THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌
ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 6:
Learner Development Beyond The Classroom
Author: Mizuka Tsukamoto
Title: Some Thoughts on Implementing a New Teaching Approach: A Review of Clarke’s“Exploring Autonomous Learning . . .”Date of publication online: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ6-8
Author contact: <mdtsukamoto(at)gmail(dot)com>
Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
https://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2022 each respective author
This article can be cited as:
Tsukamoto, M. (2022). Some thoughts on implementing a new teaching approach: A
review of Clarke’s “Exploring autonomous learning . . ..” The Learner Development Journal,
6, 114–120. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ6-8

This article is part of a collection of practitioner research on the theme of “Learner
Development Beyond the Classroom” for Issue 6 of the Learner Development Journal (LDJ6),
edited by Isra Wongsarnpigoon, Dominique Vola Ambinintsoa, Phillip A. Bennett, and André
Parsons. Published once a year, each issue of the Learner Development Journal follows a
Community of ractices approach over a period of approximately 18 months in which
contributors work together, under the guidance of the editors, to share, respond to, anddevelop their research and writing.
Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors
grant users the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only thatproper attribution is given to the work.

REVIEW
Some Thoughts on Implementing a New
Teaching Approach: A Review of Clarke’s“Exploring Autonomous Learning . . .”Mizuka Tsukamoto, Ritsumeikan University, Japan<mdtsukamoto(at)gmail(dot)com>
This practice-based book review looks at Donna Clarke’s (2019) “Exploring Autonomous Learning: A Teacher’s
Experience and Learners’ Perception” in Autonomy in Language Learning: Getting Learners Actively Involved(Menegale, 2019). This chapter in the book is a reflection on her first attempt to make her class, at theJapanese School of Brussels, more student-centred. In reviewing the chapter, I reflect on my experienceof my first attempt at teaching a semester-long project-based course in relation to some of the key ideas
discussed by Clarke. In doing so, I discuss the concerns, successes, and challenges that we shared and faced
in incorporating a teaching approach that was new to us both. I also take a close look at the methodