 What do you think could have facilitated the move from high school to university English language classes more easily for you?
7.	 What kind of support or guidance have you had to help you with your challenges?
8.	 How have you changed your approach to learning since entering university?
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201723

One Year Later: Students’ Visualizations of “Independent-Mindedness” in the L2 University Classroom

9.	 What advice or suggestions do you have for students to assist in the transition fromhigh school and university?
10.	What advice or suggestions do you have for teachers to assist in the transition from highschool and university?

Appendix B
Worksheet for ILS reflective activity showing example responses of a Level 1 andLevel 5 learner24

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

RESEARCH PAPER
The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for
Supporting Collaborative Reflection
Mathew Porter, Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Nursing University
Scott Hilton, Kure Miyahara High School
Reflection and metacognition in second language learning, particularly in the context of learner development, areimportant and yet challenging to introduce successfully in the classroom. Aiming to address this challenge, theauthors identified two tools to support students as they begin practicing reflection: a collaborative reflection protocol developed by Degeling and Prilla (2011) for use in the workplace and adapted by the authors for use in theclassroom, and The Strategy Tree (Abe, Yoshimuta, and Davies, 2014)—a visual metaphor representing a learner’s
evaluation of their language abilities, experiences, and attitudes. In this paper, the authors describe a classroom
activity using the The Language Learning Tree, a modified version of The Strategy Tree, to aid learners in beginning
meaningful reflective practice. They also discuss how classroom teachers can support improved metacognition via
collaborative reflection in a first-year nursing university setting (Porter) and a first-year high school setting (Hilton).
Learner artifacts from the authors’ respective contexts are presented and analyzed. The authors conclude by engaging in a reflective dialogue that explores their collaborative journey as researchers, as well as understandingsthat emerged from both their learners and their mutual work. Foremost among these is the recognition that, while
no single activity will transform a learner’s metacognitive capabilities, their experiences with the collaborativereflection protocol and The Language Learning Tree provide several indications that they are effective catalysts forreflective practice.
第二言語学習における内省とメタ認知は、特に学習者ディベロプメントを考える上では重要であり、教室内での導入を試みるべき価値がある。これを実現すべく、筆者らは学習者の内省をサポートするためのツールとして以下の２つのものを用いた。まず一つ目は学習者が内省の練習をするため、職場での利用を目的として Degeling and Prilla (2011)によって作られた協働的内省プロトコルを教室場面に応用し利用した。もう一つはAbe, Yoshimuta, and Davies’s (2014)が提唱した ストラテジーツリーで、これは言語能力や経験、態度についての学習者自身による評価を図式化するものである。本稿では、学習者の初期段階の意味あるリフレクティブ・プラクティスを支援するストラ
テジーツリーの修正版であるランゲージ ラーニング ツリーを使った教室活動を記述する。そして、看護学校の１年生（Porter）と高校の１年生（Hilton）のクラスにおいて実施した協働的な内省活動を通して、教師がいかにメタ認知能力の育成をサポートすることができるのかについて議論する。それぞれの調査校で得られた学習者の成果物を分析した結果、内省的な対話に従事することで、教師である筆者らは研究者としての協働的な道のりを切り開くと同時に、学習者と彼らの相互作用から理解が生まれることが明らかになった。また、この中で最も重要なのは、単独での活動は学習者のメタ認知能力を変化させない一方で、協働的内省プロトコルやランゲージ ラーニング ツリーを通した経験はリフレクティブ・プラクティス効果的に誘発することが示された。

Keywords
reflection, metacognition, collaborative reflection, peer-/self-assessment, scaffolding learner assessment

キーワード
内省、メタ認知、協働的内省、ピア／自己評価、学習者評価のスキャホールディングAny teacher who has used reflective activities with learners understands how challenging it can be. Using a simple prompt or two, teachers expect learners to be able to describe their efforts in detail, relate new insights to previous learning, and examine
attitudes about learning. Welch (1999), writing about reflection in service learning, describes
a “clumsy” approach to reflection which fails to engage learners and results in blank stares
and shallow written reflections. This can be true with diaries as well, where students may
only provide a general narrative of what they did and comment on how hard they worked
or what they liked (Little, 2001). Additionally, reflection can seem contrived when it is part
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201725

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflectionof graded coursework, especially when it requires some sort of confession or fails to meeta teacher’s expectation in terms of depth or quality. The problem may be that reflection is
ill-defined and therefore difficult to characterize and teach (Jay & Johnson, 2002), so why
should teachers bother including reflective activities in a course curriculum? In the domainof second language acquisition, reflection is considered by many to be an essential skill for
language learners. Benson (2011) has provided an overview of reflection and its relationship tolanguage learner autonomy. He explains how reflection on language itself, the learning process, and one’s existing beliefs and practices has been promoted within the field as a way tosupport learner autonomy. Little (2004) included learner reflection as one of three pedagogical principles governing the development of autonomy in language learning, stressing thatlearners must be able to “think about their learning both at a macro level (for example, reviewing what has been achieved in a school year) and at a micro level (for example, trying towork out why a particular learning activity was or was not successful)” (p. 22). Ridley (1997)
identified four interrelated areas that can make up the content of classroom learners’ reflections:i) the target language, its structures and rules, ii) the long-term process of their language learning, both past experiences and expectations for the future; iii) themselves
as language learners, and how they measure up to the demands of the course; and iv)
the various tasks, activities, or longer-term projects which they undertake (p. 6).
This focus on the learning process often highlights being able to diagnose one’s needs,
setting one’s own learning objectives, choosing one’s learning resources and strategies, andevaluating one’s learning—skills synonymous with practicing metacognition.
Metacognition refers to the concept of thinking about one’s thoughts (Hacker, 1998). As originally described by Flavell (1979), it refers to both “one’s own knowledge concerning one’s own
cognitive process and products or anything associated with them” and “the active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes in relation to the cognitive
objects or data on which they bear, usually in the service of some concrete goal or objective”(p. 232). The object of metacognition can be “what one knows (i.e., metacognitive knowledge),what one is currently doing (i.e., metacognitive skill), and one’s current cognitive or affective state (i.e., metacognitive experience)” (Hacker, 1998, p. 3). A recent review of research on
metacognition highlights that “metacognition improves with both age and appropriate instruction, with substantial empirical evidence supporting the notion that learners can be taught toreflect on their own thinking” (Lai, 2011). For this reason, it is important for teachers to findways to effectively use reflection activities in their courses. Lin (2001) identified two basic approaches to supporting metacognition in the classroom: strategy training and the creation of a
supportive social environment where learners aren’t afraid to struggle, fail, or question.

Group Reflection
The learner’s social context has a pronounced effect on metacognition and reflection, andthe use of collaborative and cooperative learning methods can help to create a supportive
social environment. Consider the example of a group discussion. Bandura (1977) suggeststhat greater interpersonal interaction can improve reflection by enhancing motivation andincreasing engagement towards the activity. We see this when one learner is inspired by apeer’s contribution to join the discussion, or rethink a position. When this learner connectsthat classmate’s experience to her own it is illustrative of social context and interaction shaping self-concept, as “knowledge about the self-as-learner is usually developed using social
modeling provided by other people” (Lin 2001, p. 27). This may lead to new insights about her
learning experience, demonstrating that collaborative and cooperative learning methods sup-26

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

port learners’ metacognitive development (Lai 2011). Little describes his principle of learnerreflection in terms of social interaction, explaining that it is “implemented interactively: theindividual learner’s capacity to evaluate his or her learning grows out of the group’s ongoing
discussion of the learning process” (2004, p. 22). But how is a teacher to orchestrate a collaborative reflection activity?
Degeling and Prilla (2011) have developed tools to support collaborative reflection for the
informal learning of skills in the workplace. Within their context, collaborative reflection is atechnique for thinking about mutual experiences and the common meaning that participants
find in collective work. They have found that successful collaborative reflection demands anability to articulate understanding of personal experiences, link those experiences and perspectives to those of others, and reflect together on differences in individual experiences. The
result of this is skill development through social practice. They describe three tasks requiringsupport for collaborative reflection to be successful: articulation, scaffolding, and synergizing.
First, articulation calls for the use of formal or informal text, such as stories, notes, or evenannotations on another document, to help trigger reflection during the reflection session.
In the classroom, this could be extended to any learning artifact that the learner wants toshare with the group. Next, scaffolding is a structure imposed on the reflective discussion to
guide it and the participants. Finally, synergizing describes the process of connecting insights
gained from collaborative reflection to outcomes (Degeling & Prilla, 2011, pp. 3-4). Degelingand Prilla recommend providing support to facilitate and maintain a sustained shared context and move the reflection forward. We believe that the approach they have developed may
translate well to the context of language learning classrooms.

Objectives
Our project has two objectives: first, to design a classroom activity for learners to gain experience with meaningful reflective practice, and second, to improve our understanding of how
we, as classroom teachers, can support improved metacognition in our contexts. To achieve
our first objective, we designed an activity for collaborative reflection on language learning following the tasks described by Degeling and Prilla. Our second objective was achieved
through the process of regular teleconferencing and correspondence while designing materials and writing this account. The remainder of this paper is divided into five sections. In thefirst and second sections, we introduce our contexts and present the three stages of the collaborative reflection activity. In the third section, we share some artifacts and responses fromlearners, as well as our observations of learners engaged in the activity, in order to provide arepresentative impression of the activity from the learner’s perspective. Then, in the fourth
section, we reflect separately on both the activity and this project, followed by a commentaryon each other’s reflection. In the final section of the paper, we offer an assessment of the activity and recommendations for its adaptation by other educators. We hope this account may
act as a helpful roadmap for other language educators looking to explore reflection and introduce it to their learners.

Our Contexts
Scott
I am an assistant language teacher on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, aninternational cultural exchange program operated by the Japanese government. I team-teachapproximately 500 high school students enrolled at two public high schools in a small city inwestern Japan. I see most learners once in two weeks. Class size ranges from 16 to 40, and I
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201727

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

team teach with 10 different Japanese teachers of English. Our syllabus follows a Ministry of
Education-approved textbook, and the lessons I teach are generally supplemental to that text.
My lessons focus on a target language ability and key expressions that support that ability.
Learners engage in a culminating project at the end of each term beginning with a conversation test in the first term, an essay in the second, and an original speech contest in the final
third term.
In my previous teaching position at a K-8 public Montessori school in California, learner
metacognition, application of inquiry-based strategies, and regular reflection had been given
institution-wide importance. In my work in Japan, after determining that my desire to replicate these goals was supported by the Japanese English teachers I work with, I began working
to design an introduction to reflection. It was my hope that by engaging learners in reflective
practice they could gain a deeper metacognitive awareness of themselves as learners. I hoped
this would lead them to develop better understanding of the learning process and greater
control of their own learning.

Mathew
I currently teach around 220 first- and second-year Japanese university students majoringin nursing in southern Japan. My classes are made up of 50-60 learners of varying ability,
and meet once a week for 90 minutes over a 15-week semester. The learners are required totake just three semesters of English, finishing required English courses at the end of the firstsemester of their second year, just as they experience their first clinical training. The threerequired courses follow a situational syllabus based on oral interactions with patients. Thesesituations are expressed through “can-do” statements that are shared with the learners. Eachsemester consists of 3-4 assessment tasks (e.g., “conducting a physical assessment on a patient”) targeting one or more can-do statements (e.g., “I can describe what I am going to do
to a patient using simple words spoken slowly without looking at anything”).
I incorporate reflective activities into these three semesters. For example, learners record
themselves completing the assessment tasks and upload their videos to Google Classroom sothat they can be shared and self- or peer-evaluated and reflected upon. Learners also complete a mid-term and end-of-semester reflection in which they evaluate their ability to accomplish the can-do statements that were practiced in the tasks and reflect on their overall
performance in class. My goal is to help my learners see that they have a role in managing
their language learning to prepare them for continued learning once they enter the workforce
and experience caring for patients who lack Japanese skills, a growing concern as the numberof foreign tourists and short- and long-term residents in Japan continues to rise.

The Activity
In the following section we will introduce the activity we designed to support collaborativereflection. In the first stage, the articulation stage, learners prepared an artifact to support
personal reflection on their English learning experiences. In the second stage, the scaffolding
stage, learners participated in a group reflection session guided by a worksheet comprised offour tasks. In the final stage, the synergy stage, learners identified a goal and created a learning plan in collaboration with their peers, based on insights from the first two stages.

Stage 1: Articulating Content for Reflection Using The Language Learning TreeAs described by Degeling and Prilla (2011), articulation is a means of triggering the reflective process that is supported by an artifact, and we believed that an activity called The Lan-

28

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

guage Learning Tree could serve as a suitable artifact for this purpose. The Language Learning
Tree is based on The Strategy Tree (Yoshimuta, Davies, & Abe, 2015), an activity designed to be
used by teachers and language learning advisors to help their learners “see the whole pictureof language learning, raise their awareness of learning strategies, and consequently develop self-regulation to proceed with their learning autonomously” (Abe, Yoshimuta, & Davies,
2014, p. 278). Whereas elements of The Strategy Tree and its ecosystem represent different
categories of learning strategies taken from Rebecca Oxford’s Strategic Self-Regulated Model (2011), The Language Tree has been adapted to emphasize the metacognitive knowledge andskills encountered in the self-directed learning process (Wenden, 1998).
In The Language Learning Tree activity the four skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading) and three systems (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation) of language are represented as the leaves and trunk, respectively, of the tree. The tree’s growth is supported by its
roots and sources of nutrients such as water, fertilizer, and the sun. Here, the roots represent
the specific affective factors of motivation, confidence, interest, and activeness (or initiative). Water and fertilizer represent learning resources and strategies used by the learner, andthe sun represents the learner’s language goals. This results in a metaphor representing thelearner’s current language ability as a living, changing tree. This representation of language
ability as a tree creates a simple, yet powerful model learners can apply to their own language
learning experiences as they work to improve their foreign language abilities. The model isaccessible to learners via the metaphor because they know water (resources) and fertilizer(strategies) and sunlight (goals) help trees grow stronger and taller, just as their corollaries in
the metaphor help language ability flourish.
A model of The Language Learning Tree can be found in Figure 1. To determine the shapeand size of their trees, a well as other elements of the drawing, learners complete an awareness-raising survey with a mix of Likert-style and open-ended questions, which can befound in Appendix A.

Figure 1. The Language Learning Tree.
Our sequence of activities begins by introducing learners to The Language Learning Tree.
There are two goals that should be accomplished at the beginning of this stage. First, learnLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201729

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

ers should understand that the tree is a metaphor for their current level of language ability.
Second, they should understand that the size of the different parts of the tree are relative toeach other, not to an external standard. In other words, the tree is a tool for comparing yourlanguage skills and knowledge to each other, not to the skills and knowledge of other individuals. The resulting personalized drawings make it easy for learners to articulate their English
learning experiences to others.

Stage 2: Scaffolding With the Collaborative Reflection Worksheet
The visual representation of the self-as-learner provided by the language learning trees makethem particularly well suited to sharing with others, and that is what learners will use themfor in stage two. In Degeling and Prilla’s (2011) model, scaffolding provides a common context
and direction for reflection. Scaffolding can also help learners take on different roles during
the reflection and draw their attention to rich data to reflect upon as a group.
With this in mind, we designed a four-task worksheet (see Appendix B) to guide learners
through a discussion about their trees. In task 1, the worksheet directs groups of 3-4 learners
to compare their trees and find similarities and differences. This is intended to provide learners with a common context, and lead them to insights about themselves as learners in relation to their peers. In tasks 2a-b, learners are directed to discuss the parts of their trees thatstood out for being particularly developed or undeveloped, focusing on the underlying reasonsfor these assessments based on their language learning experiences. Task 2c asks learners toshare the goal that they most want to achieve and the reasons for selecting that goal. This
prompt provides an opportunity for learners to discover they have similar goals or alreadyhave experience pursuing similar goals. The final task, 2d, requires learners to share learning
strategies and resources that they have found to be effective. Together, tasks 2c and 2d set
the stage for a content-rich discussion that can help learners in the final stage of the activity
where they will identify a goal and create a learning plan.
The collaborative reflection was designed to support learners in sharing their language
learning experiences with a community of peers pursuing the same overall goal—improved
English language proficiency. In doing so, learners find a point of reference for themselves
as learners by listening to the experiences of their peers. They also are exposed to a variety ofstrategies and resources used by peers, as well as their peers’ attitudes to language learning.
These personal aspects of individual learners’ experience rarely find their way into standard
classroom activities. Throughout these steps, learners take on a variety of roles, from advisor
to neophyte, as they reflect on the value of their groups’ diverse experience as learners of English. During these conversations, learners were expected to note the content of their discussions. There was also a highlighted box where learners wrote down the goal they chose andeffective learning strategies and/or resources introduced during the discussion.

Stage 3: Setting Goals and Planning Language Study
During the first two stages, learners should have gained insight about themselves and language learning through creating their individual trees and working through the collaborativereflection with their peers. The third stage of this activity is aimed at linking those insights
to the learners’ desired outcomes and identifying appropriate actions suggested by the reflective process, which Degeling and Prilla call synergizing mechanisms. As Degeling and Prilla
explain, “Learning by collaborative reflection may then occur when an individual links her
knowledge to the experience of others or when a group combines different viewpoints stemming from its members’ experience and reflects on them collaboratively” (Degeling & Prilla,
2012, p. 135). Synergy is supported by the last question on the reflection worksheet in stage

30

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

two, which asks learners to set a goal and create a learning plan for achieving that goal by theend of the school year. Then, groups discuss each learner’s goal and peers give advice about
how to achieve the goal.

The Learners
At the conclusion of stage 3, learners completed a reflection assessment survey about theexperience of making their trees and participating in the collaborative reflection. This survey
can be found in Appendix C. Their responses revealed some interesting points about how they
viewed the value of making the language trees and the discussions that followed. In the following section, we present a few representative samples of our learners’ trees and summarize
learners’ responses to the activity.

Stage 1: Learners’ Trees
We carried out this activity with over 300 learners and examined the trees that they produced.
The articulation artifacts produced in stage 1 showed a wide variety of learner engagementwith the metaphor of language ability as a tree whose growth is supported by water, soil, andsunlight. In Figure 2, the ways in which learners interpreted the activity and their generalenthusiasm for the project of creating their own language learning trees is evident. Figure 2
shows four examples of learners’ trees. It is notable that the learners interpreted the activity
in distinct ways and also that the project of creating their own language learning trees generated a great deal of enthusiasm. In looking at these samples, we hope to demonstrate theimages learners have of themselves as English language learners, the diversity of those images, and the power of the tree as a tool for articulation and self-assessment.
A

B

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201731

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

C

D

Figure 2. A Representative Sample of Learners’ Language Learning Trees.
The trees show that the learners were successful in using the metaphor to represent how
they perceive their L2 knowledge, abilities, and attitudes. Looking at Figure 2, you can seethat there are clear differences in the relative size of the foliage (representing ability in thefour language skills). Tree D clearly shows reading as the largest, and therefore strongest in
the eyes of its author, while speaking is the smallest (weakest). In contrast to this is TreeA, in which speaking and reading are nearly equal in size while writing is clearly the smallest. These variations continue as we move down the tree to the trunk, representing language
knowledge. Here we can see in Trees B and D that the learners feel weakest in pronunciation,
while Tree A shows vocabulary as the slimmest portion of the trunk. These areas of learners
L2 learning are often assessed in other ways, which allows instructors to compare the learners’ self assessments with more traditional metrics. However, the socio-affective componentsthat are represented by the roots are less readily measured by standard assessments, whichmakes them of particular interest.
The socio-affective components of the tree—motivation, interest, confidence, and activeness (initiative)—are presented as the foundation of learners’ language study that supports thegrowth of knowledge and skill. Though learners are likely aware of these aspects, the role, value, and influence of socio-affective factors on learning as represented by the tree, makes theirfoundational importance explicit. In looking at this portion of the trees in our sample set, A
and D both clearly differentiate between the different socio-affective components of their trees,with both trees indicating a strong interest (longer, deeper, broader root) and comparative lackof confidence (shorter, more shallow, narrower root). This type of difference is less clear intrees B and C, which could indicate less confidence from their creators about their self assessment of these factors, but could also be the result of a different stylistic approach or because
those learners didn’t feel there was a significant difference between these factors for them.
A common theme that emerges from looking at the learner responses to the survey is that32

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

making the tree was an act of self-discovery for most learners. Learner comments often
express new understanding of their own language learning capabilities, needs, and desires.
The new perspective offered by these realizations appears to be one that learners are positive
about, expressing optimism about their increased understanding and motivation to take advantage of what they have learned moving forward. Many note that, though the informationin the tree came from them, the way the tree provided a framework for organizing this information allowed them to understand, at a glance, insights about themselves as learners.

Stage 2: Scaffolding With the Collaborative Reflection Worksheet
Using the trees in Figure 2 and the prompts from the scaffolding worksheet, we will describe an
idealized conversation based on notes taken while observing learners engaged in the activity.

Figure 2. Language Learning Trees for a Group Discussion

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201733

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

First, the learners look for their similarities and differences. Examining the canopies ofeach other’s trees, the learners realize they all believe they have poor writing ability, but arestrong at reading. C says she feels speaking and reading are her strongest skills, whereas A,
B, and D say their listening skills are strongest. D wonders out loud why everyone is so different. Looking at the roots, our four learners notice that they all lack confidence in theirEnglish, but they are all quite interested and motivated to learn English. A and D declare thatthey are fairly active in their English language study and give some examples of their study
habits. The group then talk about their goals, with C and D both talking about how they want
to be able to sing in English and how much they like Taylor Swift. A talks about how much
she wants to go to the United States, and B shares her experience homestaying with a familyin Illinois.
Next, learners spend 10 minutes talking about the parts of their trees that stood out forbeing particularly undeveloped or developed, focusing on the underlying reasons from theirlanguage learning experiences. C starts off complaining about how she can’t catch the lyrics in songs despite her love of English music. Prompted by this, A and D talk about what
they have done to improve their listening ability. A starts off explaining how she watches TV
shows with the closed captioning turned on so she can see what’s being said. D talks about
how she looks up lyrics using Google and finds videos with embedded lyrics to help her learn
the song and listen for the lyrics. Although the final step is to talk about effective strategies
and inspiring goals, in many discussions, one learner’s goal was tied to a weakness, and, asthat learner spoke about that weakness/goal, peers responded by sharing effective strategies
that were tied to their strengths.
Looking at the survey responses relating directly to the scaffolded collaborative reflection, it
is clear that learners benefited in several distinct ways. First, they gained a broader perspective on how to study L2 by reflecting on their peers’ approaches. Many learners characterized
the experience of talking about their trees as providing them with new ideas about how to
study and new information about study resources. Second, they became part of an explicitly
recognized community of learners, discovering how their classmates were facing the challenges of learning a foreign language and imagining ways to support each other. One common
sentiment was that their relative strengths and weaknesses could complement each other,and that when they faced a common challenge it would be easier to overcome it together.
Finally, they also noted several changes to their socio-affective perception of English as a
subject. These were most commonly related to motivation, with many learners expressing
renewed desire to tackle the challenges of learning another language. There were also a number of learners who felt that the collaborative reflection had given them a chance to have theirstruggles and worries validated, which helped them feel relieved and find empathy.

Stage 3: Signs of Learner Synergy
In the final stage, learners reported on their goals and learning plans. Learners’ goals could
be described as general or specific. General goals addressed skills, systems, and socio-affective factors, such as speaking better, improving vocabulary, or having more confidence.
Specific goals identified a function or task that learners wanted to achieve, such as being able
to give directions in English. Learning plans consisted of lists of strategies, which were either specifically connected to a skill, system, or socio-affective factor, or generally related
to study. Specific strategies that were frequently reported include writing a certain number
of English sentences per day or studying a certain number of new words per week. General strategies included using a dictionary or creating a daily study habit. Survey responses
showed some evidence that the collaborative reflection played a role in this final stage. For

34

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

example, some learners indicated that they were able to clarify their goals as a result of the
discussion or were interested in using a strategy introduced during the reflection.
Based on our learners’ artifacts and their responses to our survey, as well as our observations of the learners engaged in the reflective activity, it appears to us that the basic structure of this activity is effective in providing meaningful reflective experience to learners, that
The Language Learning Tree is an effective tool for helping learners examine and express theirconception of themselves as language learners, and that scaffolded group discussions provide
learners with a valuable opportunity to develop the socio-affective elements of the self-aslearner. In the next section, we offer our individual reflections on the activity and our collaboration followed by responses to each other’s reflections.

The Teacher-Researchers
Scott’s Reflection
I met Mathew at a local teaching conference where he was presenting The Language Learning
Tree. I was seeking new ideas to inspire the learners I worked with to reframe their conception of themselves as learners in a more growth-oriented way. Carol Dweck developed theidea of the growth mindset as the understanding that learners’ skills and attributes growand change in response to their belief that effort and strategy are the factors that determine
intelligence and learning success. Specifically, she found that when learners are taught thatlearning a new idea changes the physical structure of the brain in a way analogous to exercise
changing the body, this changes their beliefs and related behaviors to promote resiliency andlearning (Dweck, 2010). Though I had no particular insight into my learners’ view of themselves, I had noticed little change in their facility with English over the course of each term.
I believed this was the result of their perception of themselves as learners, or of English as a
subject, and I was looking for ways to help them reevaluate these ideas.
Creating my own language learning tree as an intermediate Japanese learner was exactly thekind of experience I was hoping to provide. It forced me to consider the current state of mylanguage ability, my feelings about that state, my hopes for the future, and my ideas about
how I could attain them. I’ll give one example. I have always struggled with kanji (Chinesecharacters in the Japanese writing system), and as a result, with reading and writing Japanese. The process of making my tree highlighted this weakness in the structure and appearance of my tree, but, as I analyzed the goals and practices I employed as a language learner, I
noticed that much of what I do and aspire to relates to in-person communication, not reading
or writing. This gave me pause, as I considered the possibility that my difficulty with kanji may be the result of my goals and approach, not anything inherent in kanji or myself. The
reflective process of creating my language learning tree had given me new ideas about how
to tackle an old problem, and unlike journaling or writing reflections, activities I always felt
were artificial and cumbersome, I had enjoyed creating my language tree.
Creating their trees, learners invested focused effort based on conscious choices about how
to depict their learning, leading to unique and beautiful trees. A sense of ownership and autonomy developed from the freedom to choose how to represent their ideas. The trees proved
to be a powerful tool for learners to assert their individuality, opening my eyes to the diversity within the groups I work with. This served as a timely reminder that the 55 minutes aweek I spend with them provides only a glimpse into the kaleidoscope of their varied experience. My presumption that mindset would be a one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges
of second language acquisition seems quaint and misplaced in the face of their individuality.
However, based on the generic nature of their survey responses, it seems that they do share a
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201735

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflectionneed for continued support as they develop their metacognitive skills. My aspiration to alter
the view they had of English and their relation to it was not achieved by this one activity.
The Language Learning Tree is an ideal tool for helping learners contemplate their autonomy as language learners, and for encouraging them to develop a growth mindset. The tree’s
focus on metacognitive strategy assessment, its usefulness as a tool for collaboration between
peers, and the growth implied by the tree metaphor closely mirror the main components ofeffective mindset interventions outlined by Yeager and Dweck (2012). The sole element that islacking is explicit instruction in the idea of neural plasticity; that struggling to accomplish achallenging task grows new neural connections, changing the physical structure of the brain.
My experience with The Language Tree convinced me that it can contribute to a shift in learners’ attribution of the source of their successes and failures away from a fixed, innate aptitude-based understanding and towards an incremental, growth-as-a-result-of-effort-based
understanding. However, it cannot do so overnight.

Mathew’s Response
This collaboration has been rewarding on so many levels. Scott mentions his desire to support the development of a growth mindset in his learners and the suitability of the metaphorof The Language Learning Tree to illustrate this mindset through the relationship between theroots and nutrients and the size of the trunk and canopy. My interest in the tree focusedmore on its ability to represent how the learner saw her language learning experience at the
moment she created her tree and relating this image to the process of self-directed learning, which I explain in my reflection below. Although it is easy to see how learning a complex
system such as language can be represented by a growing tree, discussing how the tree could
be used to introduce a growth mindset added a new dimension to my understanding of themetaphor. Incidentally, Abe, one of the designers of the original Strategy Tree, commented onan earlier draft of this paper that they envisaged the tree metaphor as a way to support thenotion of a growth mindset. I hope to find a way to make this connection more explicit when
I use The Language Learning Tree in the future.
Scott and I first met during a workshop where I was introducing The Language Learning Tree.
Working together as partners, we shared our trees with each other and discussed our learning experiences. During that conversation, Scott realized his efforts to study Japanese did notalign with his goals. Furthermore, he realized he had misattributed his failures with kanji andwas able to see how he might address this. These are the kinds of insights we would ideallylike our students to experience too, but Scott and I are both experienced users of our second
languages as well as seasoned educators. I think these two factors give us an advantage whenanalyzing and discussing our trees, and could be a reason why the original tree is such a goodtool for language advisors or in discussions where one participant is a teacher. A question thatremains for me is how capable our learners are at making similar observations working withpeers and near-peers.

Mathew’s Reflection
Commenting on an earlier draft, one of our readers reminded us to consider this activity as
one step on the learners’ journeys to developing reflective ability and encouraged us to focus more on that journey. In this reflection, I would like to locate this project within my own
journey as a teacher who has tried to support the development of his learners’ metacognitive
abilities through reflection. My interest in reflection began when I became a language learning advisor at a self-access center in 2012. In this capacity, I taught a class on self-directed

36

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

learning in which learners were expected to reflect on themselves as learners and use insightsfrom reflection when identifying needs, setting goals, choosing strategies and resources, andevaluating their progress. I struggled to understand why the learners I was working with hadsuch a difficult time reflecting on themselves and the self-directed learning process. At first,
I thought these learners just needed a framework for reflection, or an illustrative analogy, or
examples of “good” reflection.
It was at this time that I saw a poster presentation by Davies, Abe, and Yoshimuta (2013)
reporting on The Strategy Tree, and I enthusiastically introduced it to my colleagues. We adapted it for our context and used it as a tool to help learners integrate and visually represent reflections about their language learning experiences. However, my earlier use of The Language
Learning Tree was limited to stage 1 of this project, after which learners would introduce theirtrees in groups and then reflect on what they noticed about themselves by looking at others’
trees. Although this seemed to help them to recognize their individual differences and common struggles, my learners’ were still struggling to be insightful and connect their insights
to changes in their learning habits. I began to consider how my age could be influencing mybeliefs about my learners’ abilities to use reflection effectively in their learning. Was I able toeffortlessly reflect on my learning and take appropriate action when I was their age? Dynamic
Skill Theory (Fischer & Yan, 2002) seemed to suggest otherwise. Fischer and his colleagues
examined the development of cognitive functions and concluded that we move through predictable stages as we develop, but the expression of our cognitive skills is variable. Normally
we perform at a functional level appropriate to our developmental stage, but we can performbeyond this functional level with contextual and environmental support. There are two implications of this theory that teachers working with teens should take note of: first, high ordercognitive functions are still developing in our learners, even if they are university students,and second, much as Vygotsky suggested with his Zone of Proximal Development, the development of learners’ abilities can be optimized when working in collaboration with stronger
learners or supportive materials.
Around this time, I began collaborating with colleagues on a project to support collaborative learning groups. Groups of learners were given bespoke TOEIC study packets, which they
completed together. Then they collaborated to identify resources and strategies, and create astudy plan for additional practice (Porter, 2015). This helped me see that it is not enough tojust get learners to reflect and share ideas. If they could be guided through a process of applying insights to a learning plan, perhaps they could improve their learning. Although learners
collaborating on a learning plan might be able to produce a better learning plan than doing so
alone, those learners would certainly gain practice thinking about themselves as learners andthe learning process as they negotiate the creation of the learning plan with peers. This project left me open to experimenting more with collaboration and metacognition.
At the beginning of this project, I had just read Degeling and Prilla (2011) and their recommendations for supporting collaborative reflection resonated with me. As Lin (2001) summarized, metacognition grows in supportive environments, where learners feel safe to questionand experiment, and can benefit from peer support. The tree, itself, is an effective activity forlearners to examine themselves and their learning, but the ensuing discussions go further tosupport the development of metacognitive abilities. These abilities are important to my learners, not just because I believe that greater metacognitive ability will help them to improvetheir English, but because self-reflection and learner autonomy are valuable skills in nursing.
I hope this attention on reflection in English classes helps my learners to strengthen theiroverall metacognitive capacity.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201737

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

Scott’s Response
Mathew’s reflection resonated with me in several ways. When he described his past experiences teaching reflection, I couldn’t help but identify with the challenges that he describedin trying to encourage learner reflection that was insightful, deep, or even simply accurate.
Mathew writes about his search for a “good” example that would help learners achieve hisgoals for their reflection, and of how The Strategy Tree fulfilled this need. I couldn’t agree morewith his assessment of the tree as a game-changing tool for enabling reflection about language learning.
I am also struck by the fact that we both seem to have arrived at the beginning of this project with the needs of young adult learners in mind. Though the learners that I have worked
with (11-16) are younger than Mathew’s (18-19), the need to approach all learners with anunderstanding of where they are in their cognitive development, particularly with regards
to executive function and the relative importance of social connections, is equally importantin both age groups. The Montessori philosophy that framed my approach to working withlearners aged 11-14 was predicated largely on the understanding that a learner’s successful
comprehension of any given material is dependent on her developmental readiness for thatmaterial and the possession of tools necessary to engage with it. This sensitivity to learners’
cognitive development is something that we did not address explicitly in our collaboration,
yet it can be seen throughout.
Finally, Mathew and I seem both to have arrived at our interest in pursuing reflection andmetacognition as necessary skills for our learners out of a belief that the ability to reflect on
and therefore influence one’s ideas about the self-as-learner are fundamentally about morethan learning a language. Reflection and metacognitive awareness are more than study orlearning tools. They are fundamental skills for self-understanding and their practice has thepotential to alter every facet of our lives, and the lives of the learners we reach. Though thisexperience may not have been transformative, it could mark the beginning of a journey that
leads learners to destinations they couldn’t previously have imagined.

Conclusion
We designed The Language Learning Tree activity to encourage metacognition through reflective
practice. It was envisioned as a first experience with reflective practice on foreign language
learning for learners who have a diversity of past experiences and aspirations. As the learners went through the activity, they had a wide range of responses to it, and were supported
in different ways at different points in the activity. The Language Learning Tree showed itself
to be a tool of remarkable explanatory power for our learners to reflect on their language
learning experiences. The metaphor of the tree, sun, and water provided a wonderful starting
point for exploring the needs of each learner, and the clarity of the metaphor allows learners
to access its benefits. The structure provided by Degeling and Prilla for this reflection activity
was an effective way for learners to move through the reflection, and, although not all participants reached the goal we set for their reflective journey, the journey itself was of value, as
was sharing it with peers.
A strength of the metaphor of the tree is that trees grow and change. Ideally, reflecting on
the tree could be incorporated into a syllabus at regular intervals to show learners how they
are growing, allowing them to assess the effectiveness of their current practices. In the third
stage of our activity, setting a goal based on the insights achieved during reflection, learners
needed support beyond what was provided by the reflection worksheet and survey. Specifically, they needed support identifying elements of their trees that were significant, and with
applying the self-knowledge gained to the task of goal setting. However, goal setting is a skill

38

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

all its own that we did not address. Additionally, the activity does not provide follow throughon the goals that learners developed, nor did we create an expectation that the learners would
follow up on their own. Teachers hoping to capitalize on the benefits of reflection should consider adopting an approach that addresses goal setting explicitly, or engages learners individually.
Collaborating on this activity has made us more aware that reflection is a skill that develops
over time in conjunction with metacognitive awareness and as a result of repeated practiceand refinement. It cannot be forced to proceed at a predetermined pace or in accordance withthe artificial requirements set by teachers. Looking back on this experience, we hope the story
we have shared communicates to the reader the value of introducing reflection as a metacognitive practice and that our experience provides a useful guide to those who are interested indoing the same. We can unreservedly promote the use of The Language Learning Tree as a tool
to help learners develop and express their understanding of themselves in the context of theirlanguage learning. It is our belief that this type of understanding is vital to learners’ longterm success, and that the benefits of reflective practice extend beyond the language classroom. Although our learners’ experience with reflection is just beginning, we hope that we’vesown seeds that, with the right combination of sunlight, water, and nutrients, will grow into
towering trees bearing the fruit of carefully cultivated goals and targeted study practices.

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the Administration and English Department at Kure Miyahara High School,and especially Kumamoto Chiemi (熊本 智恵美), Mizuno Mise (水野 みせ), Nomiya Misuzu (野宮三鈴), Takegawa Shinichi (武川 伸一), and Yamane Nobuyuki (山根 伸之) for their support andcollaboration. Without them this project would not have been possible.

References
Abe, M., Yoshimuta, S., & Davies, H. (2014). Now maybe I feel like trying: Engaging learners
using a visual tool. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(3), 277-293.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Benson, P. (2011). Teaching and researching autonomy. London: Pearson Longman.
Davies, H., Abe, M., & Yoshimuta, S. (2013, June). Learning advice to foster self-regulation.
Poster presented at LD20: Exploring Learner Development Conference, Tokyo.
Degeling, M., & Prilla, M. (2011). Modes of collaborative reflection. Retrieved from https://telearn.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00836670
Degeling M., & Prilla, M. (2012). Improving social practice: Enhancing learning experienceswith support for collaborative reflection. In A. Moore, V. Pammer, & L. Pannese (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Technology-Enhanced Learning(ARTEL 2012) at EC-℡ 2012. CEUR Workshop Proceedings (pp 133–146). Retrieved from http://
ceur-ws.org/Vol-931/
Dweck, C. S. (2010). Even geniuses work hard. Educational Leadership, 68(1), 16-20.
Fischer, K., & Yan, Z. (2002). The development of dynamic skill theory. In R. Lickliter & D.
Lewkowicz (Eds.), Conceptions of development: Lessons from the laboratory (pp. 279-312).
Hove: Psychology Press.
Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive
developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906–911.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

39

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

Hacker, D. J. (1998). Metacognition: Definitions and empirical foundations. In D. J. Hacker, J.
Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 1-23).
Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jay, J., & Johnson, K. (2002). Capturing complexity: A typology of reflective practice forteacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), 73-85.
Lai, E. R. (2011). Metacognition: A literature review research report. Research Reports. New
York, NY: Pearson. Retrieved from http://www.datec.org.uk/CHAT/chatmeta1.htm
Lin, X. (2001). Designing metacognitive activities. Educational Technology Research andDevelopment, 49(2), 23–40.
Little, D. (2001). Learner autonomy 1: Definitions, issues, and problems. Dublin: Authentik.
Little, D. (2004). Constructing a theory of learner autonomy: Some steps along the way.
In K. Mäkinen, P. Kaikkonen, & V. Kohonen (Eds.), Future perspectives in foreign language
Education (pp. 15-25). Oulu: Oulu University Press.
Oxford, R. L. (2011). Teaching and researching language learning strategies. Edinburgh: Pearson
Education.
Porter, M. (2015). Evaluating in-house materials for collaborative learning. In T. Ashwell, M.
Miyahara, S. Paydon, & A. Stewart (Eds.), Collaborative learning in learner development (pp.
127-147). Tokyo: JALT Learner Development SIG.
Ridley, J. (1997). Reflection and strategies in foreign language learning: A study of four universitylevel ‘ab initio’ learners of German. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When learners believethat personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302-314.
Yoshimuta, S., Davies, H., & Abe, M. (2015). Promoting self-reflection and strategy use with
the Strategy Tree. Learning Learning, 22(2), 49-58.
Welch, M. (1999). The ABCs of reflection: A template for students and instructors to
implement written reflection in service-learning. NSEE Quarterly, 25(2), 123-125.
Wenden, A. (1998). Metacognitive knowledge and language learning. Applied Linguistics, 19(4),515-537.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by the following Review Network members: Chika Hayashi,
Ann Mayeda, and Ted O’Neill. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review).

Author Bios
Mathew Porter became interested in reflection and collaborative learning while a language
learning advisor at a university self-access center. In 2015, he was appointed assistant professor of English at Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Nursing University. Mathew is a co-founder of theJapan Association for Nursing English Teaching, an organization devoted to improving thequality of teaching, learning, and research of English for Nursing. Email: portermathew@
hotmail.com
Scott J. Hilton, M.A., is a California public school teacher with credentials in foundational
level science and K-12 general education. He is currently an instructor in the Japan Exchange
and Teaching Program, where he has worked for six years as an Assistant Language Teacher
in Mie and Hiroshima prefectures. Scott’s research interests include mindset, guided inquiry,peer- and self-assessment, and blended learning. Email: scottjhilton@gmail.com

40

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

Appendix A
Self-Assessment Survey and Instructions
Each learner is different. This activity will help you realize how you are different from yourclassmates and how much you’ve already accomplished in your study of English. Read the
topics below and circle the answer that is most appropriate for you.
LeavesLow

High

Listening

1

2

3

4

Reading

1

2

3

4

Speaking

1

2

3

4

Writing

1

2

3

4

Trunk

Low

High

Grammar

1

2

3

4

Vocabulary

1

2

3

4

Pronunciation

1

2

3

4

Roots

Low/Small

High/Large

Confidence

1

2

3

4

Interest

1

2

3

4

Motivation

1

2

3

4

Activeness

1

2

3

4

The SunWhat would you like to be able to do in English? Write 3-5 things.
Water & Fertilizer
What strategies and methods have you used to study English? Write as many as you can.

How to Draw Your Tree
LeavesDraw your canopy with four areas to represent the four skills. Fill each area with leaves basedon how high or low you rated your ability for that skill. If your skill level is high, draw many
big leaves. Conversely, if your skill level is low, fill your canopy with less leaves.
Trunk
Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation support the four skills of English. The trunk is madeup of these three. Make your trunk fatter when the skill level is high and thinner when the
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201741

The Language Learning Tree: A Tool for Supporting Collaborative Reflection

skill level is low.
Roots
The roots of the tree are made up of affective factors. If your confidence, interest, motivation,or activeness (initiative) is high, draw a root that is long and fat. If one of these factors is low,draw a root that is short and thin.
The SunThe sun is a source of energy, and here its rays represents your goals. Draw the sun’s rays
and write your goals on them.
Water & Fertilizer
Water and fertilizer provide the tree with nutrients so it can grow big and strong. Similarly,
your learning strategies and resources play an important role in improving your English abilities.
Draw enough water/fertilizer to represent your different learning strategies and resources.

Appendix B
Reflection Worksheet
1.	 Look at each other’s Language Learning Trees. Everyone’s tree has similarities and differences. Talk about A and B in your group for a total of 5 minutes.
A. What are two ways that your trees are the same?
B. What are two ways that your trees are different?
2.	 Next, introduce your tree. Talk about A-D in your group for a total of 10 minutes.
A. Which part of your tree is the biggest? Why?
B. Which part of your tree is the smallest? Why?
C. Which goal from your sun do you feel the most strongly about? Why?
D. Which practice from your water and fertilizer do you think is the most useful? Why?
* This is a goal a feel strongly about.
* This is a practice from my water/fertilizer that is very useful for me.
3.	 Talk about your goal with classmates. Work together to think of ways to achieve thisgoal. You have 10 minutes.
* Looking at my tree, I hope I can improve _________________ by the end of
this school year.
I can do this by: _________________________________________

42

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mathew Porter & Scott Hilton

Appendix C
Reflection Assessment Survey
Directions: Read the question and circle the most appropriate answer from the four choices:
strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.
1A. After making this tree and talking about it, I have ideas about how I can be a better
English learner.
strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree
1B. Explain in detail.
2A. Making the language tree and/or talking about it helped me learn something.
a. About myself

strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree

b. About my classmatesstrongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree

c. About language learningstrongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree

d. About English

strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree

2B. Explain in detail.
3. Making this tree and talking about it with classmates was useful.
strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree
4. I would recommend these activities for future students.
strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201743

RESEARCH PAPER
Exploring Italian High School Students’
Metaphors of Language Learning
Luciano Mariani, Freelance, Milan, Italy
This paper reports the results of a survey I carried out on the beliefs and attitudes held by Italian upper-secondary
school students about foreign language learning. The survey was prompted by my experience in teacher training
courses, where teachers often wondered what factors were responsible for unsatisfactory learning outcomes,
even in contexts where teaching strategies and materials seemed to be grounded on sound methodological choices. This led me to consider aspects of learning which lie “below the surface” of students’ behaviour, and in particular the role that their beliefs and attitudes play in explaining how a curriculum is perceived, interpreted, and implemented in a school context. In this paper I will first illustrate the cognitive nature of beliefs, their corresponding
affective component (i.e., attitudes), and their influence on the learning process. I will then introduce the use of
metaphors as a useful tool for probing learners’ beliefs and attitudes, and outline how the research was designed
to explore students’ conceptualisations of both the knowledge of foreign languages and the process of language
learning. Results show that students tend to describe language knowledge in terms of motivation, interculturalcommunicative competence, affective implications, mastery of a system, equivalence of L1 and L2 learning, andsimilarity with other skills. Language learning is mainly seen in terms of a very demanding task, which is perceived
either as a productive experience or as a (nearly) impossible undertaking, but also as “learning from scratch” andas a game and pleasant experience. I conclude by considering ways in which these insights can be used by teachers to address their students’ “hidden agenda” and highlighting the role that an increased awareness of beliefs
and attitudes can play in the language classroom.
本稿はイタリア人高校生を対象に実施した外国語学習に関するビリーフと態度に関するアンケート調査結果である。本調査は教員養成課
程を担当する筆者自身の経験に端を発しているが、確固たる方法論に基づく教授法や教材を用いた学習環境に於いてさえ、望ましくない
学習成果を生み出す要因について教員たちは日々考えを巡らせている。そして筆者自身、生徒の行動の「水面下にある」学習に関する側面、特にカリキュラムに対する生徒と教員の認識や解釈とその実施におけるビリーフと態度が及ぼす影響ついて考えるに至った。そこで本稿ではまず、認知的要素に関わるビリーフ、そしてその対である情意（態度）とそれらの学習プロセスへの影響を解説する。次にビリーフと態度の両方を明らかにする効果的なツールである比喩の使用に関して詳説し、外国語の知識と言語学習過程に対する生徒の概念を解明することを目的とした本調査のリサーチデザインを概観する。本調査の結果、生徒たちはモチベーション、異文化間コミュニケーション能力、情意的側面、システムの熟知、第１言語と第２言語の同等性、そしてスポーツなど他のスキルとの類似性の観点から言語学習について述べる傾向が見られた。また、生徒たちは言語学習を非常に苦労するものであると主に捉えているため、言語学習に対する認識が、実り多い学習経験または（ほぼ）不可能なもののどちらかであることが明らかになった。一方で言語学習を「ゼロからの学習」、またゲームや楽しい経験として認識されていることも示された。最後に、本研究で得られた知見から「生徒の隠れたアジェンダ」を明らかにする方法を考察し、語学教室でのビリーフや態度の認識の高まりがもたらす影響も明らかにする。

Keywords
beliefs, attitudes, metaphors, motivation, language learning process

キーワード
ビリーフ、態度、比喩、モチベーション、言語学習過程

T

his paper reports on the first stage of a survey carried out in Italian upper-secondary
schools on the beliefs and attitudes held by students about foreign language learning ina school context. I was prompted to arrange the survey by the frequent dissatisfaction
shown by teachers in training courses, when they often complained that students’ responses to their strategies and materials were not what they expected. At the same time, teachers
were unable to identify factors which would explain the “gap” between their expectations andthe actual learning outcomes. To address this issue, I turned my attention to aspects of the“hidden curriculum” which are rarely investigated, such as students’ beliefs and their influ-

44

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Marianience on the learning process. The issue is particularly relevant for Italian secondary school
language teachers, who in the past few years have had to face several (often confusing) syllabus changes, on the one hand, and an increasing emphasis on the “products” of learning, interms of external exams and certifications, on the other. At such a time, I thought that going
beyond questions of methodology, and probing what lies behind students’ reactions to teachers’ demands, would throw some light on the actual learning processes taking place in theclassroom. In search of possible instruments to use in the survey, I found metaphors a particularly productive and dynamic tool. In this paper, after briefly recalling why beliefs and attitudes are so important in (language) learning, I will describe the research design of my project, report on some of the most significant results so far, and use the knowledge thus gained
to make some concluding remarks on the role that an increased awareness by both students
and teachers of beliefs and attitudes can play in the language classroom.

Beliefs and Attitudes and Their Role in Language Learning
Beliefs and attitudes towards language learning, or what teachers and students think and feel
when engaged in the task of teaching/learning a foreign language (L2), are an important partof what has been called the “hidden,” “covert,” or “implicit” curriculum (Margolis, 2001),
i.e., factors like learning preferences, aptitudes, beliefs, attitudes, and motivations. Such factors heavily impact the way that the “overt” or “explicit” curriculum, made up of syllabuses,
activities, materials, and assessment procedures, is perceived, interpreted, and implemented
by all the parties concerned. This view of the curriculum is best appreciated through the “iceberg metaphor” (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Importance of the “Hidden” Curriculum.
In contrast to visible and explicit performance, the underlying, invisible competence isheavily influenced by what the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) calls existential competence (“savoir être”)—the individual differences that
affect how knowledge (“savoir”) is acquired and skills (“savoir faire”) are developed.
Teachers and students hold quite definite beliefs and attitudes about what they teach/learn(the subject matter, in our case language, communication, and culture), how language is besttaught/learnt (the process of teaching/learning), and who is involved in this task (their own
selves as teachers and learners, including the roles they play in the process). These dimensions are interrelated (see Figure 2) and have a strong influence on the choices and decisions
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201745

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learningthat people make and, ultimately, on their behaviour in the language teaching/learning task
(Mariani, 1999; Barcelos, 2000; Bernat & Gvozdenko, 2005; Gabillon, 2005; Huang, 2006;
Mercer, 2008).

Figure 2. Areas of Beliefs and Attitudes and Their Integration.
For example, if a student thinks that language is essentially made up of words, that learning a language implies memorizing words, and that s/he has a poor memory, all this will
inevitably shape her/his view of the learning task and probably impact on the way s/he willreact to the teaching activities, especially if her/his teacher holds a different view of the same
factors. As a matter of fact, teachers’ and students’ conflicting beliefs and attitudes have proven to affect how aims, objectives, activities, and assessment procedures are interpreted, accepted, or refused in the classroom (Horwitz, 1988; Cotterall, 1995; Nunan, 1995; Peacock,1998; Wan, Low, & Li, 2011).
To explain the impact of such factors on the learning process, it is crucial to clarify thenature of beliefs and their relations to attitudes. With teachers in mind, Richards (1994, p. 5)
referred to beliefs as “the informational attitudes, values, theories and assumptions aboutteaching and learning which teachers build up over time and bring with them to the classroom”—but this definition could reasonably be extended to students. Victori and Lockhart(1995, p. 224) identified beliefs as “general assumptions that students hold about themselves
as learners, about factors influencing language learning, and about the nature of language
learning and teaching.” Thus, to use other metaphors, beliefs could be seen as a filter throughwhich experience is given meaning and value, or to a pair of glasses through which peopleinterpret the world around them and inside them (Arnold, 1999).
Beliefs can best be seen as a cognitive construct, i.e., what a person knows (or believes s/he
knows), and have also been variously referred to as mini-theories, learning cultures, suppositions, implicit theories, and self-made representational systems (Holec, 1996; Doly, 1997;
Barcelos, 2000; Bernat & Gvozdenko, 2005). However, the impact of beliefs cannot be fully
appreciated without considering how such cognitive structures are accompanied by an affective dimension, which is largely responsible for their role in learning. Wenden (1991, p. 52)
clarified the relationship between beliefs and attitudes in this way:
Attitudes have been referred to as “learned motivations”, “valued beliefs”, “evaluations”,“what one believes is acceptable” or “responses oriented towards approaching or avoiding”. Implied in these various definitions, are three characteristics of attitudes: 1. attitudes
always have an object; 2. they are evaluative; 3. they predispose to certain actions.

46

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

The cognitive, affective, and evaluative components are thus strictly linked to the behaviouralcomponent: beliefs influence attitudes and these, in turn, affect decisions and behaviour.

The Use of Metaphors to Explore Beliefs and Attitudes
The use of metaphors in exploring aspects of (language) learning and teaching is well documented in the literature (e.g., Elliott, 1984; Munby, 1986; Thornbury, 1991; Scott, 1994; Cortazzi & Jin, 1999; de Guerrero & Villamil, 2002; Berendt, 2008; Gibbs, 2011; Farjami, 2012).
Metaphors are not just an alternative to answering questions, providing definitions or taking
part in an interview. Prompting a student to complete a definition (e.g., Learning a language is/means …) is fundamentally different from asking her/him to write a metaphor (e.g., Learninga language is like …), for several different reasons. Firstly, definitions are by their very nature
analytical and thus tend to appeal more to systematic, convergent learners, while metaphorsallow for more creative insights and more global perceptions, and thus tend to appeal more to
intuitive, synthetic, divergent learners. Secondly, metaphors prompt learners to focus moreon similarities and analogies than on oppositions and differences. And finally, metaphors lendthemselves well to further elicitation and elaboration. Ortony (1993) summarizes the main
characteristics of metaphors as vividness, compactness, and expressibility.
However, creating and using metaphors can also have a strong influence on the way one
conceives and deals with reality—by giving structure to experience:
New metaphors have the power to create a new reality. This can begin to happen when
we start to comprehend our experience in terms of a metaphor, and it becomes a deeper
reality when we begin to act in terms of it. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 145)
For example, referring to teacher training by using alternatives such as teacher education,teacher learning, or teacher development points to very different ways of conceptualizing thisactivity. Thus, “A metaphor can easily be seen as a bridge, etymologically ‘carrying over’ fromone side to another. It links and comprises the known and the unknown, the tangible andthe less tangible, the familiar and the new” (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999, p. 149), “a bridge enabling
passage from one world to another” (Shiff, 1979, p. 106), “windows” for examining the cognitions and feelings of learners (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005).

Aims and Research Questions
The literature on beliefs and attitudes outlined above, and the use that metaphors have been
put to in previous research, helped me to specify in more detail both the kinds of informationthat I would be investigating and the tools that I would be using in the process. It seemed
clear to me that the crucial aspects of language learning at a time of change in secondary
schools and with teachers facing increasingly diversified groups of students could be described both in terms of how students make sense of language as the object of learning andin terms of how they approach the process of learning itself. This led me to formulate my two
research questions:
1.	 How do students conceptualize the knowledge of a foreign language, i.e., what do theymean by “knowing a foreign language”?
2.	 How do students conceptualize the process of learning a foreign language, i.e., what dothey mean by “learning a foreign language” in a school context?

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201747

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning

Participants
The participants were 612 students studying foreign languages (English, French, German, andSpanish) as part of their school curriculum in seven academically oriented upper-secondary
schools located in small or medium-sized towns in Northern Italy. The survey was carriedout across all the five school grades (students’ age range 14-19), with language levels startingfrom a post-elementary level—or Level A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages (Council of Europe, 2001)—for English, and from a beginner level for all the otherlanguages in Grade 1, and reaching an upper intermediate level—or Level B2/C1 of the Framework–for English at Grade 5.

MethodStudents were invited to complete two metaphors in writing, in their mother tongue (Italian),by referring to their overall experience of foreign language learning at school:ʶʶ“To know” a foreign language is like …

ʶʶLearning a foreign language is like …

Teachers introduced the scope of the survey and how it would be carried out. Students were
not given any examples of the actual metaphors they were invited to produce, but in orderto make them familiar with the task, teachers elicited a few metaphors on other topics, e.g.,
Winning a football match is like … or Getting back to school in September is like …, briefly commenting on the value of metaphors as a way of exploring and sharing our thoughts and feelings
about an experience.
The collected metaphors were analysed by the author with the purpose of identifying thematic categories which would help to map out the students’ meanings into recurring structures that
gradually emerged from the data itself (Cameron & Low, 1999). In some studies such structures
are described in terms of concrete images. For example, Ellis (2002) reports and elaborates onfive conceptual metaphors for learning: learning as a journey, as a puzzle, as work, as suffering,
and as struggle; while Bas and Gezegin (2015) report and elaborate on 10 groups of metaphorsfor English learning process: task, journey, period of life, progress, competition, enjoyable
activity, torture, unending process, engraving process, and nurturing process. In my survey,
however, an effort was made to directly link the recurring structures (as emerging from all thestudents’ metaphors) to some basic L2 pedagogical frameworks, i.e.,ʶʶ

for Research Question 1: motivation; intercultural communicative competence; personalcognitive and affective implications; mastery of a system; equivalence of L2 knowledge
and L1 knowledge; equivalence of knowing an L2 and any other school subject; and similarities with other skills or competences;ʶʶ

for Research Question 2: a very demanding, even dangerous, but productive experience;a very demanding but (nearly) impossible undertaking; a game, a pleasant experience;
similarities with other skills and competences; integration of some sort of “language
mechanism” within one’s mind; and equivalence of learning an L2 and other school
subjects.

The main problem experienced in the analysis of the metaphors was the fact that in several
students’ responses the two questions seemed to overlap, i.e., they tended to equate language
and language learning. This important issue is reflected in the cross-references between thetwo questions shown in the Results below.

48

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

Responses were then used to elaborate on the implications that students’ conceptualizations
may have on their approach to language learning and on their response to language teaching(see the Discussion below). The second phase of this research, which for different reasons wasdelayed and is therefore still in its early stages, will invite teachers to feed back these findings
to their students and to use them for individual and group reflection and discussion. A few
early samples of teachers’ reactions are provided in Teachers’ Feedback below.

Results
The major descriptive categories of beliefs identified in this survey are presented in Tables 1
and 2. They are illustrated with representative samples of the students’ metaphors and areaccompanied by comments on the major entailments for the emerging conceptions of language and language learning. (Notice that the English translations are just approximate versions of the original Italian metaphors and often do not do justice to the highly imaginative
language, sometimes heavily loaded with idiomatic expressions and cultural references, usedby the students.)
Table 1. Conceptualizations of the Knowledge of a Foreign Language
Descriptive category

Representative samples of metaphors

1. Motivation

1.	 making an effort to pass my exams
2.	 doing something useful, because you can use a foreign language …
not like, for instance, maths, which is of no use to me in my freetime
3.	 having a key which can open many doors
4.	 having a six-speed gearbox on my moped
5.	 arriving at a new school and already knowing the names of yourclassmates
6.	 making a long-term investment
7.	 belonging to a group of people who communicate through the samelanguage
8.	 being able to become “a foreigner” and being considered as such
9.	 changing my nationality, therefore I should know a language perfectly
10.	becoming another person, almost changing your personality andway of being; being two people at the same time interpreting roles,
becoming a little actor for a moment; changing one’s voice and wayof thinking (I think like a German, a Frenchman, an Englishman)

The knowledge of a foreign language is seen in terms of the purposes which it might serveor the benefits it might provide, both at the present time and in the future, and which in turnfuels students with the will and skill to learn. This corresponds roughly to various kinds of
instrumental motivation. This broad concept of instrumental motivation can also be seen in terms
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201749

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learningof its extrinsic value. However, different degrees of extrinsic motives can be perceived along
the extrinsic vs intrinsic continuum: while the most external forms of regulation (e.g., punishments and rewards from teachers or parents) are not mentioned, various forms of interiorization, identification and integration clearly are, from passing exams (1) to securing a better
future (7), with a general perception of acquiring a powerful tool (3-4) and useful starting
opportunities (5).
Within the broad concept of integrative motivation, the desire to become part of the culture(s)mediated by the target language(s) (7) can be linked to subtle questions of individual identity,
and can imply a change in one’s image and perception of one’s individual and social self (8).
This can imply an unrealistic expectation of the level of competence to be reached to achieve
such ambitious results (9). Knowing a language sometimes seems to imply a deeper change
in one’s personality, almost leading to a “split personality” (10); at other times, the change isperceived as a more “superficial” playing of a role (11).
2. Intercultural

12.	 a passport, a key to be able to interact with other people

communicative

13.	 opening my mind to new realities, being able to compare themcompetence

14.	having more elements of certainty, i.e. managing to express myself
and communicate with people of different languages and cultures
15.	 adjusting to other people’s ways of communicating, respecting theirculture, thus indirectly favouring cultural mediation

Students seem to be well aware of the implications of learning a foreign language in termsof acquiring a complex competence, which has both communicative and intercultural connotations. This awareness also implies the realization of the close links between languages andcultures (12-13). This competence can be seen both as relevant in private domains (14) and asa more “public” commitment to contribute to intercultural mediation (15).
3. Personal cogni- 16.	learning to live in a different way than one usually lives; having ative and affective
second life to live
implications
17.	 air: it is something absolutely necessary to life
18.	being a butterfly which flies to different places
19.	thinking through a different system
20.	having a master-key in a hotel, being able to go into any room withno effort at all, adjusting to the type of room I’m going to find21.	 proving to myself that nothing is impossible and one can learn everything
22.	being able to walk without anybody’s help; widening my personal
knowledge so as to be more autonomous in the world
having a degree of freedom which you can’t reach in any other way
Still within the issue of identity, the emphasis in this case is more on the effects thatknowing a foreign language in itself can have on one’s overall personality, without or beyond
the desire to integrate into a target community and/or to acquire a tool for personal and intercultural communication. What is stressed is the potential of language to offer opportunities
for change, not just in terms of acquiring alternative ways of thinking (19), but also as a way

50

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Marianiof experiencing new dimensions of one’s personality, like being born again (16).
The implications of learning a foreign language can reach out into the realm of self-esteem.
This is supported by the perception of developing a new flexible competence (self-efficacy)(20-21), the perception of increasing personal autonomy and independence (22) as well as amore general sense of freedom from constraints (23).
4. Mastery of asystem24.	knowing many words of a language and knowing how to correctly
pronounce them all!
25.	mastering lexis and structures so that you don’t give a strong impression of being a foreigner
26.	being a computer with many data in it

Some students stress the mastery of the language system as the key feature of knowing
a foreign language (cf. No. 6 in Table 2 below). This can apply to pronunciation, lexis, andgrammar (24-25), and can be extended to the metaphor of knowing a language as data-processing by a computer (26). Even in this case, though, “perfect” mastery is seen as necessary
in order to conceal one’s own identity as a foreigner and thus be taken as a “native speaker”(25), much in the same way as in (9) above.
5. Equivalence ofL2 and L1 knowledge

27.	being able to express myself as in Italian28.	studying Italian but in another language with other verb forms
29.	speaking two kinds of Italian because it means speaking it reallywell30.	speaking it as well as my mother tongue
31.	 knowing it as if I were a mother-tongue speaker

Some students are very explicit in equating the knowledge of a foreign language with theknowledge of their mother tongue (Italian). Especially in the early grades, their reference
seems to be “ideal native speakers”: little or no consideration is given to different levels ofcompetence and to the idea of progress in learning. This can lead to unrealistic expectations,both in terms of learning outcomes and in terms of the amounts of time and effort required.
6. Equivalenceof knowing an
L2 and knowing
any other school
subject

32.	“doing” the other school subjects
33.	studying all the other subjects, but speaking in a different way andenjoying myself more
34.	knowing another school subject, but often a more important one
35.	going to school: it may not be enjoyable, but makes life better

Also in the early grades, some students seem to perceive language as a “disciplinary subject,” i.e., they do not exhibit any special relationship with language as opposed to any otherform of content to be learnt in the curriculum (cf. No. 7 in Table 2 below). This is sometimes
associated with a perception of studying a subject which is somehow “different” from theother ones, either because of its “importance” (34) or because it implies more enjoyable activities (33).
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201751

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning

7. Similarities
with other skills
or competences

36.	knowing how to play a musical instrument
37.	being able to fly
38.	cycling with your eyes closed, driving a vehicle, skiing, swimming

Some students compare knowing a foreign language to mastering other skills or sports (cf.
No. 5 in Table 2 below).
A widespread belief among students views language learning both in terms of the effort
required and in terms of the highly satisfying nature of the task. Interestingly, the emphasis is not so much on how a language is learnt but on how deeply involved one can become inlearning it, i.e., on the (positive) affective implications of the task.
What strikes most in these metaphors is the perception of the highly demanding natureof the learning task (40-42). However, the perception of the value of the task, together withthe expectancy of success, seem to provide the relevant personal motivation. This perception isoften accompanied by the awareness of the obstacles involved and the need to be patient andpersistent. Also, setting a clear target seems to provide the necessary energy (43-44). The
learning task itself is conceptualized as a route which calls for flexibility, the ability to learn
to manage situations and be resilient in the face of difficulties (45-46); a route which implies
a step-by-step approach and a firm foundation at the start (47-48).
Table 2. Conceptualizations of Learning a Foreign Language
Descriptive category

Representative samples of metaphors

1. A very demand- 40.	climbing the Everest would be easiering, even danger- 41.	landing on the moonous, but produc42.	walking on a long and winding path, which will soon give way to ative experience
wonderful place
43.	engage in a long-distance race: I will be tired out, I will be thirsty
but in the end I will reach the finish line and thus my target
44.	crossing a river: I will find some obstacles but when I get to theother bank I will be satisfied
45.	seafaring: you need to manage the situations in which you findyourself46.	surfing – at the start you slip on the board but after some hard work
you can surf the wave
47.	reaching the top of a mountain. You proceed step by step
48.	building a house, being careful to lay sound foundations; having
built a house little by little, laying every single brick in the right way

52

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

2. A very demand- 49.	knowing everything about football, all the players’ faces ... it’s iming but (nearly)
possible
impossible under- 50.	walking on the water ... impossible
taking51.	 learning to play chess with your eyes closed
52.	being under a terrible hail storm with 2 sq cm hail stones which
won’t allow you to see
53.	running barefoot on stones
54.	playing chess without the chessboard
55.	go on a military campaign with very little probability of winning56.	having to learn something which has nothing to do with me
Another widespread belief emphasizes the feeling of failure associated with engaging inlanguage learning, i.e., the (negative) affective implications of the task. What is stressed isthe actual impossibility of language learning (49-51), with strong emotional implications(52-53). This may imply the perception of lacking the necessary tools (54), a low expectancy
of success (55), and can even lead to a feeling of unrelatedness, as if no connection could beestablished between learning and one’s self (56)—a state which is very close to demotivation.
3. A game, apleasant experience

57.	listening to a song; playing an instrument, it’s amusing and you do
it with extreme pleasure
58.	playing football – absolutely necessary
59.	being on a merry-go-round because after learning something I feelsatisfied
60.	going on a trip, because it’s enjoyable, amusing, and at the sametime interesting
61.	studying the rules of a similar game, which has different rules
62.	playing with a puzzle, where every word corresponds to a piece andthe possible combinations are endless; solving a riddle
63.	picking a rose. You have to be careful with thorns, but this is no
problem compared with its beauty and scentThis category is the one which most closely approaches the construct of intrinsic motivation—or engaging in learning for its own right, for the pleasure it gives, with no particularother purpose (either instrumental or integrative) involved. This is associated with a feelingof self-assurance as a result of the activity (59) and an intrinsic interest in it (60). Learninga language is also often compared to solving a puzzle or a riddle. In this case the focus seems
to be more on the cognitive challenge, in which language is seen as a series of elements which
can be combined in endless ways (61-62).
Notice that these first three categories of metaphors closely resemble those found in thealready mentioned studies by Ellis (2002) and Bas and Gezegin (2015).

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201753

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning

4. Learning a lan- 64.	a child starting primary school, in the sense that when I was in theguage as starting
first grade I learned Italian, now it is as I started again in anotherfrom scratch
country
65.	learning to speak my language again ... but, compared with when
we were children, it’s much more difficult
66.	going back to being a small child who has to learn everything to express herself and make herself understood
67.	when as a child I learned to walk - step by step, with no hurry;
growing up a second time
In this case students express the perception that learning a language implies a completely
new task, where previous experiences have little or no relevance. There are several important implications in this view of L2 learning. First, there is no distinction between L1 and L2
learning, the only difference being the fact that the latter involves a higher degree of difficulty (65); in other words, natural acquisition of the L1 seems to be perceived as very similar
to later (school) learning of the L2. Second, no importance seems to be given to contextual
or other factors that may influence learning as a (young) adult. And finally, the L2 learner isseen as a small child who must once again go through all the stages of “growing up” without
relying on any previously acquired knowledge or skills (66-67).
5. Similarities
with other skills
or competences(cf. No. 7 in Table
1 above)

68.	learning to play football (I hate football)69.	swimming – it’s tiring but stimulating
70.	learning to play a musical instrument
71.	 singing, not everybody can do it …
72.	learning to cycle. At the start it may seem difficult, but one you’ve
grasped how it works, it turns out to be much easier than you
thought
73.	knowing how to bake a cake, after learning the procedure and having all the ingredients; cooking: the recipe is not enough74.	driving your car, knowing its reactions
75.	learning a mathematical formula by heart, but using your reasoning
ability; doing a maths exercise, if you know the formulae76.	growing a plantStudents seem to be aware of the complexity of language learning as a competence, which
implies the acquisition of knowledge as well as the development of skills, as in complex skills
such as sports (68-69), playing music or singing (70-71), and driving a car (74). Some students seem to be aware of the process involved in learning, like understanding “how it works”(72), learning the “procedure” (73), and knowing the “formulae” (75). On the one hand, youneed all the ingredients; on the other, you need a “recipe”, which in itself is not enough (73).
Also, learning is seen as active mental processing (“reasoning ability”) rather than simple
memorization (75). Notice that (71), by mentioning the fact that not everybody can be successful, refers to the question of inborn aptitude, while (74) highlights the importance of being aware of one’s own strengths and weaknesses.

54

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

6. Development
and integrationof some sort of“language mechanism” within
one’s mind

77.	being a dictionary
78.	being a good linguist
79.	doing a sort of a revision of Italian, because if you don’t have asound foundation of Italian grammar you can’t hope to know theforeign one
80.	putting a small translating machine into my headThis category has to do with the formal aspects of the language system: vocabulary (77),grammar (79), and translation (80), thus stressing the value of knowing the system andcomparing oneself to a training “linguist” (78) (cf. No. 4 in Table 1 above).
7. Equivalence oflearning an L2and learning anyother school subject

81.	studying all the other subjects, only speaking in a different way andenjoying myself more
82.	studying any other subject, perhaps this is more useful than others
83.	studying any other subject but committing oneself more because you
have to concentrate in order to understand the differences between
our language and the foreign language

Some students do not seem to be particularly aware of the originality of language learning,although they sometimes seem to find it more enjoyable (81) and more useful (82) than otherschool subjects. They also realize the complexity and commitment demanded by a contrastive(L1 vs L2) view of learning (83) (cf. No. 6 in Table 1 above).

Discussion
I used the results of this survey to elaborate on the implications that students’ conceptualizations of “knowing a foreign language” and “learning a foreign language” can have on
their approach to learning and on their response to teaching. These implications can be summarised as follows.

1. Motivational Constructs.
The meanings that students attach to both the outcome of language learning and the process oflearning itself are clearly linked to motivational issues: instrumental vs integrative (Gardner &Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985, 2010), intrinsic vs extrinsic (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2002):
ʶʶ

instrumental motivation appears mostly as internal, rather than external, regulation, i.e.,
not related to rewards or punishments, but more as the perception of the opportunities
that knowing a language can offer, especially in the long term;ʶʶintegrative motivation seems to be quite strong too, with students often wishing to become part of the target language community and even to identify with its speakers,or, more often, with a global community of speakers of a lingua franca (Dörnyei, 2010;
Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2010). This hints at subtle questions of individual and collective
identity, since the knowledge of a foreign language often seems to imply personalitychanges or at least the commitment to “play a role” in intercultural communication.
Sometimes this is associated with unrealistic images of the level of competence required
to play such a role, i.e., an idealized native speaker level;
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201755

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learningʶʶ

intrinsic motivation is revealed by students seeing language learning as an enjoyable
game, an interesting puzzle, and a generally pleasant experience.

These strong cognitive and affective implications underlie other important motivational constructs: the perception of developing a new competence enhances self-efficacy and self-esteem(Bandura, 1997; Guthrie et al., 1999), and increases a sense of autonomy and independence,
often expressed through a feeling of freedom from constraints, which is particularly meaningful
and relevant for adolescents and young adults.

2. Challenging Nature of the Learning Task.
Despite showing positive attitudes, students do not underestimate the highly demanding nature of the task involved in language learning. They seem to be well aware of a special, even
exceptional, enterprise, which demands an equally extraordinary expenditure of time andeffort and a high degree of persistence. Combining the perceived value of the task and a highexpectancy of success provides students with the necessary level of commitment and resiliencein the face of difficulties (Pekrun, 1993; Cole, 2002; Schunk, 2003; Brophy, 2004).
However, this is clearly not so for everybody. The challenges inherent in language learning
are not always associated with positive feelings of self-efficacy and high expectations. In fact,
several students seem to stress not just the difficulty of the task, but even the impossibility ofcarrying it out. Unclear objectives, associated with low feelings of self-efficacy and expectancy of success, produce correspondingly low levels of motivation to learn.
All in all, the strong emphasis on personal constructs underlying the beliefs of these students
confirms the importance of the existential competence (or “savoir-être”), which, as we havealready mentioned, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) recognizes as a fundamental language user/learner’s competence affecting communicative competence alongside with knowledge and skills. This also sounds as a reminder
to teachers of the impact that social and emotional learning has on competence development(Payton, Weissberg, Durlak et al., 2008).

3. Language as Communication vs Language as a System.
Most students expressed a view of language as a tool for communication and a bridge to intercultural understanding (Byram, 1997; Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002). Some were also
aware of the potential of their developing intercultural communicative competence not only
for personal purposes but also as a tool for intercultural mediation. In contrast, some students
stressed the view of language as a system of sounds, lexis and grammar and a view of language learning as mastery of such a system. These two contrasting conceptions of language
have emerged in other studies (e.g., Kolb, 2007).

4. Relationship Between L1 and L2.
Especially in the early grades, some students tended to equate the knowledge of the L2 withthe knowledge of their mother tongue. Their reference seems to be the native speaker, withlittle or no consideration for possibly different levels of proficiency in different languages orin different skills within the same language, or for the relevant amounts of time and effort
required. At the same time, many students (and not just in the early grades) seem to believethat learning a language implies starting from a “zero” level and taking once again the same
cognitive and affective route they covered to learn their L1. In other words, there seems to be

56

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Marianino clear perception of the difference between “natural” L1 acquisition and L2 “school” learning, with no role assigned to the contribution that prior knowledge and previous experiencesof language learning (including their L1) can make to the development of L2 proficiency. Thiscan pose significant problems to teachers wishing to make students capitalize on the knowledge gained in their previous language learning experiences, at a time when research is proving that acquiring more than two language systems leads to the development of new skills
like learning to learn, thus facilitating further language learning (Herdina & Jessner, 2002).
Research has also shown that linguistic awareness is both a feature and a powerful aid in
multilinguals (Jessner, 2006), so that tertiary language learning (e.g., German after English)
can greatly benefit the cause of plurilingualism (Hufeisen & Neuner, 2004).

5. Analogies With Other Learning Experiences.
Different kinds of complex skills were mentioned as a metaphor of language learning (e.g.,sports, playing music, driving a car, cooking). Especially interesting is the awareness that
language competence does not imply only knowledge (of a system), but also the ability to“orchestrate” that knowledge in terms of communicative skills. Students also stress the importance of mastering the procedure, the “formulae”, the “rules”: in other words, they seemto be aware that complex skills cannot be acquired by lower-level reasoning (e.g., mechanicalrepetition, rote memorization) but demand higher cognitive operations (i.e., active mental
processing). In contrast with this view, which stresses the specificity of language learning,some students, particularly in the early grades, expressed a sort of “generic” view, i.e., a conception of language learning as the study of any other school subject. This view was sometimes tempered by a recognition that learning a language can be different because it can be
more useful and/or more enjoyable, as well as requiring more commitment and concentration.

Teachers’ Feedback
As already mentioned, the results of the survey will also be used to draw “profiles” of thebeliefs and attitudes held by particular classes. Teachers will then discuss the implications ofsuch class profiles as the first step in feeding the data back to their students to stimulate reflection and discussion in class. Further elaboration of the metaphors by the students will include reasons for choosing a particular metaphor, their intent in using it, and comparing thedifferent meanings that the same metaphor carries for individual students. Also, I will invite
teachers to compare the data emerging from the metaphors both with their own knowledgeof the classes (often derived from classroom observation), and with the further elaborationand clarification of the metaphors by the students themselves, thus improving data validation through a process of triangulation (Burns, 1999; Murphey & Falout, 2010). Teachers havealready suggested possible ways to feed back the data to their classes, e.g.,ʶʶhanding out a synthesis or posting it on the school’s web site or blog platform;ʶʶ

leading a whole-class discussion;ʶʶ

asking groups of students to discuss the data and report and compare their findings in aplenary session;ʶʶleading group interviews or focus groups on specific issues as emerged from the data;ʶʶ

discussing the teaching/learning implications: this can take the form of ideas and suggestions leading to possible changes in objectives, methodologies, tasks, activities, materials, and assessment procedures.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201757

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning

Some teachers’ early comments on the results of feedback to the students are reported as
examples of the kind of data that will hopefully emerge from the second stage of this survey:
1.	

“Since my students are studying different languages, and are therefore exposed to different teaching methods, I would be interested in checking whether their beliefs change
according to each language. This does not emerge from their general metaphors.”

2.	 “I think that I need to stress the metacognitive component in my teaching, to makestudents aware, for example, of how the knowledge of an L2 can be helpful in learning
an L3.”
3.	 “The data from my class clearly point to a rather confused idea of what it means tolearn a language at a certain level of competence. Students need to have clear, sharedobjectives right from the start.”
4.	 “A student in my class argued that discussing what students think about learning
methods is somehow irrelevant because there is just “one” method …”
5.	 “One of my students found the discussion about ways of learning a foreign language a
bit useless, since she thinks that at high school all this should be considered as a prerequisite for students coming from middle schools.”
6.	 “I have a feeling that there is a sort of a gap between my beliefs and my students.” A
considerable number of students said that they start “from scratch” when they first engage in learning a foreign language. I always try to build their skills taking into accountwhat they already know and can do, but that doesn’t seem to be perceived by students.”

Limitations of the Present Study and Implications for Further Research
The sample of students involved in this survey attend academically-oriented high schools,
where foreign languages represent a valued and consistent part of the curriculum, and wherelanguage learning plays a major role and has therefore high status. This may in part explain
the emerging generally positive beliefs and attitudes, which cannot be expected and indeed
were not found in other parts of this research project (which were targeted at vocational
schools). More generally, this can point to the need to link students’ data with the specificfeatures of each context, taking into account, e.g., different school environments or different
languages studied as part of the curriculum.
Other useful projects could involve gathering data from the same students at different timesof their “learning career,” to evaluate the development of beliefs and attitudes over time, or
focusing more specifically on single skills/communicative activities like reading or writing, oron particular aspects of competence (e.g., grammar, lexis). It would also be useful to explore
correlations between beliefs/attitudes and other factors like age, gender, school grades, andlevels of proficiency.
As metaphors are rich, vivid images of the underlying beliefs and attitudes, their ambiguity is at the same time their value and their limitation. As a result, they often need to be disambiguated by asking students to elaborate on what they really meant when using a certain
metaphor, thus providing “narrative” clues to the students’ intent and scope. This process
would best be developed in close sequence, with teachers asking for and providing feedback
within a reasonable time sequence. This may require considerable time and energy resources (teachers’ busy time schedules and the frequent teacher turnover typical of Italian schools
have resulted in serious constraints in the actual implementation of the present survey).
Another interesting development of this survey would be to ask teachers to provide theirown metaphors, which would add a further dimension to the variables involved. A prelim-

58

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

inary study of such teachers-students comparisons (Mariani, 2013) has yielded intriguing
results and would provide a more balanced view of the “classroom culture” where different,
and sometimes conflicting, beliefs and attitudes coexist and where dynamic relationships arecontinually evolving.
As a general concluding remark, probing the “hidden curriculum” means providing a space(both physical and psychological) for people to share their perceptions, become aware of thereal forces that are at work in classroom learning, and perhaps start mediating and negotiating—a way to work towards students’ and teachers’ awareness and autonomy.

References
Arnold, J. (1999). Affect in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.
Barcelos, A. M. (2000). Understanding teachers’ and students’ language learning beliefs in experience:
A Deweyan approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
Bas, M., & Gezegin, B. B. (2015). Language learning as losing weight: Analysing students’
metaphorical perceptions of English learning process. Procedia - Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 199, 317-324.
Berendt, E. A. (Ed.) (2008). Metaphors for learning: Cross-cultural perspectives. AmsterdamPhiladelphia: John Benjamins.
Bernat, E., & Gvozdenko, I. (2005). Beliefs about language learning: Current knowledge,
pedagogical implications, and new research directions. TESL-EJ 9(1), 1-21.
Brophy, J. E. (2004). Motivating students to learn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language
teaching: a practical introduction for teachers. Strasbourg/Graz: Council of Europe/ECML.
Cameron, L., & Low, G. D. (1999). Metaphor. Language Teaching, 32(2), 77-96.
Cole, J. E. (2002). What motivates students to read? Four literacy personalities. The Reading
Teacher, 56(4), 326-336.
Cortazzi, M., & Jin, L. (1999). Bridges to learning: Metaphors of teaching, learning andlanguage. In G. Low & L. Cameron (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 149-176).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cotterall, L. S. (1995). Readiness for autonomy: Investigating learner beliefs. System 23(2),195-205.
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior.
New York: Plenum.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.) (2002). Handbook of self-determination. Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press.
de Guerrero, M. C. M., & Villamil, O. S. (2002). Metaphorical conceptualizations of ESL
teaching and learning. Language Teaching Research, 6(2), 95-120.
Doly, A. M. (1997). Métacognition et médiation à l’école [Metacognition and mediation at
school]. In M. Grangeat (Ed.), La métacognition: Une aide au travail des élèves [Metacognition:
A guide for students] (pp. 17-61). Paris: ESF.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201759

Exploring Italian High School Students’ Metaphors of Language Learning

Dörnyei, Z. (2010). Researching motivation: From integrativeness to the ideal L2 self. In S.
Hunston & D. Oakey (Eds.), Introducing applied linguistics: Concepts and skills (pp. 74-83).
London: Routledge.
Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2010). Teaching and researching motivation. Harlow: Longman.
Elliott, R. K. (1984). Metaphor, imagination and conceptions of education. In W. Taylor (Ed.),
Metaphors of education (pp. 38-53). London: Heinemann.
Ellis, R. (2002). A metaphorical analysis of learner beliefs. In P. Burmeister, T. Piske, & A.
Rhode (Eds.), An integrated view of language development: Papers in honor of Henning Wode (pp.
163-179). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Ellis, R., & Barkhuizen, G. (2005). Analysing learner language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Farjami, H. (2012). EFL learners’ metaphors and images about foreign language learning.
Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2(1), 93-109.
Gabillon, Z. (2005). L2 learner’s beliefs: An overview. Journal of Language and Learning 3(2),233-260.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes andmotivation. London: Edward Arnold,
Gardner, R. C. (2010). Motivation and second language acquisition: The socio-educational model.
New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation in second-language learning.
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Gibbs, R. W. (2011). Evaluating conceptual metaphor theory. Discourse Processes, 48(8), 529-562.
Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Metsala, J. L., & Cox, K. E. (1999). Motivational and cognitive
predictors of text comprehension and reading amount. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3(3),231-256.
Herdina, P., & Jessner, U. (2002). A dynamic model of multilingualism: Perspectives of change in
psycholinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Hufeisen, B., & G. Neuner (Eds.) (2004). The plurilingualism project: Tertiary language learning –German after English. Graz: European Centre for Modern Languages.
Holec, H. (1996). Self-directed learning: An alternative form of training. Language Teaching,29, 89-93.
Horwitz, E. (1988). The beliefs about language learning of beginning university foreign
language students. Modern Language Journal, 72, 283-294.
Huang, Z. (2006). Learner beliefs of language learning revisited. Sino-US English Teaching, 3(3)(Serial No. 27), 62-67.
Jessner, U. (2006). Linguistic awareness in multilinguals. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kolb, A. (2007). How languages are learnt: Primary children’s language learning beliefs.
Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1(2), 1-15.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Margolis, E. (Ed.) (2001). The hidden curriculum in higher education. New York & London: Routledge.
Mariani, L. (1999). Reshaping the curriculum: The role of motivation. Perspectives. A Journal of
TESOL Italy, 35(1-2), 92-110.
Mariani, L. (2013). Convinzioni e atteggiamenti verso l’apprendimento delle lingue: insegnantie studenti a confronto [Convictions and attitudes towards language learning: Teachers andstudents compared]. Babylonia, 1, 70-74.
Mercer, S. (2008). Learner self-beliefs. ELT Journal, 62(2), 182-183.
Munby, H. (1986). Metaphor in the thinking of teachers: An exploratory study. Journal ofCurriculum Studies, 18(2), 197-201.

60

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Luciano Mariani

Murphey, T., & Falout, J. (2010). Critical participatory looping: Dialogic member checking
with whole classes. TESOL Quarterly, 44(4), 811-821.
Nunan, D. (1995). Closing the gap between learning and instruction. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1),133-158.
Ortony, A. (Ed.) (1993). Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Payton, J., Weissberg, R. P., Durlak, J. A., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., Schellinger, K. B.,& Pachan, M. (2008). The positive impact of social and emotional learning for kindergarten toeighth-grade students: Findings from three scientific reviews. Chicago, IL: Collaborative for
Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning.
Peacock, M. (1998). Exploring the gap between teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about “useful”
activities for EFL. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(2), 233-250.
Pekrun, R. (1993). Facets of adolescents’ academic motivation: A longitudinal expectancy
value approach. In P. Pintrich & M. Maehr (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement:
Vol. 8 (pp. 139-189). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Richards, J. (1994). The sources of language teachers’ instructional decisions. Perspectives. A
Journal of TESOL Italy, 20(2), 5-22.
Scott, M. (1994). Metaphors and language awareness. In L. Barbara & M. Scott M. (Eds.),
Reflections on language learning (pp. 89-104). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Shiff, R. (1979). Art and life: A metaphoric relationship. In S. Sacks (Ed.), On metaphor (pp.
105-120). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schunk, D. H. (2003). Self-efficacy for reading and writing: Influence of modeling, goal
setting, and self-evaluation. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 19(2), 159-172.
Thornbury, S. (1991). Metaphors we work by: EFL and its metaphors. ELT Journal, 45(3), 193200.
Victori, M., & Lockhart, W. (1995). Enhancing metacognition in self-directed language
learning. System, 23(2), 223-234.
Wan, W., Low, G. D., & Li, M. (2011). From students’ and teachers’ perspectives: Metaphor
analysis of beliefs about EFL teachers’ roles. System, 39(3), 403-415.
Wenden, A. (1991). Learner strategies for learner autonomy. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by the following members of the Learner Development Journal Review Network: Steve Brown and Jo Mynard. (Contributors have the option of open or blind
review.)

Author Bio
Luciano Mariani is a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer, and researcher based in Milan,
Italy. He has published widely on autonomy and related topics, such as study skills, learning and teaching styles and strategies, language learning motivation, and learner and teacher
beliefs and attitudes. More recently, he has investigated the role of strategic and pragmaticcompetence in learner autonomy. He runs a bilingual (English-Italian) website (www.learningpaths.org), specifically devoted to learner education and teacher development for learnerautonomy. Email: luciano.mariani@iol.it

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201761

RESEARCH PAPER
Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge forPlanning in Self-Directed Language Learning
Mayumi Abe, Waseda University
This paper focuses on planning by self-directed learners. The process of self-directed learning such as planningis called metacognitive activities in which judgment and decision-making in the process are supported by metacognitive knowledge. In this study I specifically focus on metacognitive knowledge and investigate how learners
developed and integrated it for planning through classroom instruction, with an assumption that if learners apply
multiple types of metacognitive knowledge, they can make more effective learning plans. Qualitatively analyzing
the class reflections and learning plans written by two university students who took a course titled Self-Directed
Learning, I found that development and integration of metacognitive knowledge can be promoted by intervention
in class. However, the two students sometimes failed to integrate and act on their metacognitive knowledge, whileat other times they successfully did this without teacher intervention.
本研究では、自律学習者のプランニングに焦点を当てる。プランニングなどの自律学習のプロセスはメタ認知的活動と呼ばれ、そこでの判断や意思決定を支えるのはメタ認知的知識である。本研究では、特にそのメタ認知的知識に着目し、学習者がよりよい学習計画を立てるには多様なメタ認知的知識を組み合わせて活用する方がよいとの仮定に基づき、クラスでの指導を通して、学習者がどのようにメタ認知的知識を発達・統合させていったかを調査した。調査対象は、大学1年生対象の必修授業「Self-Directed Learning（自律学習）」の履修学
生２名が作成した授業リフレクションと学習計画である。それらを質的に分析した結果、授業での介入によるメタ認知的知識の発達や統合は確認されたものの、重要であるはずのメタ認知的知識が適用されなかったり、介入とは無関係にメタ認知的知識が向上し活用された場合もあった。

Keywords
self-directed learning, planning, metacognition, metacognitive knowledge, learner development

キーワード
自律学習、プランニング、メタ認知、メタ認知的知識、学習者の成長A

s a language learning advisor and English instructor, I have seen many language learners struggling to find effective learning strategies or failing to make learning plansthat truly fit their own goals and needs. Some learners make a start to learning but arealways unsure if they are on the right track. Other learners select strategies without knowing
what effects they can expect from those strategies. I began the current study assuming thatsuch learners could become more effective self-directed learners if they knew more about
themselves and could connect various aspects of that knowledge in planning their language
learning. I have been interested in metacognition for a long time as a teacher and learning
advisor and as a researcher. In my practices as a teacher, I have wanted to help my students
learn better even out of class by raising their metacognitive awareness about their own learning. As a learning advisor, I encourage learners to reflect, listen to their stories, and makesuggestions by synthesizing their descriptions of their learning activities with the knowledge
I have about them as learners, applying, as best I can, a metacognitive perspective on second language learning. As a researcher, I have explored questions such as how metacognition helps learners manage learning, how we can enhance learners’ metacognition, and how
metacognition works in the minds of successful learners. In this study, I try to bring theseperspectives together by looking in particular at how learners use metacognitive-knowledge
in planning for their self-directed learning.

62

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Metacognition involves visualization of one’s cognition and is thought to be necessary for
self-directed learning. Metacognition consists of two dimensions, metacognitive knowledge andmetacognitive activities, where metacognitive knowledge is defined as forming the basis formetacognitive activity. Although there are a number of research studies on both metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive activities as well as metacognition for self-regulation, only
a few have explored the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
activities in any depth. In particular, little attention has been paid to how multiple types ofmetacognitive knowledge are connected and integrated in learners’ minds and how learners apply these to planning, which is a fundamental part of metacognitive activities. This
study, therefore, focuses on this dimension and explores how individual learners applied andconnected their metacognitive knowledge as they put together and developed their learningplans. The learners in this study were given explicit instruction in language learning strategies, so I not only consider in what ways the learners’ plans changed over time, but I also
explore how effective such language learning strategy instruction was in helping learners tovisualize the development of their learning.
The paper presents a case study examining outcomes written by students in the SelfDirected Learning course at a Japanese private university. The course aims at fostering lifelong self-directed English learners and lasts one semester, with students meeting once aweek for 90 minutes. As the instructor of the course, I regularly gave lectures and presented
activities in class to raise students’ metacognitive knowledge and encourage them to integrate
their awareness into their practices as learners. Specifically, I wanted to see whether the students were able to connect their metacognitive knowledge to their planning and goal-setting
practices in ways that better fit their needs as a result of the instruction provided. In orderto look closely at these issues, I qualitatively analyze the class reflections and learning plans
written by two students.

Literature Review
Metacognitive Knowledge and Metacognitive Activities
It is widely recognized that metacognition plays an important role in self-directed learning.
Metacognition consists of two dimensions: metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive activities. Metacognitive knowledge includes the self-concepts that learners have about themselves, their learning strategies and learning tasks, while metacognitive activities refer tometacognitive learning process consisting of planning, monitoring and evaluation phases.
Metacognitive knowledge is generally described as a prerequisite for metacognitive activities, in which learners plan, monitor and evaluate their learning based on their metacognitive
knowledge (e.g., Anderson, 2012; Flavell, 1979; Pitrich, 2002).
Although metacognitive activities are variously described as metacognitive experiences(Flavell, 1979), metacognitive strategies (Wenden, 1998), and metacognitive skills (Veenman,
2006), I have chosen to use the phrase “metacognitive activities” as introduced by Sannomiya (2008), considering it the most useful descriptor, inclusive of experiences, strategies, andskills.

Types and Features of Metacognitive Knowledge
The best-known categorization of metacognitive knowledge is person, task, and strategy proposed by Flavell (1989). Several researchers have elaborated this concept by presenting various aspects that these three types comprise. “Person,” for instance, includes knowledge about
universal human traits, knowledge of the self, where self-knowledge includes individual feaLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201763

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learningtures such as one’s age, preferences, strengths and weaknesses, breadth and depth of one’s
knowledge, as well as the cognitive and affective dimensions of significant others and communities surrounding the self. “Task knowledge” includes knowledge of task purpose, task
demands, familiarity or unfamiliarity, well or poorly organized and so forth (Flavell, 1989;
Pintrich, 2002; Wenden, 1998). Since most of the research studies on metacognitive activities
were conducted in contexts of in-class activities or at formal education, task usually refers toassignments given by a teacher and learning strategies discussed there generally mean how
students learn or complete the given assignments effectively and efficiently (Zimmerman,
2002). In self-directed learning settings, however, learners need to choose their own tasks
independently. They determine their needs, set goals, and consider how to attain their goals,
redefining those tasks as fulfilling the aims of and for self-directed learners. In other words,
task in self-directed learning is interchangeable with a goal in self-directed learning (Anderson, 2012), and it can be conceived of as a big picture framework or smaller short-term
step. Task, as a concept, also includes decisions learners may make when they need to workon deliberate learning practices necessary to achieving their goal (Wenden, 1998). “Strategy”
includes general strategies for learning and thinking as well as concrete detailed step-by-step
strategies (Pintrich, 2002). Although Oxford (2011) claimed that those three strategies would
provide insufficient information, and presented six types instead, including person, groupor culture, task, whole-process, strategy, and conditional knowledge (pp. 19-21), all of these
could be included in the three types of metacognitive knowledge as described by Flavell above.
None of these aspects of metacognitive knowledge, however, is absolute. Rather they are
self-concepts that learners conceive through their own perceptions. Therefore, understandings of their megacognitive knowledge might be correct or incorrect (Flavell, 1979; Pintrich,
2002; Veenman et.al, 2006) as Anderson (2012) argued that self-assessment could be superficial or hyper-critical in contrast to healthy, appropriate self-assessment. In addition, learners may experience varying degrees of stability in metacognitive knowledge; some types ofmetacognitive knowledge may be retained as a stable, core element in the learner’s sense ofself, interchangeable with belief, according to Wenden (1998), while others are more prone tofluctuate as dynamic or peripheral elements (Mercer, 2012).

Integration of Metacognitive Knowledge
As seen above, metacognitive knowledge has a variety of aspects, and it is generally agreed
that self-directed learners must connect multiple pieces of their metacognitive knowledge
and apply the combined view to create effective learning plans appropriate to their own situations (Flavell, 1979). For example, let us imagine a university student who wants to study
abroad as an undergraduate in order to realize their dream of working in international business after graduation. In order for them to actually start their learning, they need to knowwhat skills are required for their goals (task knowledge), their current weak points (person
knowledge), and what learning strategies might be effective and available for their learning (strategy knowledge). In addition, they also need to know when and where they should
use the learning strategies (conditional components of strategy knowledge) and what affective strategy is effective for them to sustain motivation (affective dimension of person
knowledge). As such, if learners can connect multiple aspects of metacognitive knowledge,
it could lead to more effective self-directed learning. Although the integration of metacognitive knowledge is thought to play an important role in self-directed learning, much of theresearch regarding relations between metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive activities
focuses on adopting a single piece of metacognitive knowledge to modify a learning strategy
as seen in the cyclical process defined as self-oriented feedback loop by Zimmerman in 1990.

64

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Some researchers call this view meta-metacognition, as it is an overview of metacognition
from one level higher, and state that for students to acquire this point of view entails the
support of experts such as advisors or instructors (e.g., Sannomiya, 2008). In the course I am
teaching, I have attempted to address these concerns by helping learners develop advanced
metacognitive skills through explicit intervention in the context of classroom instruction.
Although I have sometimes feel that learners’ self-assessment routines are superficial, or that
their understanding of their own metacognitive knowledge may be inaccurate in some ways,
I believe it is essential that learners be encouraged to integrate the knowledge they have with
their planning efforts in order to maximize the effectiveness of their learning plans.
Thus, my research is based on the following two assumptions: integration of multiple
pieces of metacognitive knowledge leads to better planning, and integration of metacognitive knowledge can be promoted by explicit educational intervention. Therefore, the researchquestions of this study are as follows:
1.	 Was integration of metacognitive knowledge promoted by explicit intervention in thecontext of this study?
2.	 If yes, did it lead to better planning?

MethodI conducted this research in a required English course for first-year students titled Self-Directed Learning at a private university in Japan. The course aimed at helping students become more independent English learners by guiding the development of better self-directed
learning skills. It was held for one semester from April to July in 2016 with a 90-minute classper week through 14 weeks. I was the instructor of the course and taught two groups of students, one consisting of 24 students (10 male, 14 female) and the other 23 (9 male, 14 female),through the semester, applying the same syllabus and instructions to the two groups.
The students were provided with many opportunities in class to raise their metacognitive
knowledge on various aspects of themselves and their English learning. In-class activities
included lecture-style input, demonstrations and experiences of learning strategies and resources, worksheets for self-assessments and reflections, and pair or group sharing anddiscussions. After each class, they were assigned to write a class reflection for submission on
an online learning management system, Moodle, with a deadline of two days after each class.
The reason for setting the deadlines at this interval was to have them review their learningin class while they still remembered it and give them enough time for deep reflections. It wasalso explained that a class reflection should not be only a summary or simple review of theclass but they should connect what they learned in class to their own personal learning preferences and experiences outside of class.
In addition, activities to enhance integration of the students’ metacognitive knowledge
were explicitly presented three times during the semester. The first intervention was in Class
6, after the students had explored strategies for learning vocabulary and the four language
skills in Class 2 to Class 6. It consisted of a worksheet aiming at leading the students to review their own awareness in the past classes, consider an order of priority, and make a learning plan for the next week (see Appendix A), which was followed by a group sharing and discussion in class. The second intervention was attempted in Class 8, when the students wereassigned to design a one-month learning plan after contemplating their goals in Class 7. They
were given a worksheet (see Appendix B) to integrate their awareness raised in the past classes including metacognitive knowledge about themselves as an English learner (Class 1), English learning strategies (Class 2 to 6) and their goals (Class 7), after which they shared what
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201765

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learningthey had written in groups. The third intervention was given in Class 13, when they designed
a learning plan for the two-month summer holiday, having considered time management inClass 10 and motivational strategies in Class 11. The worksheet provided to the students inClass 13 included goal-setting (Class 7), learning strategies (Class 2 to 6), self-motivational
strategies (Class 11) and time management (Class 10) (see Appendix C), and was followed by agroup discussion in the same way as in Class 6 and 8. Table 1 gives an overview of the topics
and interventions in the course.
Table 1. Overview of the Course
Class

Topic

Class Reflections(CR) and Learning
Plans (LP)1

“My English Learning History”

CR1

2

Learning Strategies: Vocabulary

CR2

3

Learning Strategies: Reading

CR3

4

Learning Strategies: Listening

CR4

5

Learning Strategies: Speaking

CR5

6

Learning Strategies: Writing

CR6

Integrating Learning Strategies

Explicit Intervention
for Integration✔

LP1 (for 1 week)7

Goal setting

CR7

8

Designing Learning Plan 2

LP2 (for 1 month)9

Sharing Learning Plan 2

n/a

10

Time Management

CR10

11

Sustaining Motivation

CR11

12

Sharing Results of Learning Plan 2

n/a

13

Designing Learning Plan 3

LP3 (for 2-monthholiday)

14

Sharing Learning Plan 3

n/a

✔

✔

I provided the worksheets but did not collect them so that the students could review themwhen they wrote their class reflections and complete learning plans after class. However, theysubmitted their class reflections and learning plans on Moodle, which automatically madeit possible for each student to save their submissions in one place and review them easily at
any later time. In other words, the learning management system functioned as a portfolio forindividual students through the semester, which could promote integration of their metacognitive knowledge as well (Reynolds & Patton, 2014; Yang, 2003). In contrast to the formatted
worksheets used during class activities, I set neither rules nor forms for online class reflections and learning plans so that the students could present them as they liked.
In-class activities and out-of-class assignments were all conducted in English because thecourse was a part of the English curriculum at the university and instruction was supposed
to be provided through the medium of English. Since the first language of all the students
was Japanese, it is possible that using their second language placed an extra load on theirthoughts and expressions.

66

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Analysis
I chose one student from each group as a research subject based on the following criteria:(a) they attended all the class meetings, (b) they submitted all the course work, and (c) theywrote the largest number of words in total in their class reflections and learning plans. Because I did not provide any direction for either word limit or minimum word requirement,
they could be among the layer of the students who worked through the course more seriously
in the groups.
I submitted three learning plans (LP1, 2 and 3) and nine reflections (CR1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10,
and 11) written by the respective two students to qualitative analysis, which I conducted in
two cycles. In the first cycle, I focused on identifying metacognitive knowledge in their writings, and in the second cycle, I looked at how they had integrated metacognitive knowledge
into their learning plans and reflections.
In the following sections I analyze and discuss the learning plans and reflections of two
students who participated in the course: Mari, a female student, from group 1, and Dai, a malestudent, from group 2. Both Mari and Dai are pseudonyms.

Results
Case 1: Mari
In the process of preparing her first learning plan (LP1), Mari wrote in her first reflection(CR1) that she did not “know clearly the way of studying English.” She therefore decided totry a variety of learning resources and strategies during CR2 through CR6. These included
vocabulary learning with a textbook and dictionary, reading graded readers, reading news articles, listening to songs, watching news on TV, watching YouTube, shadowing practice with
TED talks, self-talk for speaking practice, message exchange on LINE, and keeping a diary inEnglish. In LP1 following these explorations, she made a weekly plan including: (a) listening
to English songs, (b) using a smartphone application for vocabulary learning, and (c) reading
and listening to online news articles. For the strategies she selected in LP1, she explained that
she chose songs as a resource because she liked listening to music, and news articles because
it was less time-consuming than reading books, which she had tried, but could not keep up
on account of her tight schedule. In other words, Mari connected her metacognitive knowledge about her preferences and life style (person knowledge) to the resources and strategies(strategy knowledge) she selected in LP1.
In LP2 in Class 8, two weeks after making LP1, Mari attempted to apply the strategies forgoal-setting covered in Class 7, in which the students considered the big goals in their lives
and learned how to break them down into smaller goals. Mari described her big goal as “tocommunicate with a lot of people around the world more fluently”, and continued, “I liketravel abroad and I want to communicate with them more comfortably” in CR7, which is similar to the description seen in CR1. Reflecting on her English learning experience, she wrote in
CR1:Today, I remembered my language history for the first time…I found I have been to a
lot of countries, because my parents love to travel around the world. And I realize thisexperiences made me feel “I want to be the fluent speaker of English!”
To achieve her goal, Mari analyzed her current skills and explained that she would improve
her speaking skill by increasing vocabulary and practicing listening and pronunciation. In
LP2, therefore, she selected: (a) listening to English songs during her bath time; (b) using asmartphone application for vocabulary learning in her spare moments; (c) listening to onLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201767

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learning

line news articles; and, (d) using English on LINE to practice daily phrases. These practiceactivities were quite similar to those listed in LP1, but she confirmed that they also matched
her goals. One point to note here is that she connected learning strategies with the idea ofutilizing spare moments in her schedule as clearly mentioned in (a) and (b). In other words,
while Mari attempted to integrate several pieces of her metacognitive knowledge in her planning in accordance with the topics and contents presented in class, she also connected personand strategy aspects of her metacognitive knowledge on her own and applied the combination to her planning. This concept formed the foundation for a more stable metacognitive
self-knowledge and was used as the basis for her later planning efforts.
LP3 in Class 13 was created after exploring time management in Class 10 and motivationin Class 11. Mari included six learning resources in this plan, which was much more than theprevious plans. However, this may be related to the fact that the plan was for a two-monthsummer holiday, a longer period of time than covered in her previous learning plans. The
resources selected here included applications and websites for vocabulary, speaking, listening
and reading practice, all of which could be done in a short time, for as she put it, “I may feelvery hot and tired every day [because of club activities]. So I must study English in my sparetime, as well as my usual school days.” Since there is no mention of either her goals or motivation dealt with in Class 11, it is difficult to infer if she seriously considered them in spite of
having applied the concept of goal setting in LP2 and having written about the motivational
strategies she wanted to use in CR11.

Case 2: Dai
Dai made a weekly plan selecting two learning strategies in LP1, after the first explicit instruction for integration. One was watching news, presentations and movies, which he had
selected in CR4, and the other was intensive reading, which he had selected in CR3. In addition, he observed, “I could notice which self-directed learning was appropriate for me … I
could find my weakness points through learning.” However, he had already claimed, “I want
to improve my grammar skills and increase my vocabulary,” in CR1. Looking back on his CR1
more closely, he explained that he was not confident about using English even though he was
educated at an international school and wrote “mistakes will lose a person’s confidence suchas grammatically mistakes and spelling mistakes. Therefore, I would like to remember more
vocabulary, and improve my grammar skills.” Taking his reflections into account, it could besaid that his awareness of his weak points, and his belief in the importance of correct grammar and vocabulary use, do not provide evidence of new metacognitive knowledge raised by
the course instruction. Instead, they show a confirmation of his original beliefs about his language learning goals and practices, though perhaps articulated in a more metacognitive way
as a result of the course activities. The point to note here is the reasons Dai chose the learning
strategies mentioned above. He explained that he would read scripts when watching videos tomake sure his comprehension was correct in CR4, and would do intensive reading for learning
new vocabulary and writing styles in CR3. In other words, he connected these pieces of newmetacognitive knowledge about learning strategies to the beliefs he held since the beginningof the course.
LP2 was made in Class 8, one week after he went through goal setting in Class 7. In CR7,
Dai set a goal of obtaining a high score in TOEFL®iBT and claimed, “it needs an enormous
amount of vocabulary and a lot of practice in reading, listening, speaking and writing to do.”In LP2, therefore, he selected learning strategies and resources for each language skill, particularly the ones that he had tried before such as listening speeches with scripts (CR4), intensive reading (CR3), and vocabulary applications (CR2) with addition of writing practice68

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

by imitating model essays or articles. We can see here that he integrated his metacognitive
knowledge about his goal (task knowledge) from CR7, learning strategies (strategy knowledge) from CR2, 3 and 4 and himself (person knowledge) from CR1 or earlier.
The contents of LP2 were maintained into LP3 as well. Since his goal was unchanged, hedecided that he should continue the same learning strategies during the summer holiday
too. However, contradictorily, he confessed in LP3 that he had not actually been able to carryout his LP2 in the past month. He said, “I think I could not control myself well and the time
management was bad. However, I don’t want to quit this plan.” What is interesting here isthat although he stressed the importance of self-control and time management in his reflections, he did not apply strategies that would help him strengthen these practices, even thoughthose topics were dealt with in Class 10 and 11, in between LP2 and LP3. This means that his
integration occurred in his choice of goal-setting and language learning strategies but notwith strategies to control his motivation and time management even though all of them werecovered in class in similar ways. Also, it would be worth noting that in the latter part of LP3,
he added, “I need to achieve this goal by some useful grammar and vocabulary books because
I need to improve these skills especially.” One interpretation of this is that his core metacognitive knowledge, or belief, seen in CR1 remained constant until the end of the course.

Discussion
I would like to return here to the research questions introduced at the beginning of the chapter:
1.	 Was integration of metacognitive knowledge promoted by explicit intervention in thecontext of this study?
2.	 If yes, did it lead to better planning?
The answer is both yes and no. Although integration of some types of metacognitive knowledge was observed in both cases, there were also several types of metacognitive knowledge
that were not applied to the learning plans.
Mari connected her metacognitive knowledge of her learning preferences as explored in her
first Class Reflection (CR1) through CR6 in her first Learning Plan (LP1), in those listed in CR1
through CR7 in LP2, and from those listed in CR1 through CR6 and CR10 in LP3. This linking
suggests that we may consider the intervention to have promoted these integrations. However, as also noted, CR7 was not used in LP3 even though the concept was once applied in LP2.
Although it is possible that learners do not utilize a certain metacognitive knowledge intentionally if they consider it is unnecessary or irrelevant, CR7 focused on goal setting, one of themost important factors in planning. In other words, in spite of the fact that goal setting constitutes a fundamental kind of metacognitive knowledge, and should logically be integrated inlearning plans, integration was not induced for LP3 in spite of the intervention.
Dai connected his metacognitive knowledge observations from CR1 through CR6 in LP1, andfrom CR1 through CR7 in his LP2 and LP3. This linking could also be considered evidence of
the intervention as having promoted the integrations. However, CR10 and CR11 observations
were not applied to the LP3, which he composed following those classes. His “confession,”
reported in LP3, that he could not sustain his previous plans because of his poor time management and motivational strategies, which had been covered in Class 10 and 11, suggests that
he recognized them as important elements in achieving his goals. Therefore, he should haveintegrated these concepts into his LP3 for better planning.
Another issue recognized in both cases was that some integration took place even withLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201769

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learningout intervention. In Case 1, Mari had begun the practice of integrating time management andskill-based learning strategies, before the concept of time management was explicitly coveredin the course itself. In Dai’s case, the integration of his metacognitive knowledge about himself with language use with skill-based learning strategies started before any explicit intervention for integration was presented in class. The learners’ metacognitive knowledge in bothcases was stable enough to be sustained throughout the semester, and was consistently connected to newly developed metacognitive knowledge even without external intervention.
To bring things together, the analysis of the two cases suggests that integration of metacognitive knowledge can be promoted by explicit intervention. However, it does not mean thatintervention can always induce integration, and sometimes fails even when the integration isconsidered important for the learner’s development. At the same time, some integration may
occur even without intervention; particularly when the metacognitive knowledge is a part of astable belief-system for the learner.

Conclusion
I began the study assuming that the integration of multiple kinds of metacognitive knowledge
is important for self-directed language learners to make more effective learning plans. To
test this hypothesis, I examined the results of interventions designed to promote the integration of metacognitive knowledge by two students, Mari and Dai, enrolled in the Self-Directed
Learning course. The results showed that although integration was promoted by the intervention, it did not occur in all cases. The learner reflections also showed that even though
the integration of all aspects of metacognitive knowledge is not always necessary for better
planning, there is room for improvement in future practices to enhance greater integrationof metacognitive knowledge with goal setting and strategy adoption. Learning advisors or
instructors must also consider the possibility that integration will sometimes not take placeeven when it is crucial to improve learning outcomes.
In order to encourage greater integration of metacognitive knowledge into students’ learning plans, I am now evaluating several possible revisions to the course. These include:
1.	 Increasing the frequency of interventions;
2.	 Making integration practices more explicit on worksheets;
3.	 Developing new models in the design of learner portfolios;
4.	 Changing the order of the topics of instruction; and,5.	 Including one-to-one short advisory sessions with individual students.
Although the challenges in developing advanced metacognitive skills, or meta-metacognitive awareness, especially through classroom instruction, must be acknowledged, I believethat it is still a goal worth pursuing so that I can support the development of skillful self-directed learning, not only in advisory sessions with individual learners but also through instruction for larger groups of students.

References
Anderson, J. N. (2012). Metacognition: Awareness of language learning. In S. Mercer, S. Ryan,& M. Williams (Eds.), Psychology for language learning (pp. 169-187). Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.

70

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive
developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911.
Mercer, S. (2012). Self-concept: Situating the self. In S. Mercer, S. Ryan, & M. Williams (Eds.),
Psychology for language learning (pp. 10-25). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oxford, R. L. (2011). Teaching and researching language learning strategies. Edinburgh Pearson
Education.
Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The role of metacognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, andassessing. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 219-225.
Reynolds, C., & Patton, J. (2014). Leveraging the ePortfolio for integrative learning: A faculty guideto classroom practices for transforming student learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Sannomiya, M. (Ed). (2008). メタ認知―学習力を支える高次認知機能― [Metacognition: Higher ordercognitive function to support learning skills]. Kyoto: Kitaoji-shobou.
Veeman, M. V. J., Van Hout-Wolters, Bernadette H. A. M., & Afflerbach, P. (2006).
Metacognition and learning: Conceptual and methodological considerations. Metacognition
and Learning, 1, 3-14.
Wenden, A. (1998). Metacognitive knowledge and language learning. Applied Linguistics, 19(4),515-537.
Wenden, A. (1999). An introduction to metacognitive knowledge and beliefs in language
learning: Beyond the basics. System, 27(4), 435-441.
Yang, N. D. (2003). Integrating portfolios into learning strategy-based instruction for EFL
college students. IRAL, 41(4), 293-317.
Zimmerman, B. J. (1990). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview.
Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 3-17.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice,41(2), 64-70.

Review ProcessThis paper was double-blind reviewed by members of the Review Network. (Contributors havethe option of open or blind review.)

Author Bio
Mayumi Abe has been a language learning advisor for 10 years and is currently an instructor
at Gakushuin University. She also works with ALC, a publishing company, in charge of the
management and training of advisors. She received her master’s degree from Temple University Japan Campus and is now studying in the doctoral program of Waseda University. Her
research interests include self-directed learning, metacognition, motivation, and language
learning strategies.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201771

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learning

Appendix A
Worksheet in Class 6
Review of Class 1 to 6
CL#

Topic

2

Vocabulary

3

Reading

4

Listening

5

Speaking

6

Writing

Reflection (Resources & strategies that worked for you)

Integrate the ideas above and make a plan for this week72

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

PriorityMayumi Abe

Appendix B
Worksheet in Class 8
SDL I Class 8 Designing Learning Plan 1
A My English Tree (Needs analysis)

B My big goal and small goals (related to English skills and learning)
Big goal

Small goals

C My schedule
WeeklyDate

What to do

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201773

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learning

Appendix C
Worksheet in Class 13
SDL I Class 13 Designing Learning Plan 2
My Goal(s)My English Tree (Needs analysis)––––– my current skill ––––– my goal by the end of summer

74

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Learning Resources & Strategies
Target skill(s)(e.g. listening,
vocabulary)

Resources /Strategies

when, where,
how long,
how often

Goals (What toachieve by the endof summer)

My Self-Motivational Strategies (how to maintain motivation)

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201775

Integrating Metacognitive Knowledge for Planning in Self-directed Language Learning

My schedule
WeeklyDate

76

What to do

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Mayumi Abe

Daily
Mon.

Tue.

Wed

Thu.

Fri.

Sat.

Sun.

min

min

min

min

min

min

min

6:00
7:00
8:00
9:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:00
15:00
16:00
17:00
18:00
19:00
20:00
21:00
22:00
23:00
24:00

Total
SDL
time

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201777

RESEARCH PAPER
Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others
Yoshifumi Fukada, Meisei University
Tetsuya Fukuda, International Christian University
Joseph Falout, Nihon University
Tim Murphey, Kanda University of International Studies
In this collaborative, self-reflective research, we asked our students periodically over the course of one semester
how they thought they could be helping each other learn English as a foreign language better, and what we teachers could do too for their learning. We think we ended up teaching better by seeing how we could collaborate
better with our students, and in the process becoming better collaborators and learners ourselves. For the present study, we explain the socio-dynamic changes seeded by sharing each others’ voices—students to each other,students to us teachers, and us teachers to each other. Data for this study were collected in our English communication oriented classes throughout one semester. First, surveys elicited students’ responses to class activities
and also their ways of participating in class. Then the students’ responses were periodically looped back to themto reflect upon what they and their classmates were saying, and to add further data. Also, each of us four teachers
kept a journal to reflect upon our own teaching and the students’ classroom behaviors. These reflections wereshared among the four of us, and sometimes parts were also shared with the students. Additionally, we sharedvoices in classroom discussions (for students and teachers) and research team discussions (for us teachers), which
led us to co-construct affinity spaces for mutual learning and development. The findings are presented here in
narrative form, with processes of the respective teacher-researcher’s and their students’ mutual transformation
through the lessons and research described in detail.
内省を用いた恊働の研究において、学生にある学期に渡って定期的に、どのようにすれば英語を外国語としてよりよく学ぶのを助け合えると思うか、また、教師の側も学生の学習を助けるには何をすればよいかを問うた。どのようにして学生と恊働すればよいかを省察することにより、また我々自身がよりよい恊働者そして学習者になる過程において、我々の教育も最終的に改善されたと考える。当研究に関しては、お互いの声を共有する（学生同士、学生から我々教師へ、我々教師同士）ことによって播種された、社会動学的変化を説明する。当研究のデータは、我々が担当した英語のコミュニケーションを重視したクラスで、一つの学期に渡って収集したものである。まず調査紙によって、授業の活動に対する学生の反応、およびどのように授業に参加しているかが明らかになった。次に学生の反応は定期的に学生自身に還元され、自分やクラスメートがどう答えたのかを省察し、さらにデータを収集した。また我々4名の教師もそれぞれが、自分自身の教育や学生の教室での行動を振り返るために、定期的な記述記録を保存した。これらの省察は我々4名の間で共有され、その一部は時に応じて学生とも共有された。それに加えて教室での議論の内容（学生と教師に向けて）や、研究グループでの議論（私たち教師に向けて）も共有し、我々が相互に学習や成長をするための親和空間を共同で構成することへとつながった。本稿では得られた知見を、それぞれの教師および研究者とその学生が相互に、詳細に記述される授業と研究を通して変容する過程を通して物語り形式で提示していく。

Keywords
ideal classmates, possible selves, affinity space, critical participatory looping, near peer role modelling

キーワード
理想的クラスメート像、可能性のある自己、親和空間、批判的参加循環、近似的ピア理想モデル

Yusuke and Aya were asked an interesting question by their teacher: “Please describe a groupof classmates that you could learn English well with. What would you all do to help each otherlearn better and more enjoyably?”Aya said she wanted her classmates to speak more in English
so she could learn more. Yusuke said he thought people should not laugh at other’s mistakes.
All the students’ comments were collected and given back to the class in a handout. Both Aya
and Yusuke saw their comments and were glad that others were reading them. But they wereactually more moved by another classmate’s comments a few weeks later when she was talking

78

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

about reading the whole class’s comments. She said: “I could know what is an ideal person. Now
I will try to be an ideal person. And I’ll try to enjoy studying English, talk with my classmates inEnglish more. I think that my motivation becomes high because of this survey.” — (A recreatedscenario of student interaction with a real student quote at the end.)There are a variety of ways imagination can positively motivate language learners, whichis particularly important for those who are struggling with the challenges inherent tolanguage learning. Images of a possible self using the language well in the future cancontribute to improving motivation (Murray, 2013). Focusing too much on the self, however,can actually foster a deterioration of positive psychological benefits (Robinson & Tamir, 2011).
Placing at least some of the imaginative focus instead on others can bring a healthy, adaptive perspective in imagining, and therefore we have proposed imagining Ideal Classmatesas one way of doing this (Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, & Fukada, 2014). For the present study,
we investigate the potential effects these imaginings might have on classroom interpersonal
dynamics through exploratory action research (see Smith, 2015).
We will attempt to relate the shifting interrelationships and developing abilities of ourstudents and us, the teacher-researchers, in visualizing how we all collaborate to learn andteach a second language (L2) together. We will also present some of the shifting perspectives
between focus on self and others that are important to forming visualizations appropriate forinducing positive transformations in L2 learning.
With these goals in mind, we set the following research questions (RQs):
RQ1: How do our students transform their class participation or engagement through theirvisualizations of Ideal Classmates?
RQ2: How can we as teacher-researchers transform our ways of teaching our English
classes in better ways through hearing and reflecting our students’ voices in thepresent study?

Literature Review
Humans are cognitively adept (although not necessarily accurate) at predicting what might
happen and how they might feel in the future to prepare themselves for avoiding adverse
possibilities and attaining preferable possibilities (Gilbert & Wilson, 2007). Imagining a positive possible self that one would like to become can strongly influence the activation, continuation, and preservation of behaviors and strategies that lead to becoming that person(Markus & Nurius, 1986). This theory of motivated behavior, called possible selves theory, has
inspired an influential theory in applied linguistics. It is called the L2 motivational self system,
which posits that imagining a future self whose language abilities are superior to those of
one’s present self, can spur greater interest and commitment in the present toward achieving
such goals (Dörnyei, 2009).
Qualitative and quantitative evidence from English classrooms in Japan (Fukada, Fukuda,
Falout, & Murphey, 2011; Munezane, 2015; Nitta & Baba, 2015; Sampson 2012, 2016) and othercountries (Chan, 2014; Mackay, 2014; Magid, 2014) has shown that envisioning positive future L2
selves can indeed engage individual student’s positive psychological factors and self-reported efforts to learn a language. Much about these pedagogical treatments focused primarily on the self
only, rather than directing some focus toward others as possible role models for the self.
Possible selves theory, however, emphasizes the primacy of social comparisons of self toothers, because of the social influence that others have upon internalized values and self-beLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201779Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

liefs. Also, images of one’s positive and negative role models act as a means of creating andchanging possible selves images (Markus & Nurius, 1986). It is important to focus on the selfin pedagogical applications of possible selves theory, but not without forgetting to include
relevant and necessary focus on others as models of ideal or possible selves. Results from one
study (Lockwood & Kunda, 1999) caution that an over-focus on academic ideal selves canhinder the motivational development of learners because it prevents them from visualizing
even better possible selves, as could be imagined if role models—the focus on others—were
included in the visualization treatments. Focusing on negative role models informs people
about what to avoid, and focusing on positive role models helps people to set their targets
higher and work toward them (Lockwood, Jordan, & Kunda, 2002). In sum, possible selves are
drawn from the examples of others (Markus & Nurius, 1986), or what some researchers referto as near peer role models (Murphey & Arao, 2001; Ogawa, 2012; Singh, 2010).
With the Ideal Classmates activities, we believe we are encouraging the self-regulatory
powers of retrospection, prospection, and theory of mind. In asking our students to imagine how others can help them to learn English effectively and enjoyably, we believe students
are drawing upon their own experiences with past classmates (retrospection); imaging whatmight work for them in learning (prospection); and then reacting to others in the classroom
from a heightened sensitivity and realizing that what they are wanting from others, they
themselves may not be doing and thus should be doing, a process we call reciprocal idealizing(Murphey et al., 2014). As we concluded after using Ideal Classmates activities and research inour classrooms (Murphey et al., 2014):
Findings suggest that pedagogical applications of possible selves theory would do wellto include active participation of imaginings within a lived experience, proximal peers
and environments, past and present self guides, and possible others. (p. 242)
In the present study, we explore how students as well as teachers can develop themselves
as better language learners and teachers by visualizing possible others together.

Methodology
Research participants
There are two sets of research participants for the present study: students who are taking ourEnglish courses and we ourselves, their teachers.
The student participants were undergraduate students from private universities in the Kanto region of Japan, taking English communication courses taught by two of us authors, Yoshi
and Tetsuya. Yoshi focused on one class (n = 6), while Tetsuya focused on four classes in two
universities (n = 173). The students’ subject majors and English levels were varied. The statedobjectives and contents of the English courses were also different, but the common point wasthat the students were encouraged to communicate in English through various tasks or activities (e.g., conversations, games, speeches, discussions, and presentations).
The other participants in this study were the teacher-researchers, not only Yoshi and Tetsuya themselves, but the whole research team, which includes two others, Tim and Joe. For
several years the four of us have been collaborating as a research team, conducting studies
into our classrooms together, yet also conducting our classes and studies separately, to support both our collaborative and individual pedagogical and research endeavors (see Murphey,
Falout, Fukada, & Fukuda, 2015). Although we conducted this Ideal Classmates study in all of
our respective classes, due to limited space only Yoshi’s and Tetsuya’s cases will be presented
in this paper.

80

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

Research techniques
We utilized three types of research techniques: (a) surveys, (b) Critical Participatory Looping(CPL; Murphey & Falout, 2010), and (c) teaching journals.
In the beginning of the semester we used surveys to ask two open-ended questions: first,
the Ideal Classmates prompt (Q19), “Please describe a group of classmates that you could
learn English well with. What would you all do to help each other learn better and more enjoyably?” and second, the Ideal Teacher prompt (Q20), “Please describe how you think yourteachers can best help you develop your English skills or English learning skills. What exactly
would they do to support you and help you learn effectively and enjoyably?”In the middle of the semester, we asked a My Classmates prompt to encourage continuing
visualizations of potential Ideal Classmates behaviors both quantitatively (Qs 1—6) (1 = Not atall; 6 = Yes, very much) and qualitatively (Q7):(Q1)

My classmates are helping me to learn English.

(Q2) I am helping my classmates to learn English.
(Q3) My classmates are helping me to enjoy English.
(Q4) I am helping my classmates to enjoy English.
(Q5) I am learning English better by myself than with my classmates.
(Q6) I am enjoying English better by myself than with my classmates.
(Q7) In what new ways are your classmates helping you to learn and enjoy English in thelast few weeks?
Lastly, at the end of the semester, Tetsuya used an extra prompt to promote his students’further reflection of their classmates’ interpersonal behaviors during the semester: (Q22)
When did you think your classmates were good classmates?
Critical Participatory Looping (CPL) is a process that involves collecting open-ended responses or quantitative data from the students, compiling it all together, and showing the
responses in full, and anonymously, to the whole class. Sometimes these responses are also
shown across different classrooms. For the present Ideal Classmates study, we mostly loopedback students’ responses by printing them out and distributing them on paper. There are
additional ways of looping. For example, in Joe’s classes, weeks after the paper copies were
distributed, students’ compiled responses were projected onto a large classroom screen, andstudents took pictures of their looped ideas with smartphones. Tim, on the other hand, selected certain responses from students to include in classroom newsletters.
For the present study, each teacher-researcher wrote in his own respective teaching journal about the use of Ideal Classmates in his classes and how the students were responding
to each other. We shared our reflections in a private online forum open only to our researchteam. We occasionally read each other’s reflections and wrote comments right into eachother’s journals.
The social spaces in which we engaged ourselves in the present study can be perceived asaffinity spaces (Gee, 2004), a kind of social space for situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Situated learning is a type of learning through engagement in social practice or interaction
with others of different backgrounds but who share common goals. Affinity space can be understood as “a place or set of places where people can affiliate with others based primarily onshared activities, interests, and goals, not shared race, class, culture, ethnicity, or gender”(p. 73). While the four of us have somewhat different national, cultural, and historical backLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201781Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

grounds, our bonding as well as friendships were strengthened through the engagement of
this collaborative study.

Presenting findings in a narrative form
We arrived at our findings, which we present here in a narrative form, by our collaborativereflection upon data triangulation: students’ comments collected in different types of surveys,
the writings of our journals, and students’ comments or voices collected in the classroom.
The narrative approach has been widely adopted in the field of TESOL (Barkhuizen, 2011;
Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014) because it enables vivid descriptions of “language teaching
and learning as lived experiences” (Barkhuizen, Benson, & Chik, 2014, p. 12). In the following
section of the paper, we share two narratives based on Yoshi’s and Tetsuya’s classroom experiences as teacher-researchers, both of which were constructed by focusing on different classactivities and students’ responses—and both use first person singular perspectives, i.e., “I.”

Findings
Recreated Narrative of Yoshi’s Class
The goal of my [Yoshi’s] English class was “to become able to complete different types oftasks in the medium of their target language (TL), English,” and each of the lessons was
structured as follows:
1.

Warm-up (15 min.):– Short English speech / conversation

2. Main activity (65 min.):– Performing speeches for invitation of Tokyo Olympics / Discussion / Presentation
3. Reflection sheet (10 min.)After the 15-minute English warm-up for each class, the main activities included: performing English speeches as invitations to the Tokyo Olympic games; group discussions on
a variety of topics (e.g., developing a special lunch menu for male students at a university;
redesigning a lounge adjacent to the university’s library; developing a travel plan for a groupof international students studying in Japan); and group presentations of travel plans that students developed.
My 2016 English class was quite small, with 12 students in the first lesson and in the following lesson, there were only 6 students (Yoshi’s journal, first and second lessons, April 11
and 18, 2016). I was a little bit disappointed but I realized later on that the small class size
facilitated my ability to observe each of the students’ performances, and I could also attend
in more detail to their voices shared during activities in the classroom as well as from theirreflection sheets and the surveys.
I used survey prompts to conduct one activity for Ideal Classmates (Q19. Please describe agroup of classmates that you could learn English well with. What would you all do to help each otherlearn better and more enjoyably?) and another for Ideal Teacher (Q20. Please describe how you
think your teachers can best help you develop your English skills or English learning skills. What exactly
would they do to support you and help you learn effectively and enjoyably?). Below are descriptions
from my journal:

82

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

I asked my students to respond to the Ideal Classmates and Ideal Teacher prompts onlarge drawing papers and to share their responses with the whole class. This meansthat in addition to conducting classroom activities and imagination-based interventions, I was able to collect the data and loop it back to the students at the same time. I
decided to try the activity during the lesson, because prior to it only 2 students out of
the 6 answered the survey in their free time at home [I confirmed before conducting
the activity their willingness of answering the survey questions. They mentioned thatthey did not answer the online survey just because they rarely check e-mails, including my e-mail notification for the online survey.] From their responses, the students
shared images of their Ideal Classmates as follows (names are pseudonyms and all
students’ quotes are translated except where noted.):ʶʶ

Actively speak English (Naoki)

ʶʶActively speak English, without being afraid of making mistakes (Hideki)ʶʶActively speak to promote mutual communication (Ken)ʶʶAttend to other students’ talk / communicate in English (Kanako)ʶʶHave clear goals (Kenji)ʶʶ

Have about the same level of English skills (Yuta)
						
(Yoshi’s journal, third lesson, April 25, 2016)

Their Ideal Classmates were found to be active students with compassion and clear goals.
These all corresponded to characteristics included in the 16 descriptors of Ideal Classmatesderived from the responses of 449 students taking our English communication courses previously (Murphey et al., 2014), such as: (3) Show passion and enthusiasm in learning English: getexcited and don’t give up, and (10) Interact with classmates who have similar English abilities, and canbe near peer role models.
Their Ideal Teacher images, on the other hand, were as follows:ʶʶ

Talk in English (Kanako)ʶʶSpeak English confidently (Ken)ʶʶKeep the ball rolling in conversations with students (Naoki)ʶʶProvide Students with many opportunities for English communication in class, andspeak in English here and there (Hideki)ʶʶPresent ways to learn English (Yuki)

ʶʶ

Suggest ways to use English skills for strengthening motivation to learn (Kenji)							
(Yoshi’s journal, third lesson, April 25, 2016)

Hearing the students’ Ideal Teacher images shared in the classroom, I found that they expect English teachers to speak actively and with confidence, and promote students’ conversations, and suggest to them how to improve and to utilize their TL skills.
Inconsistent with their Ideal Classmates images, students were quiet and passive in 30-second short English speeches offered as warm-up in the beginning of the semester, although
they were relatively active in the following main activity (Yoshi’s journal, first lesson, April 11,
2016; Yoshi’s journal second lesson, April 18, 2016). However, reading their comments written
in the reflection sheets, I realized that being quiet and passive does not necessarily mean that
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201783Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

the students had no English-learning motivation:… I felt that small talk [Q&A following a short English speech] is really important. I would like to
ask more questions in English spontaneously. (Kanako, April 18, 2016)
I tried continuing the conversation [during Q&A following a short English speech] by actively
asking questions in English. (Yuta, April 18, 2016)
Both Kanako and Yuta showed their willingness of asking more questions during the Q&A
following the other students’ speeches, although their attempts were not taken up by theother students. The other students themselves commented about this in their reflection
sheets, giving reasons why they became so passive during the Q&A.
… I sometimes forget how I should ask questions [during Q&A after the other students made ashort speech] … (Kenji, April 18, 2016)
I become nervous during the speech, feeling strange that Japanese students were communicating in English. (Naoki, April 18, 2016)
While Kenji did not know how he could ask questions in English to the other students about
their speeches, for Naoki, his nervousness came from speaking English in front of other Japanese students and it prevented him from making his speech self-assertively. My researchteammate, Tetsuya, posted a comment later in my journal after reading the above and otherstudents’ comments:
I understand all the comments made by Yoshi’s students. They feel awkward in having
English conversations among Japanese students only, and also they find it difficult to
express themselves in speaking English. Those feelings are shared with a lot of speakers of English as a second language, including me! [May 7, 2016]
Reading my students’ and Tetsuya’s comments, I decided to adjust my ways of teaching,starting with the warm-up activity itself, to promote their class engagement. First, referringto the students’ Ideal Teacher images, suggestions such as “talk in English (Kanako),” “speak
English confidently (Ken),” and “keep the ball rolling in conversations with students (Naoki)” were elicited from my students. Thereafter, I started joining in the short speech activities, making my own short speeches in English in front of them (Yoshi’s journal, third lesson,
April 25, 2016). I had hoped they could see that their feedback had affected me. I also triedcreating an atmosphere where the students could speak English in comfort by sitting in acircle during the activity. Actually, this was advice from another research teammate, Joe, whowrote in my journal: “… last year I had a class of 7 students in a big room, and every week
they pushed away desks and made a circle of chairs” (Joe’s comment, April 24, 2016). I feltthat it would help make their participation in activities more interactive and help create an
atmosphere where they could speak openly in comfort.
Although I made these adjustments, the classroom atmosphere during the warm-up did
not change much. One of the students, Kanako, who is outgoing and frank, and Kenji, who
is introverted but reflective, wrote the following comment in their reflection sheets after thelesson.
You are all gloomy and taciturn. We should communicate more! … (Kanako, April 25, 2016)
As I was actively speaking, I hesitated to make my next utterance because other students werequiet. (Kenji, April 25, 2016)84

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

Kanako also made a similar type of comment during the warm-up activity within the classroom in the next lesson (Lesson 4).
Why is everyone in a dismal mood? (Yoshi’s journal, fourth lesson, May 9, 2016)
As some students commented in the reflection sheets and also during the lesson, overall mystudents were still quiet in third and fourth lessons. However, I started to see some change intheir thinking by reading their comments in reflection sheets collected during the lessons. I
found that while they were quiet, they analyzed in detail their own English performance on ameta-cognitive level:
We do a short speech today, but probably I can’t eye contact. I try to eye contact next speech. [sic,original English] (Naoki, April 25, 2016)
Although I tried speaking actively, the lack of English vocabulary and ability of paraphrasingwords made it difficult to continue my conversation, and then I gradually became passive, creating an awkward atmosphere. (Kenji, April 25, 2016)
It is important to speak clearly and briskly while making eye contact. I might make mistakes inpronouncing some words, but I felt that I needed to speak while looking at the audience. I would
like to expand my vocabulary and to relearn English grammar to be able to transmit my message
to the audience clearly, even if it were done in only a simple manner. (Hideki, May 9, 2016)
The students seemed to realize through the analysis of their own performance what prevented them from performing well or what kinds of skills they need to acquire to perform inbetter ways in the warm-up activity.
Seeing a glimmer of hope in the students’ comments in reflection sheets, I made further
adjustments in the fifth lesson (May 16, 2016). To make the warm-up activity more interactive and to create a more relaxing atmosphere, I changed the activity to a short, 5-minuteEnglish conversation. Students now conversed three times, each time in different pairs, andeach time I also joined in one of the groups (Yoshi’s journal, fifth lesson, May 16, 2016). Additionally, I played music (relaxing but not too slow) to promote their casual conversations. I
also encouraged them, asking them all to stand up so that they could more easily make gestures and body movements during the conversations.
After these adjustments, I started recognizing the students’ positive reactions in the lesson.
… At every rotation, all pairs were able to continue their conversations for five minutes,
actively asking questions to each other. I could also readily see everyone smiling during
the conversations. (Yoshi’s journal, fifth lesson, May 16, 2016)
The students’ positive reactions also started being reflected in their reflection sheets in fifth
and the following lessons.
I think that I was able to speak English activity and take the lead in English conversations ...
(Kenji, May 16, 2016)
I was able to ask questions to my conversation partners to continue our conversation … (Yuta,
May 30, 2016)
While I wasn’t able to speak well during small talk, I gradually became able to talk longer in thethree conversations!! … I will do my best next time, too!! (Kanako, May 30, 2016)
Shortly thereafter, I was able to recognize positive comments in the second My Classmatessurvey conducted in the following week (Lesson 13, July 11, 2016).
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201785

Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

My classmates’ attitudes show they are listening to my talks. (Yuta, second My Classmatessurvey, July 11, 2016)
Although the students’ English proficiency levels are varied, I felt that everyone was eager totalk. Because of that, I was able to enjoy the small talk [short English conversations] in every
lesson. When my classmates wanted to say something but couldn’t express it well, I learned how
I should respond to them. (Kanako, second My Classmates survey, July 11)
These comments imply that not some but all of the students were eager to speak English(while they still have some difficulty in expressing their thoughts in the TL). Kanako, whoused to make negative comments in reflection sheets and within the classroom in the beginning of the semester, wrote this positive comment regarding the warm-up activity. The
attitudes or behaviors described in the above comments were now more consistent with their
Ideal Classmates images than when shared before with the whole class at the beginning of thesemester.

Summarizing in Yoshi’s affinity space
RQ1: How do our students transform their class participation or engagement through theirvisualizations of Ideal Classmates?
RQ2: How can we as teacher-researchers transform our ways of teaching our English
classes in better ways through hearing and reflecting our students’ voices in thepresent study?
Conducting this case study in focusing on my English course, I came to certain realizations regarding the research questions. About RQ1, I found that, through visualization of Ideal
Classmates, the transformation of students’ class performance and engagement could occur at
two stages: First, at the psychological level, and second, at the physical or performance level. It seemed to take some time for their psychological transformation to be reflected in theiractual class performance. Regarding RQ2, I was able to acquire new perspectives as a language
teacher, which helped me to realize two things: First, there is a risk of judging how much
TL-learning motivation students have by making an assumption based only on their performance or apparent attitudes during class activities. My students often remained passive andsilent throughout what I thought would be easy warm-up activities. However, I noticed byattending to their inner voices shared in reflection sheets and surveys, as well as what theysaid during the lessons, that they were struggling to participate actively. Second, I realizedthat their images of Ideal Classmates could more likely become manifested in the students
themselves when their teacher adjusts or scaffolds toward what they are imagining. This caneffectively promote increases in the frequency and quality of class engagements and create
better learning atmospheres within the classrooms. Through my own adjustments and scaffolding afforded to me, the teacher, by simply asking students what they would like to see
more of in themselves and in their teacher, the students became able to act more like eachother’s Ideal Classmates, and I myself was able to grow as a teacher, possibly more oriented
towards the students’ Ideal Teacher images.

Recreated Narrative of Tetsuya’s Classes
I [Tetsuya] would like to start my section with my first comment in the research journal. I
felt excited about this project, in which I expected to see interactions among students andalso I could collaborate with my students.

86

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

This is the very first entry of Tetsuya’s journal, and I would like to begin my journal
with a comment I found in a book this morning. This book chapter (Toohey & Waterstone, 2004) is about collaborative research among researchers from different places.
They say, “Teacher and researcher collaboration, for example, have been seen as promoting more complete and nuanced descriptions of classroom events and the perspectives of both teachers and classroom outsiders are available for analysis.” (Toohey &Waterstone, 2004, p. 292) As members of a research group ourselves, we believe wecan bring different events and perspectives from different settings. I feel lucky to bein this group and learn from my research friends. — (Tetsuya’s journal, first lesson,
March 31, 2016)

Figure 1. My Classmates Survey Handout.
Soon after I made this comment in my journal, another researcher in the current researchteam, Tim, contributed a different quote in my journal, which was also about the importanceof collaboration in learning. I was very excited about finding another quote, but more excitedthat my voice was heard by another person, and that I was learning from him. This entry wasa powerful motivator for me to start our current research and also to encourage my students
to help each other as we do.
After giving Ideal Classmates and Ideal Teacher prompts (Qs 19 & 20) in the beginning of
the semester, in June, (the eighth lesson of one English communication course offered at
University A), I conducted the My Classmates prompts (Qs1-7), in which we asked students
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201787Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

how much they were helping each other. After downloading the data and calculating the meanscores quickly, I made a handout (Figure. 1). In my research journal I wrote:
Today, I downloaded the data file of the My Classmates survey [Qs1-7] from both universities [where I teach my English communication courses], and made a simple handout. Tomorrow, I will have a short discussion at one university about the data. I believe
it [the My Classmates Survey Handout] is also CPL [Critical Participatory Looping]. —(Tetsuya’s journal, eighth lesson, June 15, 2016)
CPL should not be confined to the qualitative data, i.e., reactions to open-ended questions
or freely written life stories, such as language learning histories. Even after collecting data
through Likert-scale question items, we can quickly make a simple table or a graph, andreturn the data to students and ask them to think about it. In addition, we can also ask themto write their reactions to the handout. In my own classes, students generally enjoyed finding their own results. It might be because the classes I mentioned here are in the faculty ofscience and engineering, and the students tend to be accustomed to finding evidence in figures in tables and graphs. The students also seemed to be interested in differences between
universities. They understood that different universities have different cultures, and groupdynamics are involved in every class at every university. The tables in the handout seemed tobe helpful for their understanding of how diverse students, classes, and universities can be. In
my journal I wrote comments about this class activity as follows.
At [University A], we had a short group discussion about the data. Students seemed
to enjoy the discussions especially about the differences between [University A] and[University B]. For example, about Statement 1, “My classmates are helping me to learn
English,” the average response among [University B] students was 4.92, while the average among [University A] students was 4.09. It means [University B] students thinkthey are supported by their classmates significantly more than [University A] students.
It makes sense to me, because students have much more opportunity to have group
work at [University B]. In the discussion, one [University A] student said that theyshould have help each other more. I hope this discussion session was a good chancefor [University A] students to think about their learning style. — (Tetsuya’s journal,
eighth lesson, June 16, 2016)
Then at the end of the semester, I asked my students an open-ended question within the
My Classmates survey, Q22: When did you think your classmates were good classmates? Incontrast to the Ideal Classmates prompt at the beginning of the semester, in which we attempted to elicit students’ images of Ideal Classmates, Q22 asked students to describe what
they actually did for each other. 74.17% (n = 89) of the students responded, and of thosestudents, a few made neutral comments (e.g., I have no idea) or negative comments (e.g., I
didn’t think so), but 95.51% (n = 85) made positive comments with real examples. I coded
these comments according to the 16 descriptors of Ideal Classmates that the research team
had derived from our action research with other students previously (Murphey et al., 2014).
The 16 descriptors show the images of Ideal Classmates that our past students had, and thecomments analyzed for the present research were what my current students reported doing
during the semester. Quite naturally, after coding the comments of Q22 in terms of the 16
descriptors, not all 16 were matched by my current students. In contrast, as many as 43.82%(n = 39) of the comments were categorized into descriptor # 12 (Help each other in class tolearn: teach vocabulary, explain how to say something in English, etc.). For example, one student commented, “When I don’t understand the question, my classmate helped me hard [sic].
I think my classmates were good classmates.” Another descriptor that many students’ com-88

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

ments matched was # 6 (Actively talk to lots of partners in English in class), into which 12.36% (n = 11) of the students’ comments were categorized.
After collecting, analyzing, and returning the data of my students back to them, I also
found changes inside of myself as a teacher-researcher. Even before conducting this study, I
had believed that engaging in group work and visualizing ideal selves, as a learner and as aclassmate, could generally enhance students’ motivation to study English. At the same time,
it was true that I thought there would be a significant number of students who might be reluctant to participate in these Ideal Classmates activities and also in follow-up discussions.
In fact, one teacher-researcher outside of our research team had told me she was considering this idea for her classes. She said that although she really wanted to incorporate Ideal
Classmates into her lessons, she also worried about the possibility that some of her students
might think that writing about images of their Ideal Classmates and talking about common
ideas among classmates were a “waste of time.” It turned out, however, that almost all mystudents took the question seriously. They also seemed to be enjoying themselves while discussing the common ideas about helping each other and the differences among universities.
Through these experiences, I found myself much more firmly believing that my students
would benefit greatly from answering questions and discussing the reactions, and thus feelingmuch more comfortable that these activities could fit into my tight schedule.

Summarizing in Tetsuya’s affinity space
RQ1: How do our students transform their class participation or engagement through theirvisualizations of Ideal Classmates?
RQ2: How can we as teacher-researchers transform our ways of teaching our English
classes in better ways through hearing and reflecting our students’ voices in thepresent study?
To sum up, in terms of RQ1, during the semester my students had strengthened their senseof belonging to their class. One phenomenon that became apparent is that when I randomly
assigned pairs at the beginning of class each week, I detected more and more greetings andsmiles among them, although it is quite difficult to judge whether the change in the students’attitude or behaviors is solely attributable to our Ideal Classmates procedures. In terms of
RQ2, I felt increasingly comfortable in giving them greater amounts of pair tasks. The Ideal
Classmates activities may have affected how students perceived their classmates and themselves, leading to more active learning. I also found this action research changing me in how I
gave tasks in class, which in turn seemed to have led to more enjoyable group work.

Limitations
Collaboratively visualizing learner and teacher development in affinity spaces seldom happens by accident and often does not happen even with great care. The authors do not see Ideal
Classmates procedures as a Pollyanna practice (something that will solve all our problems),
but modestly as a procedure that invites students and teachers to question and question again
at appropriately spaced intervals their identities, their agency, and their impact on each other. Simply visualizing something once does not mean that it automatically changes one’s
thoughts and behaviors instantly or permanently. However, each reflection and visualization
can contribute to shaping the synaptic structures in our brains, link by link. And with morerevisits to these imaginings, the links become stronger.
We see these reflections and visualizations as openings of educational minds and the shaping of affinity spaces in our classes and out of them. Our data here are not intended to irreLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201789Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

futably present these procedures as pure panacea to the problems of student silence (King,
2013). Rather, we have attempted to present qualitative data, which seems to be supportingthese emerging critical reflections of re-shaping identities, collaborations, classroom atmospheres, student agency, and the general socialization of our classes. We cannot isolate andidentify the Ideal Classmates procedures as a primary cause of the changes that students
made toward behaving in more helpful and active ways in engaging each other in learning
English. We think that our students changed in better ways through the influence of multiple
factors: not only our Ideal Classmates activities, but also their socializing with other students
as well as us, their teachers, English activities we offered, their getting used to the classroom
environments, and perhaps even more influences that we do not recognize. It would be invalid to attribute our students’ change solely to the Ideal Classmates activities. However, we
believe from our own subjective reflections that these procedures at least partly helped ourstudents and ourselves become more socially-sensitive toward each other, especially because
we related to and cared about mutually learning in our affinity spaces.

Discussion and Conclusion
To summarize Yoshi’s and Tetsuya’s narratives of their uses with Ideal Classmates procedures, they both strove to engage their students in community building though challenges,
acceptance, and collaborations. They challenged their students with what they saw as acceptable tasks, and yet they were flexible enough to allow the students to adjust the conditions
to enhance their own learning and create English-learning affinity spaces among themselves
and their teachers. The teachers’ acceptance of their students as key developing practitioners(Allwright & Hanks, 2009) in the present study could send a message that “this is your spaceand your learning,” such that students can invest themselves in the challenge of improving
their English. Both teachers were open to negotiating the aspects of their classrooms in orderto help students learn. We have come to understand that when people work well together onbuilding common understandings of each other, they mutually affirm each other and form
affinity spaces of shared activities, interests, and goals. In the cases presented in this study,
these affinity spaces helped both students and teachers to bond together through shared English activities, interests in English, and goals of learning effectively together.
In the present study, regular feedback received from our students and looped back to themnot only critically informed us teacher-researchers about what our next steps might be, it
created affinity spaces for both the students and us to develop classroom relationships andskills. The affinity spaces co-constructed among students as well as between students andteachers were expanded across our research team via sharing classroom narratives written in
our teaching journals. Hearing our students’ voices embedded in each of our narratives helped
us visualize and discuss how we could develop our relationships with our students, and how
we could further improve our ways of teaching. We realized through the present study thatboth students and teachers cannot visualize their ideal or better selves and then realize thesevisualizations in a vacuum. But when each of us mutually participates actively in our ecological systems, each of us can visualize and grow further in our relations with one another. In
these processes we think we are expanding our reciprocal idealizing (Murphey et al., 2014)
into reciprocal development. By looping our ideas among ourselves and our students, and bylooping these narratives beyond to other teachers (i.e., you, the readers of this paper), we arelooping these explanations forward to an even wider ecology (Falout, Murphey, Fukuda, &Fukada, 2016).
To conclude, when teachers ask students to imagine helpful classmates, valuable imagesof helpful classmates can appear in students’ minds. With further focus upon these images,

90

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

students then begin to identify with what they have seen as something that is possible forthemselves as instead something possible for others—thus becoming their own Ideal Classmates. Also, reflecting on and discussing what students visualize as Ideal Classmates could
also positively influence teachers’ own visualizations and behaviors to reach for better ways
to teach as Ideal Teachers. Teacher-researchers observing themselves within their own respective classes can learn well enough, but by expanding their perspectives by collaborationin research groups, they can go more deeply with their observations and reflections so thatthey can see the wider picture. By sharing our visualizations of how we—students, teachers,
and readers of this paper—can help each other toward mutually identified common goals, andby observing our own impact upon each other, we all can collaborate to imagine and achievemore.

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to our reviewers for helping us visualize revisions for this paper.

References
Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to exploratory
practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Barkhuizen, G. (Ed.) (2011). Special topic issue: Narrative research in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly,
44(3), 391-590.
Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2014). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning
research. New York, NY: Routledge.
Chan, L. (2014). Effects of an imagery training strategy on Chinese university students’possible second language selves and learning experiences. In K. Csizér & M. Magid (Eds.),
The impact of self-concept on language learning (pp. 357-376). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Dörnyei, Z. (2009). The L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dörnyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.),
Motivation, language identity and the L2 self (pp. 9-42). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Falout, J., Murphey, T., Fukuda, T., & Fukada, Y. (2016). Whole-class self-referential feedback
from university EFL contexts to the world: Extending the social life of information bylooping it forward. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25(1), 1-10.
Fukada, Y., Fukuda, T., Falout, J., & Murphey, T. (2011). Increasing motivation with possible
selves. In A. Stewart (Ed.), JALT2010 Conference Proceedings (pp. 337-349). Tokyo: JALT.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Gilbert, D. T., Killingsworth, M. A., Eyre, R. N., & Wilson, T. D. (2009). The surprising powerof neighborly advice. Science, 323(5921), 1617-1619.
Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2007). Prospection: Experiencing the future. Science, 317(5843),
1351-1354.
King, J. (2013). Silence in the second language classroom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press.
Lockwood, P., Jordan, C. H., & Kunda, Z. (2002). Motivation by positive or negative rolemodels: Regulatory focus determines who will best inspire us. Journal of Personality andSocial Psychology, 83(4), 854-864.
Lockwood, P., & Kunda, Z. (1999). Increasing the salience of one’s best selves can undermine
inspiration by outstanding role models. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(2),214-228.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201791Collaboratively Visualizing Possible Others

Mackay, J. (2014). Applications and implications of the L2 motivational self system in a
Catalan EFL context. In K. Csizér & M. Magid (Eds.), The impact of self-concept on language
learning (pp. 377-400). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Magid, M. (2014). A motivational programme for learners of English: An application of theL2 motivational self system. In K. Csizér & M. Magid (Eds.), The impact of self-concept on
language learning (pp. 333-356). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954-969.
Munezane, Y. (2015). Enhancing willingness to communicate: Relative effects of visualizationand goal setting. The Modern Language Journal, 99(1), 175-191.
Murphey, T., & Arao, H. (2001). Reported belief changes through near-peer role modeling.
TESL-EJ, 5(3), 1-15.
Murphey, T., & Falout, J. (2010). Critical participatory looping: Dialogic member checking
with whole classes. TESOL Quarterly, 44(4), 811-821.
Murphey, T., Falout, J., Fukada, Y., & Fukuda, T. (2015). Research group dynamics withcritical collaborative creativity. Explorations in Teacher Development, 22(2), 33-36.
Murphey, T., Falout, J., Fukuda, T., & Fukada, Y. (2014). Socio-dynamic motivating throughidealizing classmates. System, 45, 242-253.
Murray, G. (2013). Pedagogy of the possible: Imagination, autonomy, and space. Studies inSecond Language Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 377-396.
Nitta, R., & Baba, K. (2015). Self-regulation in the evolution of the ideal L2 selves: A complex
dynamic systems approach to the L2 motivational self system. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D.
MacIntyre, & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivation dynamics in language learning (pp. 367-396).
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Ogawa, H. (2012). Near Peer Role Modelling (NPRM) Examples: Videoing in Iwate.
PeerSpectives, 8, 12-13.
Robinson, M. D., & Tamir, M. (2011). A task-focused mind is a happy and productive mind:
A processing perspective. In K. M. Sheldon, T. B. Kashdan & M. F. Steger (Eds.), Designing
positive psychology: Taking stock and moving forward (pp. 160-174). Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Sampson, R. (2012). The language-learning self, self-enhancement activities, and self
perceptual change. Language Teaching Research, 16(3), 317-335.
Sampson, R. J. (2016). Complexity in classroom foreign language learning motivation: A practitioner
perspective from Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Singh, S. (2010). Near-peer role modeling: The fledgling scholars education paradigm.
Anatomical Sciences Education, 3(1), 50-51.
Smith, R. (2015). Exploratory action research as workplan: why, what and where from?
In K. Dikilitas, R. Smith, & W. Trotman (Eds.), Teacher-researchers in action (pp. 3745). Faversham: IATEFL.
Toohey, K., & Waterstone, B. (2004). Negotiating expertise in an action researchcommunity. In B. Norton, & K. Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogies and language learning(pp. 291-310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by the following members of the Learner Development Journal Review Network: Dexter Da Silva and Katherine Thornton. (Contributors have the option ofopen or blind review.)

92

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Yoshifumi Fukada, Tetsuya Fukuda, Joseph Falout, & Tim Murphey

Author Bios
Yoshifumi Fukada, Ed. D. (University of San Francisco), is Professor in the Department ofInternational Studies at Meisei University, Tokyo. His research interests include L2 learners’
and users’ dynamic identities, their agency in their English learning and social interactions(in and out of class). One of his recent publications is A language learner’s TL-mediated socializing in affinity space of the host country: An autoethnography (Study Abroad Research in Second
Language Acquisition and International Education, 2017). Email: fukayo2@hotmail.com
Tetsuya Fukuda, Tenured Instructor at International Christian University in Tokyo, and alsoa PhD candidate in Education at Temple University Japan Campus. He has internationally published papers and book chapters mainly on psychological issues in language learning,
including L2 motivation, group dynamics and school belonging. His other research interests
are program evaluation, test analysis, and World Englishes. He has been an editorial board
member of JALT Pan-SIG proceedings and also of multiple school journals. Email: tfukuda@
icu.ac.jp
Joseph Falout, Associate Professor at Nihon University, has authored or coauthored over 40
publications of papers and book chapters about language learning affect, motivation, andgroup dynamics. He has received awards from JALT for publications and presentations, andhe edits for JALT’s OnCUE Journal and the Asian EFL Journal. Collaborations include creating
the foundations of critical participatory looping, present communities of imagining, and idealclassmates. Recent book chapters focus on learner past selves and teacher job crafting.
Tim Murphey (PhD Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland) TESOL’s Professional Developmentin Language Education series editor, co-author with Zoltan Dörnyei of Group Dynamics in the
Language Classroom (CUP), author of Music and Song (OUP), Language Hungry! (Helbling), The
Tale that Wags (Perceptia,), Teaching in Pursuit of Wow! (Abax), and co-editor with Jane Arnold
of Meaningful Action (CUP), researches Vygotskian socio-cultural theory (SCT), sociobiology,
and positive psychology while soft assembling community, play, and music at Kanda University of International Studies. Email: mitsmail1@gmail.com

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201793

RESEARCH PAPER
Parallel Journeys: Creating andConceptualising Learning in Language
Counselling
Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson, University of Helsinki Language Centre
In this paper, we explore how learning is conceptualised and created in language counselling sessions in the ALMS
(Autonomous Learning Modules) programme at Helsinki University Language Centre. In ALMS courses, learners reflect in order to plan, develop, and evaluate study programmes which fulfill their foreign-language degree
requirement. This reflection partly happens in counselling sessions, with the learners conceptualising learningand themselves as language learners, in discussion with their counsellor. One of the aims of this discussion is toafford the emergence of new learning and new learning selves. The counsellor’s experience is a parallel process:We create and recreate our counsellor selves through each counselling encounter. Moreover, in exploring thisphenomenon, we conceptualise our counsellor selves through practitioner-research and engage in the reflective
practice we ask of our learners. In our inquiry, we use free-writing after counselling sessions as a method of inquiry(Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005), both to create and analyse data. The article consists of two practitioner researchaccounts in which we critically examine the free-writing through our theoretical understandings. These accounts
are framed by an introduction, responses to each other’s research, and a coda. In this project, we wanted to experiment with new forms of academic writing. For us, writing from our experience, moving between free writing
and academic text construction was a way of braiding the personal and the academic, making affective interpretations of our counselling encounters, and reconstructing ourselves textually. We believe this interactive process ofreflective writing and critical discussion has the potential to afford learning and self-discovery for both counsellors
and students.
本稿では、ヘルシンキ大学ランゲージセンターの自律的学習モジュール（ALMS）
プログラムのカウンセリングセッションにおいて、学習がどのように概念化され、創造されるのかを考察した。ALMSコースでは、学習者が、自らが履修する言語プログラムを、計画、構成、そして評価するために省察を行う。この省察の一部はカウンセリングセッションの中で行われ、学習者は、自身の学習および学習者としてのあり方
を、カウンセラーとのやり取りを通して概念化する。本稿の目的の一つは、新たな学習方法と、今までにない学習者像の提起である。カウン
セラー自身の経験も学習者のそれと平行しており、毎回のカウンセリングを通じて、自身のカウンセラー像を追求していく。さらにこの現象を深く追求する中で、われわれはカウンセラーとしてのあり方を実践研究の中で概念化し、カウンセリングセッションで学習者に課しているものと同じような省察を、自らも行うようにした。本研究はmethod of inquiry (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005)として、カウンセリングセ
ッションの後に行われる自由記述を用いて、データを収集し分析した。本稿は、参加者二人の実践研究から構成されており、集められた自由記述は私たちの理論的解釈に基づいて分析された。これら二つの実践研究は導入、研究参加者相互によるフィードバック、そしてまとめからなっている。本研究において、我々は新たな形の学術文書様式を試みた。我々にとって、カウンセリングでの経験を記録し、自由記述と学術文書を行き来することは、個人的な経験を学術理論に組み込む一つの方法であり、カウンセリングで直面したことを効果的に解釈し、文字を通してカウンセラーとしての自分自身を再構築する方法ともなった。このような双方向的な省察と建設的ディスカッションの機会は、
カウンセラーと学習者の双方に学習と自己の再発見を促す可能性を与えるものと思われる。

Keywords
language counselling/advising, practitioner research, reflective/ experiential writing, professional development,
learner/counsellor reflective practice

キーワード
言語カウンセリング/アドバイジング、実践研究、省察的/経験的ライティング、専門的能力の開発、学習者/カウンセラーのリフレクティブ・プラ
クティス

Language counselling, as we practice it in the ALMS (Autonomous Language Learning
Modules) programme at the University of Helsinki, involves a student and their counsellor meeting to discuss language learning. It is a form of language advising, drawing
on humanistic counselling and language teaching (Carson & Mynard, 2012, p. 5) to promote

94

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

and support learning and learner autonomy. However, as ALMS counselling has emerged in
our unique context so, too, each counselling meeting differs as individual students and theircounsellors plan and reflect on learning.
In this paper, we—Leena Karlsson and Fergal Bradley, ALMS counsellors—explore our own
counselling in relation to our students’ learning processes during a semester-long ALMS
course in spring 2016. We use a cycle of free writing after our counselling sessions, and considered commentary on the resulting texts, to reflect on the role of counselling in our students’ learning journeys on their ALMS courses. We also explore our counsellor selves andhow they grow and develop during the project. In this sense, our paper describes parallel
journeys of students and counsellors in ALMS.

What is the ALMS Programme?
ALMS (Autonomous Language Learning Modules) is an English course, one of several options for students at the University of Helsinki to fulfill the required foreign-language studies component of their degrees. The students are primarily Finnish, and Finnish-speaking,undergraduate students working towards degrees in one of the university’s 12 faculties. The
course’s underlying philosophy is learner autonomy, in that, after two awareness-raisingsessions, students design, carry out and reflect upon their own programme of study in order
to complete the course (for more information see Karlsson, Kjisik, & Nordlund, 1997, 2007).
Students may attend a variety of support groups to practice and develop their language skills
and knowledge, and many also create groups of their own. However, many also choose to
do part of their work independently. The starting level for the course is nominally B2 on the
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In practice, however, students
are often above or sometimes below this level. We ask ALMS students to consider the statedcourse objectives as a factor when planning a course that is personally relevant for them.
ALMS has few formal requirements, the primary ones being that students keep a learning
diary and come to three counselling sessions. In the diary—or log, blog, or portfolio, the exact
format is not important—students record their work and reflect on it, in writing. Reflection
on language learning and language use occupies much of the awareness-raising sessions
at the beginning of the course. These two compulsory sessions are the only official groupmeetings of an ALMS course. Comprising roughly 20 students, the groups are often faculty-specific, but this does not mean the students will necessarily work together or even meetagain. The aim of these sessions is to start the reflection process and to support the students
in developing a learning plan for the course. Students engage in and with various reflection
models, methods and tools, such as completing the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(SILL) (Oxford, 1990), writing language learner histories, and free writing about and discussing previous language encounters. They also learn about the practicalities and possibilities of
ALMS: sharing ideas, asking questions, reading blogs and logs donated by former students,
signing up for and creating support groups, and writing their own plans for the course. The
reflection and planning—looking backwards and forwards—continues in the learning diaryand the counselling sessions.

The Role of Counselling
ALMS students come to three counselling sessions throughout their course—at the beginning,in the middle, and at the end. These counselling sessions are the primary contact students
have with the responsible teacher on the course (their ALMS counsellor), who also leads theawareness-raising sessions at the beginning. Taking place at different stages, the counselling
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201795

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counsellingsessions play different roles in a student’s course. In the first session, students look back attheir learning histories and plan their course based on this, echoing Kramsch’s (2004), “remembering how and imagining what if.” In the second counselling session, students discuss
the course in progress: their learning and the reflection on it in their diary. Finally, the third
counselling session involves looking back and evaluating their learning, and looking forward
to their future as language learners and users.
In ALMS, we view counselling as a holistic process, which involves the whole person: theirstudies, their personal, and their professional lives, and their pasts, presents, and futures.
Counselling is also dialogic, in that students and counsellors discuss the course plan together and the counsellor tries not to dictate or tell the student what to do on their ALMS course.
Ideally, it is the learner in the leading role—taking charge of their own learning (Holec, 1981,p.3)—with the counsellor advising, empathising or challenging as needed, but above all listening and responding. Counselling is also an autobiographical and experiential process.
Students tell stories about themselves and their language experiences, sharing them with thecounsellor, who may share their own stories and experiences in return. This sharing involves
the building of a relationship between student and counsellor, involving empathy, respect,and genuineness (Mozzon-McPherson, 2012, p. 48).

This Project: Reflective Writing and Practitioner Research
Since it began in the mid-1990s, ALMS has always been inquiry oriented, with a tradition ofpractitioner research (see, for example, Karlsson, Kjisik, & Nordlund, 1997; Karlsson, 2008;
Karlsson & Kjisik, 2011; Kidd & von Boehm, 2012). Recently, we have used methods such as
peer group mentoring (PGM) (Heikkinen, Jokinen, & Tynjälä, 2012) as a support network
and a means of professional development. The PGM meetings involve counsellors sharing
stories, free writing, and reading literature from the field of language advising. This work
has prompted further practitioner research, such as a recent project, inspired by Dörnyei
and Kubanyiova’s (2014) work on vision and motivation, where nine counsellors wrote toeach other about their visions of future counselling selves (Bradley & Karlsson et al., 2016).
This paper arises, then, from a culture of reflective writing and an attitude of inquiry (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). We wish to take up Laurel Richardson’s (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005)
idea of writing as a method of inquiry but, as educators first, we also want our inquiry to be
non-invasive and integrated into the counselling pedagogy (see the principles of Exploratory
Practice, Allwright, 2003; Allwright & Hanks, 2009).
Through our PGM meetings, we became interested in how we, as counsellors, experience
our students’ reflective processes and the creation of new learning and new learning selves,as this happens in the counselling sessions. We also see a parallel between our learners’
personal reflection process in ALMS and our own: through the counselling encounters andour practitioner research, we discover and create our counsellor selves, by doing the reflective practice we ask of our learners in ALMS. So for this project, we ask the question of howlearning is conceptualised and created in counselling. Not expecting a single, simple answer,
we work for understanding of our own counselling and our students’ learning.
To explore the question, our first stage was free writing—pen on paper in a notebook—after our counselling sessions throughout one semester. This free writing then formed the basis
for critical commentaries—typed on the computer—in which we examined and discussed ourfree writing our free writing through our theoretical understandings, interests and concerns.
The process formed a cycle of immediate reflection and considered response on our counselling, which influenced one another, as we moved from first counselling to second and third
during the semester. The writing, and then reading of ourselves, developed into a shared crit-96

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

ical discussion of our practice as counsellors and our experiences and understandings of thestudents’ learning in their ALMS courses.
Our concern in this project was with writing as an expression of autonomy. We use reflective and free writing with our students as a way of helping them to recognize and appreciate
experiential lifewide learning (see Barnett, 2010), and so it seemed an appropriate method for
us to explore our counselling practice and identity. In their diaries, the students write and areshaped by their writing, as are we in our inquiry effort. Writing, at its best, acts as a “glue”
between different sites and experiences of learning. Similarly, counselling sessions encourage
students to draw together their ideas, thoughts, feelings, and experiences related to language
learning, and this is a way to stimulate new learning and help new learning selves emerge.
Thus, reflective writing and counselling can both be seen as critical nodes or hotspots in theecology or complex system of ALMS for both students and counsellors. They can both consolidate past learning and stimulate new learning.
Through writing here in our counsellor voices, we express our autonomy, and this expression emerges from engaging with theory. The theoretical perspectives that shape our thinking, that is, learner/teacher autonomy as a rich ecology (linking elements from complexity
theory and learning ecologies, narrative autobiographical knowing, experiential learning,learning histories, and storied identities) have influenced the methodological choice for thisresearch. Caring for the students’ wellbeing and quality of life and, very importantly, theirownership of learning meant looking for a way of researching that would be pedagogicallymotivated. Thus, turning our gaze upon ourselves, an auto-ethnographical take on the counselling dialogue, felt like an ethical and pedagogically sustainable solution.
In a thought-provoking article, Arthur Bochner (2012) tells the story of why and how he(together with Carolyn Ellis) came to see narrative and autoethnographic storytelling as alternatives to standard academic writing practices in social sciences. He writes about what happened when they decided to think of themselves as writers, as storytellers, and turned an ethnographic eye on themselves and their own lived experiences, a process ours shares features
with. In Bochner’s text, which is both an academic article and a first-person story, we see an
instance of autoethnographic storytelling which suggests how we can write about human experience, “not as reporters but as writers.” This is also what we have tried to do in this paper.

The Structure of the Paper
The paper now splits into distinct but connected texts. The first is Leena’s methodology section, “Feeling My Way” through Writing from Experience. In this section, Leena focuses on writing as a method and as data in this project (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005). This is followed
by a response from Fergal. The third section is Fergal’s results section, Meeting of Minds and aCounsellor’s Reaction. Here, Fergal discusses what he learned through the project and the implications for his counsellor identity. Leena then responds to this. Finally, the Coda, or concluding section, draws together the various strands of the process, reflecting on writing as ameans of professional development. Figure 1 demonstrates the structure visually.
We choose this structure to allow the reader into our different but related experiences andunderstandings and to allow our individual counsellor/researcher voices to express distinct
but connected sense-making processes in this project.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201797Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

Figure 1. The Structure of the Paper.

Leena: “Feeling my way”i through Writing from Experience
I am a language counsellor and have been living and working on the landscape of ALMS stories for 20 years. Language counselling means interacting with feeling, flesh-and-blood
human beings, experiencing complexity and ambiguity, looking for, and often not finding, thewords to express the experience I am going through and to interpret the one the student istelling about. My own and the students’ embodied and emotional reactions to the encountercan be challenging to make sense of in the fleeting moment of counselling interaction. Finding sensitive interpretative tools in a retrospective research effort can be even more challenging.
I believe that language counselling, like teaching, should be reflective and become “an exploratory sort of research” (Vieira, 1997, p. 60). This kind of an educational inquiry should
be on-going, context-sensitive and self-reflexive; in my experience, it is also a process thatshapes my counsellor self as much as I shape my professional landscape through research. I
am a practitioner who believes in pedagogy for autonomy and, as a researcher on the landscape, in always being aware of my own autobiography and its influence on my inquiry. In
my research I have been using methods that, on the one hand, serve the purpose of getting
close to lived and felt experience and, on the other hand, respect and serve the research participants. Autobiographical narratives, I find, are one powerful way of representing lived andcontext-shaped educational experiences. During my thesis writing process (Karlsson, 2008), I
came to see writing as a method of inquiry. For me, it was a way of finding out about myself
as a researcher and my research topic, a way of thinking and learning, of knowing, of discovery and analysis, and also a way of telling. Writing as inquiry (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005)
1.	 I borrow Sarah Ahmed’s metaphorical concept of “feel our way”—inspired by Benesch’s (2012)
work—to describe my writing process and the emotional echoes from previous research and practice.

98

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

means using writing as both a method of data collection and data analysis, as inseparablefrom research. Thought happens in the very writing: the writer thinks, writes and creates.
I am also a facilitator of student writing and a writer of academic and professional texts.
Writing as a process, experience and phenomenon puzzles and fascinates me. As a writer
myself, I have experienced different ways and textual forms of writing, individual and collaborative, in academic contexts and elsewhere. I learnt about writing conventions and practices
at school and university, worried about my lack of skill, experienced writer’s blocks and felt
uncertain about what to write and how to communicate my thoughts to an audience. Theseexperiences have shaped my thinking and influenced the way I see the role of writing in educational and personal lives, that is, what writing can be and do, for myself and my students.
In recent years, I have been involved in experimenting collaboratively with personal kindsof scholarly writing that uses the writers’ autobiographies as a basis (Barfield & Delgado,
2014; Bradley & Karlsson et al., 2016). Both writing projects have been first-hand experiences in relational writing and also meant engaging in professional development from the insidethrough pedagogical conversations, explorations, and collective authoring. Jiménez Raya andVieira (2015) also suggest that we should see inquiry and writing from experience as professional development.
These projects raised my interest in further experiments in how one can/should/might
write about educational experience in an academic text. I became convinced that searching forcollaborative answers for these questions are ways of unlearning and relearning writing so as
to bring it closer to the self and both the intellectual and emotional aspects of lived experience. The discussions with the other writers and the dialogic, multivoiced writing also became
tools for developing a “scholarship of counselling” (see Vieira 2010; 2013), that is, inquiry
into, narrating about, and disseminating our practice.
In my work, there is a need and duty for counsellor reflexivity, which in turn can become
an ethical way of building a bridge between research and practice: being and becoming areflexive practitioner. When students become participants in a research effort, a researcher’s reflexivity should permeate every step in and aspect of the research process. For me,
researcher reflexivity is the capacity to acknowledge how my own experiences and contexts,
possibly fluid and changing, inform the process and outcomes of the inquiry (Etherington,
2004, pp. 31-32).
This means being aware of how my own experiences, thoughts, feelings, motivations, educational, social and personal history, my whole autobiography, inform me all the way throughthe pedagogical and research process, including the final text produced. Over the years, I have
unlearnt certain ways of thinking and stopped seeing genres of writing promoted in schools
and academia as the only legitimate ones. When using autobiographical narratives to capture the experiences on the ALMS landscape, I have written what could be called “braided”(Casanave, 2003) or “interwoven” (Choi, 2016) stories of personal and academic lives. However, during this project, I was determined to learn new writing and interpretative practices(Luce-Kapler, 2004) through writing and for my own writing in the future. In particular, I
needed to work with raising the level of affective interpretation (Luce-Kapler, 2004) of whatwriting is and does in order to counsel and facilitate from my experience.
For this end, I hoped to gather such data in the (free) writing, which I would not otherwise
be gathering: St. Pierre (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005, p. 970) calls this data “dream data”,“sensual data”, “emotional data”, “response data”, and “memory data”. For me, her question “how can one textualize everything one thinks and senses in the course of a study” ties
in with a concern for how to write about experience, how to find the language for emotional

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 201799

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

reactions, how to understand and communicate what emotions do in learning (Benesch, 2012),
and how to construct knowledge yet touch upon unspoken or hidden emotional reactions.
From a previous writing project (Karlsson, 2016), I knew that combining formal and creative uses of language can provide spaces for transformative learning when “less cognitively-driven, more spontaneous and bodily-felt approaches” (Hunt, 2013, p. 15) to learningand writing are used. Free writing was a choice that I knew would open me up to the bodily
nature of writing (Hunt, 2013). How did I then write my way through this project? How did“thinking feelingly” (Hunt, 2013, p. 15) happen? Was emotional data created in the writing?
Emotions mattered and indeed guided me in and through this writing effort and every effort in our hybrid writing project: free writing after counselling, writing commentaries after“rereading myself” and engaging in writing this final text shaped me and gave a potentiallynovel insight into writing the next text. Here is an extract from my free writing after the 3rd
counselling sessions:… also what was happening, sporadically, was the awareness of our bodies, connections between
them and our stories, our moment of being in the world together. My bitten nails and Minttu’s,
Ida’s tears and her tense body, slowly relaxing. Maria’s blushing face, her anxiety worse than
before and how my own shock reaction slowly melted both of us into laughter and good feelings.
Yes, I’ve felt old, feeble, almost smelly with some of these fresh and beautiful nimble bodies. And
this takes me back to auto/biography [reference to a central concept by Liz Stanley I usedin my thesis]: how complex the interrelations between partners in counselling are, the bodies
and the physical space matter here. Fergal wrote about the meeting of minds [reference toFergals’ commentary text I had read]; I became really aware of the meeting of bodies, too.
Bodies that shake, sweat and refuse to carry us to a classroom or a counselling office: anxiety is abodily experience (handwritten text, free writing 9.5.2016)
This then is an extract from a commentary text to the free writing, an example of re-reading myself and of how “thinking feelingly” continues and is woven in with the reading happening at the same time:
Fergal’s “meeting of minds” is a wonderful metaphor for many counselling encounters that succeeded and a valuable goal for the work we do! In these final counsellings, I became very awareof my body and the students’, the “meeting of bodies”, and the connection between our bodies
and our stories at the one moment of being together in the counselling room. Anxiety that I know
so well from many troubled students is a bodily experience. Embodiment (e.g., Horsdal, 2014,
Hunt, 2013), the biological bodies and how bodily processes underlie learning encounters, seems
an avenue to be explored. Horsdal writes about bodies, minds and stories in interaction in autobiographical narratives. Perhaps also considering writing as a bodily action, as a body experience, as an activity and object, in the methodology chapter? My own writing has been happening
using two techniques: 1) free writing after counselling meetings by hand (and also keeping a diary as in filling in notebook after notebook with everything that happens in life), and 2) writing
commentaries with the computer. How have these techniques affected the meanings produced?
Cixous (1993) writes about “writing as a method of embodied and emotional knowing”, which
this project has made a tangible thing (commentary mid-May 2016).
It was clear that writing across the texts acted as self-support and as a way of venting
feelings, but also as a way of getting back into being an academic writer, yet bringing some“feeling held” experiences into the final text being born. All writing seems to be “permeable”(Luce-Kapler, 2004, p. 19) and thus we import elements from other discourses we engage

100

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

in during the time of writing; my discussions with Fergal are a case in point. Writing was
non-linear and complex, it was episodic and fragmentary but it became a “glue” betweensites of learning, an ecology. Embodied and emotional learning from all my interactions withthe writing environment happened.

Figure 2. Leena’s Free Writing Journal.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017101

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

Fergal’s Response to Leena’s Text
Leena writes about writing as a glue between sites of learning, connecting ideas, thoughts andemotions, and holding them together. It is indeed a sticky object (Ahmed, 2004). Counselling,
too, for me, is a sticky object for a student on their ALMS course: it plays a symbolic role intheir learning journey and is associated with a variety of emotions. For counsellors, it is apoint of contact with students and a window into their learning, but it also represents a node
in a complex learning ecology, a potential site for an offshoot of new learning. I think, too, it
is a chance to perform and, thus, reshape our counsellor identity. Leena writes about writingfrom experience, and counselling is the experience as an ALMS counsellor. This is perhaps
why it is so sticky: it connects us to our students, our fellow counsellors and our reading, and
it is the experience when we fully are who we are, that is, language counsellors. So writing
about counselling, in the different modes we have taken here, feels important: a way of making sense, of learning about our students and ourselves.
In this response to Leena’s text, I focus on how it resonates with my own experience of the
project, which follows in the next section. Firstly, I am struck by the different directions our
texts and our sense making processes take.
As Leena mentions, in my text, I focus on meetings of minds, but Leena’s text brings upother meetings or meetings on other levels, which I had not written about or even read into
my experiences. In my text, I chose to write about patterns of encounters which jumped out
at me from my free writing and then, through another reading, about my actions and ways of
being, in relation to those patterns. But left out are other actions, encounters, patterns, andways of being. We are telling stories, spinning yarns, from our experiences, but also in our
analyses. “It is through… storytelling… that humans narrate ways of knowing and being”(Lewis, 2011, p. 505).
These different departures show an ecological reality too: our projects evolving in parallel ways
to different points, just like each ALMS student’s course branches out from the opening sessions.
This suggests that inquiry is never just simply a research question, followed by data collection,
analysis and writing up the results, just as a language course is always more than setting aims
and evaluating outcomes. Leena’s text brings in her reading, her previous research, her own
writing experiences, and the emotions and bodily experiences that interact in this project.
My second response to Leena’s text is an understanding of how the writing feeds back into
counselling. We began this process by writing after our counselling but, by the end, the freewriting was also before counselling: the free writing and the commentary writing informed
later counselling sessions. This complicates and enriches both the counselling and the freewriting, as pedagogical and research experiences. We are writing from experience, but perhaps also experiencing from writing. As we draw academic writing closer to the self, we also
draw ourselves closer to the writing, and our counselling practice is changed too. During the
project, Leena has spoken of being “in” the counselling more because of the free writing andthe commentaries. This, too, is what we ask of our students during their ALMS courses: toreflect on and be more aware of language, how it is being used, and what they are learning.

Fergal: Meetings of Minds and a Counsellor’s Reaction
Three Types of Encounter
Unlike Leena, my history as ALMS counsellor is short—about four years. As well as counselling, I also teach, but I do not see those roles as separate; rather, they are different spaces
to work with students developing their English skills. There is slippage between the roles ofcounsellor and teacher, which brings up interesting questions about my practice and its effect102

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

on student learning. This project, for me, was a chance to explore my counsellor self, but also
counselling itself as a specific learning encounter.
In my free writing, I quickly noticed several patterns emerging from my counselling. I was
writing about three types of encounter in relation to learning being conceptualised and created. My initial texts concerned the first counselling sessions, where students were talking
about their plans and goals for the course. The first type of encounter was one where students
knew what they wanted to do and learn on the course. They were able to present a clear picture of where they were going on the course, and I use this visual metaphor deliberately: it
was on my mind following a previous project on visions of future counselling selves (Bradley& Karlsson et al., 2016), inspired by Dörnyei and Kubanyiova’s (2014) work. So visual metaphors were on my mind, and indeed they appear frequently in the free writing texts. The students too used visual imagery to describe their course plans. For example, I have quoted one
student in my free writing as saying, “I have a picture of how the course is going to go.”
The second type of encounter was one where students were less definite about their ALMS
courses. This is not to say they had bad learning plans or didn’t know what they wanted to
do. Rather, in the counselling sessions, there was more dialogue about the direction of theircourse and their plans were being co-constructed through discussion with me. We were
working on a picture of their learning together. Fleshing out a sketch or focusing a camera
lens were images I used in my free writing.
The third group of encounters were with students who didn’t or couldn’t or wouldn’t painta picture of their ALMS course in counselling. I left the counselling sessions without an ideaof what they wanted to learn or what they were going to do on the course. There didn’t seemto be a vision, or if there was, they weren’t revealing it to me.
There were variations on these types too: when students “pictures” didn’t match up to what
they had written about in their learner histories or needs analyses, or students whose pictures I
was suspicious of or didn’t quite believe. Why were they planning to do all of this reading work,when they were telling me that speaking was what they needed? Or were they actually going to
do all of the things they had put in their plans? And would those things help them to learn?
In the second and third counselling sessions, the discussions gradually moved from planning learning to reporting and reflecting on work done and what was learned. Here again
the same three types of encounter remained. There were students who knew what they’dlearned—or when they weren’t learning!—from different activities, and students who usedthe counselling as a discussion space to make meaning out of the hours they had already put
in. The third type also remained, at least in the second counselling sessions, after which I
wrote about the lack of a shared vision of learning with some students in my free writing.

Figure 3. Three Types of Encounter With Students During Counselling.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017103

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

By the third and final counselling sessions, there did seem to be a meeting of minds withall of my students. However, I do not imply that the course was a complete success for all
students. Some students do drop out of courses and, in my four years of ALMS counselling,
I have had final counselling sessions that ended without a vision of learning shared by bothcounsellor and student. The changes in encounter from one session to the next do seemto suggest that counselling works differently for students at different times of their ALMS
course. The counselling encounter is not stable from one meeting to the next, but rather itchanges in accordance with a student’s learning journey. Through reflection, the student witha clear plan at the start of the course may find their ideas of what they want to learn change
during the course. Likewise, those who are not sure at the beginning may learn more about
themselves as learners and users of English as the course progresses. Students bring these reflections to counselling to tell them or open them up further.
These types of encounter seem to suggest that students use the counselling sessions in different ways and for different purposes on their ALMS courses. For some, the counselling session is a checkpoint or a milestone on their course and, through preparing to report on theirlearning plans or their work in counselling, they come to understandings and make meaning
for themselves. For others, the counselling session is a potential learning experience. They
can discuss plans, share thoughts and get ideas for their learning. The third type of encounter seemed to suggest that some students do not know what the counselling is for or how to
use it and often, in this project, it seemed also to be associated with students who had blocks
or constraints to their learning. One student recognized her problem was not with speaking,but with listening in English. For another, a trip abroad and contact with an internationalgroup made her think differently about her English—she stopped holding herself up to native
speaker standards. For another, already a proficient user of English, the reflection work in
ALMS made him think differently about other languages he was learning and using.

My Role in the Encounters: Affordance or Constraint? I-poems and Negative
Knowledge
So, how was I responding to different students approaching counselling in different ways?
Was I supporting or hindering them, being an affordance or a constraint to their learning? Inmaking sense of this free writing project, I was inspired by the Listening Guide (Gilligan etal., 2003; Gilligan, 2015)—a qualitative approach to analysing data in psychology—to re-readmy free writing texts. In this method, the first listening—listening for the plot—corresponded well with what I had done with Leena. I had made notes on what was happening, what
were the key themes—in my case, the three types of encounter related to individual students’
ALMS courses.
The Listening Guide’s second listening involves creating I-poems: identifying instances ofthe first person singular, the I, and presenting them along with accompanying verbs and perhaps other words or phrases. Koelsch (2015, p. 98) describes the goal of I-poems as being “toforefront the participant’s sense of herself within the story” and argues that they allow for an
emotional reading of the participant’s, in this case my, lived experience. I-poems also seemed
to fit well with Richardson’s (Richarson & St. Pierre, 2005) idea of creative analytical practices, which inspired this entire free writing project.
The following are some extracts from my I-poem, created from the collection of free writing texts (see Appendix A for the complete I-poem). I have chosen these because they brought
to my attention or into focus certain themes related to my counsellor words and actions in theencounters.

104

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

I need to shut up
My butting in
I think I just spouted
I felt I went on a bit
My lecturing
I came out with
I-poem extracts: My talk as redundant or even constraining
I see a frustration throughout my writing with my own talk in counselling, especially in
relation to traditional teacher talk. This regularly felt redundant or even sometimes a constraint on the counselling, not contributing to a student-generated but shared picture oflearning. After one encounter of the third type, where there was no shared picture of learning
emerging, I wrote about the problem of trying to create a picture of learning for the student.
This echoes Dornyei and Kubanyiova’s (2014, p. 36) comment that “the teacher can listen andprompt, but the L2 vision must ultimately become the student’s own.” The prompting comesthrough clearly in the I-poem, but with a sense of reluctance or of being used as a last resort.
In the free writing, I seem to be justifying my explicitly teacher behaviour.
I found myself discussing…. describing
I felt like I needed to question
I felt I had to talk a lot
I made suggestions
I felt I had to emphasise
I-poem extracts: Having to talk / “teaching” as last resort
In one extract from the free writing, I wrote, “today, I had three counselling sessions, and I
had to be different in each one.” The I-poem also sheds light on different ways of being thatwere more positive, where my words and actions seem to afford learning.
I laid off a bit
I try to encourage
I think I asked good questions and allowed responses
I was legitimizing
I tried to open up
I was legitimizing
My letting her speak
I recognize her need to talk about thisI-poem extracts: Allowing, recognizing, validating learning
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017105

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

Bondi and Fewell’s (2003) work with therapeutic counsellors—as distinct from language
counsellors—positions their knowledge as a “negative” or “inverted” knowledge, as opposedto that of say doctors or lawyers who deliver expertise or specialist knowledge to a “patient”
or “client.” This resonates with my I-poem in that, in order to positively contribute to thestudents’ learning, I seem to have to drop my “expert” language teacher knowledge as much
use it. I was listening, giving space and support, responding as a language user and learnerand indeed a person, as much as a language teacher. The teacher or expert role did not disappear, but waxed and waned in a dynamic relationship to other more lay, more human roles.
The question “what did you learn from doing this work?” was often difficult for students toanswer, as they seemed to think I expected a technical answer—50 new words, how to use thepresent perfect, how to write an academic paper. In fact, their learning was often about feelings,
attitudes, awareness, identity in relation to language learning and language use. The students
who feel more comfortable speaking English now with strangers, who realize how much English
they use in their day to day life and studies and are now aware of the potential there for learning,
who see themselves applying to study abroad or writing their master’s thesis in English.
In a recent paper, Kubanyiova (2016) called for language education research to shift in focus
from learner characteristics to learner sense-making. This project forced me to look awayfrom decontextualized characteristics of counsellor behaviour and instead led me into a process of making sense of my own counselling.

Leena’s Response to Fergal’s Text (and a Bit about My Own):
Making Sense of Free Writing
In a previous writing project (Karlsson, 2016) I had experienced how a writing ecology canbe created in which the very writing acts as a glue between different sites of learning whencreative and reflective ways of writing are used. In our current project I wanted to see if freewriting, done retrospectively immediately after counselling meetings, could help me to lookdeeper into, even capture, my self-experience, the emotional elements that I knew were there
but which, without documentation, mostly remained hidden or got forgotten. I also wanted to
explore what emotions can do in counselling and how affective interpretations can be found,
how I can write about them and communicate them in an academic text.
I take as my starting point a sentence in Fergal’s text, a text which, with its wonderful
I-poems, resonated strongly with me: “Today, I had three different counselling sessions and I
had to be different in each one.” Initially, Fergal’s words made me think about the pedagogical sensitivity a counsellor needs; a sensitivity that resembles clinical sensitivity (Lindqvist,2009), a prerequisite for a therapist’s work. A counsellor too is meeting a unique human being, engaging in a unique encounter, listening attentively and with empathy, but potentially
feeling an Otherness yet striving to make sense of it, searching for respectful and encouraging
words, and giving space for the student’s story about her learning. We were both concerned
for the extent and depth of our pedagogical sensitivity and the worry was expressed in our
free writing.
Like Fergal I found a way of making sense of my free writing through counselling literature, in a related and very powerful idea of the writer as the first reader of her own text,
reading and re-reading her Self. Wright and Bolton (2012, p. 26) inspired me into thinking
about free writing as re+cording (re=again and cord=heart). They describe the exploratory
and expressive process of first writing (recording as in “getting closer to the heart”), thenre-reading to the Self (which becomes a way of listening to oneself and can only happen after
the writing), and finally a deep emotional reading of one’s Self and a potential sharing with aconfidential other. Unexpectedly, the way we had planned our project and writing turned out

106

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

to be in harmony with the idea of reflective writing as a personal questioning process (Wright& Bolton, 2012) and an integral part of professional development (Bolton, 2010) and that weboth felt the positive effects.
As a result of my self-exploratory process I became acutely aware of why we have to be,cannot perhaps even avoid being, “different in each counselling session.” This is because of
the unique bodily processes involved in the encounters, the bodies that sweat or shake, theeyes that cry or mouths that laugh. In my third counselling sessions, as documented in thefree writing, emotional and bodily reactions strongly guided the counselling dialogue. I now
claim that this heightened awareness came at least partly from the experience of my ongoingwriting, listening to and re-reading my Self and created, using Hunt’s words, “an increased
sense of inner space for thinking, a willingness to relax cognitive control and be open to akind of learning that comes through bodily-felt and emotional experience rather than justthrough conscious reason” (Hunt, 2013, p. 15).
During this project it became very tangible to me what Horsdal (2014) means by suggesting that bodies, minds and stories are in interaction. In counselling, which I have written
about as a storytelling event (Karlsson, 2013), listening to a student’s story is just as muchan embodied, emotional experience as is reading a story, say, when an entry in a diary or alearning history is brought into counselling. Writing stories is no less corporeal and emotionally charged and puts the writer in contact with her body in its environment. Ahmed (2004)
writes about sticky objects, that is, objects, ideas or words to which emotions adhere. Emotions
tend to shift and move but they also stick to a variety of objects and words in language learning and teaching situations, and, without doubt, to learning diaries and ALMS counselling itself and the very idea of what counts as learning. When normalizing happens with a learning
tool, when “even students’ reflective thought becomes an oppression” (Tochon, 2015, p. x) it
can become a sticky object. Our concern should thus remain to ensure that for students, writing as inquiry or learning should mean open-ended “transgressive explorations” (Kramsch,2009, p. 205), not narrow practices bound to models, rules, rigid instructions or an overpowering concern for accuracy. The writing should ultimately be their own, just like the visionsof learning Fergal referred to in his text. We should respect our students’ right to own theirdaydreaming and timetravelling (Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014), using their own narrative capabilities and forming their personal visions for learning, blurred or sharp, in flux or fixed, ornone at all.

Coda
In this project, we wanted to experiment and explore new forms of (academic) writing. We
wanted to use writing as method and to give it a true prominence in representing lived experience. From what became an ecology of free writing, writing our commentaries, having critical reflective discussions and writing this final text, a mixture of stories emerged in which
we try to make sense of our counselling lives and, in the end, attempt to give an account inwhich we “persuade others to see our perspective” (Choi, 2016, p. 116). We wrote the texts,
this final research text included, in the first person; we made ourselves the objects of ourinquiry; we depicted experience in episodic and fragmentary forms across time; we did not
generalize across cases but tried to give concrete details of individual encounters; we presented the texts as stories with characters and storylines; we brought to light the emotional experiences in the counselling. We wrote “not as reporters but as writers” (Bochner, 2012).
We now hope that our research story manages to convey to the reader the experiential
context of our counselling stories and to touch lightly upon some immediate experiences inour counselling rooms. We hope that the reader can “hear” some of the emotional and emLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017107

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counsellingbodied echoes of the encounters. We hope to have written in such a way that the concretenessof feelings and actions between the participants can be imagined. We hope the story we havewritten resonates with our readers and even creates vicarious experiences in them (Conle,
2000). For us, writing from our experience, moving from free/reflective and creative writing
to academic text construction and back was a way of braiding the personal and the academic,
a way of making affective interpretations of our counselling encounters and a way of textual
self-reconstruction.
Based on our experience, we will wholeheartedly, but with a pedagogical sensitivity, recommend free/reflective writing to our students. Moreover, we will suggest that they consider taking self-exploratory and expressive writing further through engaging in reading andre-reading themselves in their texts and through writing and experimenting with different
genres. The process of inquiry into learning, a parallel to the one described here we think,
could have them walk the bridge from experience to reflection in the texts written, listened
to and read; encountering, analyzing, and interpreting emotions, memories, learning, evensticky issues. They could move between sites of experiential lifewide learning in writing alearning diary or journal, in recording and reflecting on their learning. Such a self-createdecology of writing has the potential of becoming a way of thinking, of self-discovery, a method for emergent learning and an emotional and creative yet analytical process for students inthe same way as it was for us as counsellors.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by the following Review Network members: Jo Mynard and
Ted O’Neill. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

References
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.
Allwright, D. (2003). Exploratory practice: Rethinking practitioner research in language
teaching. Language Teaching Research, 7(2), 113-141.
Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to exploratory
practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Barfield, A., & Delgado, N. (Eds.). (2013). Autonomy in language learning: Stories of practices.
Canterbury: IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG.
Barnett, R. (2010). Life-wide education: a new and transformative concept for higher
education? In N. Jackson (Ed.), Lifewide learning and education e-book [PBworks]. Retrieved
from http://lifewidelearningandeducation.pbworks.com
Bradley, F., Karlsson, L., Amendolara, S., von Boehm, S., Kidd, K., Kjisik, F., Koskinen, L.,
Moncrief, R., & Toepfer, T. (2016). Generating visions, generating knowledge—ALMS
counsellors write! In T. Lehtonen & J. Vaattovaara (Eds.), Näkökulmia kielenoppimisen
ohjaukseen on advising and counselling in language learning (pp. 91-118). Helsinki: University
of Helsinki Language Centre. Retrieved from https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/
handle/10138/159069/Vol_6_Nakokulmia_kielenoppimisen_ohjaukseen.pdf?sequence=2
Bochner, A. (2012). On first-person narrative scholarship. Autoethnography as acts ofmeaning. Narrative Inquiry, 22(1), 155-164.
Bolton, G. (2010). Reflective practice. Writing and professional development (3rd ed.). London: Sage.
Bondi, L., & Fewell, J. (2003). “Unlocking the cage door”: The spatiality of counselling. Social& Cultural Geography, 4(4), 527-547.

108

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

Carson, L., & Mynard, J. (2012). Introduction. In J. Mynard & L. Carson (Eds.), Advising inlanguage learning: Dialogue, tools and context (pp. 3-25). Harlow: Pearson Education.
Casanave, C. P. (2003). Narrative braiding: Constructing a multistrand portrayal of self as
writer. In C. P. Casanave & S. Vandrick (Eds.), Writing for scholarly publication. Behind thescenes in language education (pp. 131-146). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Choi, J. (2016). Creating a multivocal self. Autoethnography as a method. Milton Park: Routledge.
Cixous, H. (1993). Three steps on the ladder of writing. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Conle, C. (2000). Thesis as narrative or “What is the inquiry in narrative inquiry?” Curriculum
Inquiry, 30(2), 189-213.
Dörnyei, Z., & Kubanyiova, M. (2014). Motivating learners, motivating teachers: Building vision in
the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilligan, C. (2015). The listening guide method of psychological inquiry. Qualitative Psychology,2(1), 69-77.
Gilligan, C., Spencer, R., Weinberg, M. K., & Bertsch, T. (2003). On the listening guide:
A voice-centered relational method. In P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes & L. Yardley (Eds.),
Qualitative research in psychology: Expanding perspectives in methodology and design (pp. 157172). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Heikkinen, L. T., Jokinen, H., & Tynjälä, P. (Eds.) (2012). Peer-group mentoring for teacher
development. Abingdon: Routledge.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and foreign language learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Horsdal, M. (2014). The body and the environment in autobiographical narratives andin autobiographical narrative research. In L. Formenti, L. West, & M. Horsdal (Eds.),
Embodied narratives: Connecting stories, bodies, cultures and ecologies (pp. 47-59). Odense:
University Press of Southern Denmark.
Hunt, C. (2013). Transformative learning through creative life writing. Exploring the self in thelearning process. London & New York: Routledge.
Jiménez-Raya, M., & Vieira, F. (2015). Enhancing autonomy in language education. A case-based
approach to teacher and learner development. Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter Mouton.
Karlsson, L. (2008). Turning the kaleidoscope: (E)FL educational experience and inquiry as auto/
biography. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Language Centre.
Karlsson, L. (2013). Lost and found: Storytelling in language counseling. Chinese Journal ofApplied Linguistics, 36(1), 107-124.
Karlsson, L. (2016). Write the fear: Autobiographical writing and language (classroom)anxiety. Scriptum: Creative Writing Research Journal, 3(1), 32-59.
Karlsson, L., & Kjisik, F. (2011). Lifewide and lifedeep learning and the autonomous learner.
In K. K. Pitkänen, J. Jokinen, S. Karjalainen, L. Karlsson, T. Lehtonen, M. Matilainen, C.
Niedling, & R. Siddall (Eds.), Out-of-classroom language learning pp. 85-106). Helsinki:
University of Helsinki Language Centre.
Karlsson, L., Kjisik, F., & Nordlund, J. (1997). From here to autonomy. Helsinki: Helsinki
University Press.
Karlsson, L., Kjisik, F., & Nordlund, J. (2007). Language counselling: A critical and integral
component in promoting an autonomous community of learning. System, 35(1), 46-65.
Kidd, K., & von Boehm, S. (2012). Kaleidoscope, an online tool for reflection on language
learning. In J. Mynard & L. Carson (Eds.), Advising in language learning: Dialogue, tools andcontext (pp. 129-150). Harlow: Pearson Education.
Koelsch, L. E. (2015). I poems: Evoking self. Qualitative Psychology, 2(1), 96-107.
Kramsch, C. (2004). The multilingual experience: Insights from language memoirs. Transit,
1(1), 1-12.
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017109

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. What foreign language learners say about theirexperience and why it matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kubanyiova, M. (2016, August). Towards seeing language learning as a ‘moral symphony’.
Paper presented at the Psychology in Language Learning: Individuals in Contexts
Conference Jyväskylä, Finland.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). An attitude of inquiry: TESOL as a science. The Journal of the
Imagination in Language Learning, 5. Retrieved from http://coreilimagination.com/Books/
V5.pdf#page=21
Lindqvist, A. (2009). Kirjoittaminen itsehoitona ja psykoterapeuttisena menetelmänä.
[Writing as a self-care and psychotherapeutic method] In J. Ihanus (Ed..), Sanat että
hoitaisimme. Terapeuttinen kirjoittaminen [Words that we would handle. Therapeutic writing](pp. 70-96). Helsinki: Duodecim.
Luce-Kapler, R. (2004). Writing with, through and beyond the text. An ecology of language. New
York: Routledge.
Mozzon-McPherson, M. (2012). The skills of counselling in advising: Language as a pedagogic
tool. In J. Mynard & L. Carson (Eds.), Advising in language learning: Dialogue, tools and context(pp. 43-64). Harlow: Pearson Education.
Oxford, R. L. (1990). Language learning strategies: What every language teacher should know. New
York: Newbury House.
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y.
S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 959-967). London: Sage.
Tochon, F. T. (2015). Foreword: The deep turn: Education for autonomy at a time teachers
need hope. In M. Jiménez-Raya & F. Vieira (Eds.), Enhancing autonomy in language education.
A case-based approach to teacher and learner development (pp. vii-xv). Berlin/Boston:
DeGruyter Mouton.
Wright, J., & Bolton, G. (2012). Reflective writing in counselling and psychotherapy. London: Sage.

Author Bios
Leena Karlsson is University Lecturer in English at the University of Helsinki Language Centre, Finland. Her research and publications focus on language advising/counselling, learner/
teacher autonomy, learner diversity, and narrative inquiry and stories in educational settings.
She coordinates the ALMS Programme at the Language Centre. Pedagogy for autonomy is thedriving force in her practice. Email: leena.karlsson(a)helsinki.fi
Fergal Bradley is University Instructor in English at the University of Helsinki Language
Centre, Finland. His teaching and research interests include language advising/ counselling,learner/teacher autonomy, academic writing, identity in second language learning and teaching, and practitioner research as a means of learning and professional development. Email:fergal.bradley(a)helsinki.fi

Appendix A
I-poem Created from Fergal’s Free Writing
1st Counselling
Me thinking metacognitively
I’m counselling
I had

110

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

I think
I forced him to confront
I’m not sure
I had
I ran overI found myself discussing / describing
I also foundI need to be
I had
I find it hard
I’ll go throughI don’t know
I need to shut up, recognize, encourage
I found myself
My butting in
I was reminded
I got personal
I can still feel it
Am I changed?
I’ve given myself
I had
I felt like I needed to question
My questioning
I didn’t have to confront
I laid off a bit
I still seem focused on
I had to be
I found it difficult
I don’t know
I ran into
I try to encourage

2nd counselling
I had
I think
I could see
I saw
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017111

Parallel Journeys: Creating and Conceptualising Learning in Language Counselling

I saidMy discussion
I’d like to read more on(I was) negotiating myself
I was kinda chatty
I think I asked good questions and allowed responses(I was) legitimizing
I tried to open up
I think I just spouted(I was) legitimizing
I felt I went on a bit
My lecturing
I think
My letting her speak
I had
I had to be different
I felt I had to
I made suggestions
I felt I had to emphasise
I came out with
I always worry when
I think
I had to get personal
I would do ALMS
I was able to
I gave some suggestions
I was amazed

3rd counselling
I had
I thinkI’ve asked if I can quote her
I had
I get the feeling
I finished

112

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Fergal Bradley & Leena Karlsson

I will be writing again
I had
I’ve chatted
I feelI feel
I was in a hurry
I was impatient
I recognize her need to talk about thisLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017113

COMMENTARY
Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on
Visualizing Learner Development
Alice Chik, Macquarie University

I

have lived in Sydney for almost three years now, and one thing I am still not used to is the(dis)connection between festivals and weather. It is now October, and it is getting hotter
and hotter by the day, but shopping malls and companies are starting to sell Christmas decorations and promote gift ideas. In some shops, Christmas songs are already chiming merrily
through the PA system with Bing Crosby singing, Do You See What I See? (At least he wasn’tsinging White Christmas). This song reminded me of JALT2015 in Shizuoka City during the last
week of November, 2015. I stayed two extra days in Tokyo, and as one can imagine, Christmas
was in the air and the tune of Do You See What I See? was played everywhere.
Then, someone corrected me, the song is not called “Do You See What I See?,” it is called “Do
You Hear What I Hear?.” I grew up thinking the song was called that because the lyrics include
the line “Do You See What I See?,” and because I never paid attention to the second verse of
the song. And I also thought this song is only about Christmas celebrations, until I read the
Wikipedia entry to the song. The music was written by Gloria Shayne Baker, and the lyrics
by Noël Regney. The song was not just another commercialized Christmas song, it was a plea
for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. In one song, I was wrong about
two things: the title and the origin of the song. I only got Bing Crosby right. This disturbing thought put me in a reflective mood. We all want to see what we want to see, as language
teachers and researchers, but do we necessarily see our learners the ways they want to be
seen? But how do we explore different ways for learners and their development to be seen?

Visualizing Learner Development: My (Visual) Take
When the Learner Development SIG invited me to give a presentation at JALT2015, the conference theme was “Focus on the Learner.” I thought about it and the work I have done, andcame up with “Visualizing Language Learning.” The first thought about visualizing learner development, for me, is the actual visual representation of learner development. I grewup with an education system in Hong Kong that emphasized classroom-based teaching andlearning. However, when I started teaching in schools, the students were developing theirinterests in English by learning outside school and in their own social worlds. My particularresearch interest is in what happens beyond the language classroom, and how learner development evolves over time and space. Visualizing language learning then involved learners
producing artefacts to show various kinds or stages of learner development or reflections on
the learning process. This assumption comes from my involvement in using narrative inquiry
as a research methodology (Barkhuizen, et al., 2014), which considers narrative as “the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1). It
is not only the meaning-making aspect that appeals to me, the idea that telling stories as a“universal human activity” (Riessman, 1993, p. 3) means that this is a way for all language
learners to make their learning processes explicit. Story telling is also a way for learners to114

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Alice Chikboth better understand and construct their learning worlds (Bruner, 1991, 2004). To capture this concept of building knowledge, Barkhuizen (2013, p. 4) coined the term, “narrativeknowledging” for “making sense of an experience through narrating, analyzing narratives,
reporting narrative research, and consuming research findings.”
When exploring the visualization of learner development, my research approach leans toward a literal interpretation of the word “visualize,” and uses a visual narrative approach.
Visual narratives come in different forms: language portrait silhouette (Chik, 2014, 2018),
photo-elicitation (Besser & Chik, 2014), and multimodal language learning histories (Chik &Breidbach, 2011, 2014). There are three main approaches to using these visual narratives fordata collection. First, the visual narratives are treated as artefacts and objects of investigation(Melo-Pfeifer, 2015). Secondly, visual narratives are used as prompts for language learninginterviewing and/or writing (Coffey, 2015; Besser & Chik, 2014; Giroir, 2014). And finally, ahybrid of the above two approaches (Chik, 2014, 2018; Kalaja et al., 2008; Menezes, 2008).
My particular research interest with visualizing learner development is through using freeform drawing (Chik, 2018; Prasad, 2014) or the coloring and labeling of language portrait silhouettes (Busch, 2012; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018; Coffey, 2015). In most of my studies, I am interested in the ways learners develop their language identities, and the resources
they utilize. Through the process of drawing or coloring, a learner systematically selects andhighlights emotions, practices, and peoples that are important to them. However, I did findthat events are usually not being depicted. Another discovery is how frequently learners portrayed themselves as being alone, both physically and metaphorically. In my recent collectionof about 175 language portrait silhouettes completed by primary school students and pre-service teachers, fewer than 15 silhouettes included more than one human figure. These silhouettes were collected in classroom contexts, and this raises a question about what and how
learners actually see themselves and think about the learning process: Do most learners reallythink and feel that they are learning on their own? And if I use another research instrument,
would the learners have framed their learner development differently?

Visualizing Learner Development: The Collective Wisdom
I have discussed one approach to visualizing learner development, and the collection of articles in this special issue has opened my understanding of “visualizing.” To start a discussion:in a classroom setting, who are involved in visualizing learner development? Are we looking
at the teacher visualizing a group of students? An internal gazing by individuals? From one
student to another? How about from one teacher to another?
Trying to graduate from coloring, I am very excited by the work done by Porter and Hilton.
The idea of using a metaphor, and in this case a vibrant growing tree, as a model for learners
to organize their reflection is a perfect way for learners to envision future growth. This tree
metaphor is a particularly apt choice to remind us all that language learning does not happen
over night (or in three months as claimed by many commercialized courses and providers).
And if language learning can be conceived as growth, it requires some loving tender care.
When learners see others’ representation, there are inspirations to think about what othernutrients do my tree needs? This reflective exercise also enables teachers to reflect upon howlearners view their learning as an ecology, and start a reflective dialogue with colleagues.
A continuous dialogue with colleagues is an important way for teachers to pause, rethink,reflect, and re-energize. But Karlsson and Bradley brought out a new dimension of emotions.
Many teachers experience a class and teaching not only professionally, but also emotionally.
Teachers are frequently the first people who notice the ups and downs among learners, butteachers’ own emotions are frequently censured in formal contexts. In their study, Karlsson
Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017115

Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on Visualizing Learner Development

and Bradley use free writing to capture their own emotional reaction in their language consultation. And the understanding of emotions can lead to explicit insights on a creative approach to language learning and teaching.
The externalization and display of an internal construct can possibly jog students to rethinktheir own learning and development. McCarthy’s exercise of having students display theirconceptualization of the meanings of learner autonomy presented a sad truth. In the current
relationship between language proficiency (especially for English learners) and socio-economic advancement, learners are connecting levels of proficiency with all types of reflective
practices. Learner autonomy, as a construct, should be directed toward helping a learner totake charge, make decisions, and possibly chart a growing path. I learn Italian on my own andin my spare time, and make hopelessly slow progress. I still feel that I am an autonomous
learner, because I made choices on what and how to learn, and am satisfied when I can sort ofunderstand some news headlines or recognize some words in a video. But I am not under any
pressure because acquiring some proficiency in Italian is only for my own pleasure, and I do
not receive any economic benefits. But the Japanese students in McCarthy’s study do not havethe luxury of learning English as a recreational activity. Their visual representation of theirinterpretations of learner autonomy reflects the inequalities in the education system.
The idea of keeping up with the Joneses does not necessarily have to be a negative experience. Fukada and colleagues show that visualizing possible helping others could be empowering. By focusing on attributes for positive psychology and learning, learners then visualize
their own possible attainment to develop such attributes. And this could work really well with
Mariani’s use of metaphors to get students to move beyond the learning, and focus on thelearning process. Looking at the different categories of metaphors used by students, it is notdifficult to see that students connect their learning experience beyond the classroom. They
think about how English learning skills can be transferred (or imported) from other types oflearning, or other forms of language learning. This connects to Abe’s work on developing students’ metacognitive knowledge to make learner development explicit.

Concluding Remarks
After reading through the studies in this volume, several questions came into my mind: Whenlearners are put into one classroom, they tend to be categorized as one group. The “English
for Business” students, or the “Year 2” students, so on and so forth. Learner development
tends to be institutionally measured in grades and achievement, and unfortunately, failure as
well. The individual learner disappears into the crowd, and vanishes. However, each study inthis volume asks one question: How can learner development be reconceptualized, especiallyby involving learners in this visualization process? The different researchers adopted different
research methodology that best fitted their teaching and researching contexts. However, one
observation from this collection of work is that the visualization of learner development is not
limited to what happened in the classroom. Regardless of the research focus and methodology, the visualization of learner development revealed more about the learners as people, andhow language learning is connected to other aspects of their social worlds. Development inlanguage learning is connected to the development of the person, and it does not exist as justone isolated event within the classroom.
Coming back to my earlier mistaken musical memory of “Do You See What I See?,” the collection of papers in this inaugural issue of The Learner Development Journal helps make learnerdevelopment explicit. Sometimes, it is important for the teacher to see that development or
the learning process explicitly because it is the students who are singing, do you see what I see(my triumphs and my struggles in learning a language). Sometime it is the teachers singing

116

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017

Alice Chik

the tune because they can see what the students are going through and will be likely to go
through in their language learning journeys, and the teachers are finding ways to help students externalize the mental processes at work. And sometimes it is also an excited shoutfrom one teacher to another when something amazing happened in the classroom. So maybe it is Christmas after all, and visualizing learner development is the best gift in a language
classroom, for both the teacher and the learners.

References
Barkhuizen, G. (2014). Narrative research in language teaching and learning. Language
Teaching, 47(4), 450–466.
Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2014). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning
research. London: Routledge.
Besser, S., & Chik, A. (2014). Narratives of second language identity amongst young English
learners. ELT Journal, 68(3), 299–309.
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21.
Bruner, J. (2004). Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691–710.
Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503–523.
Chik, A. (2014). Constructing German learner identities in online and offline environments. In
D. Abendroth-Timmer & E-M. Hennig (Eds.), Plurilingualism and multiliteracies: International
research on identity construction in language education (pp. 161–176). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Chik, A., & Breidbach, S. (2011). Online language learning histories exchange: Hong Kong andGerman perspectives. TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 553–563.
Chik, A., & Breidbach, S. (2014). ‘Facebook me’: Technologizing learner autonomy. In G.
Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp. 100–118). London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Chik, A., Markose, S., & Alperstein, D. (2018). Multilingual Sydney: The people, the languages, thepassion. Sydney: NSW Federation of Community Language Schools.
Coffey, S. (2015). Reframing teachers’ language knowledge through metaphor analysis oflanguage portraits. The Modern Language Journal, 99(3), 500–514.
Do You Hear What I Hear?. (2017, October 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved
09:25, November 5, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Do_You_
Hear_What_I_Hear%3F&oldid=804053703
Giroir, S. (2014). Narratives of participation, identity, and positionality: Two cases of Saudi
learners of English in the United States. TESOL Quarterly, 48(1), 34–56.
Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2015). Multilingual awareness and heritage language education: Children’s
multimodal representations of their multilingualism. Language Awareness, 24(3), 197-215.
Menezes, V. (2008). Multimedia language learning histories. In P. Kalaja, V. Menezes, & A.
M. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Narrative of learning and teaching EFL (pp. 199–213). Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Polkinghorne, D. E . (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative Studies
in Education, 8(1), 5–23.
Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017117

Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on Visualizing Learner Development

Author Bio
Alice Chik is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University. She recently published her work in Applied Linguistics Review on visual methodology, andin System on recreational language learning. A new edited volume on Learner Autonomy: New
Research Agenda (Palgrave Macmillan, co-edited with Naoko Aoki and Richard Smith) is to be
published in early 2018. Her recent projects focus on learner development and multilingualism, and an edited volume, The Multilingual City: Sydney Case Studies (Routledge, co-edited with
Phil Benson and Robyn Moloney) is to be published in mid-2018.

118

Learner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 1 • November 2017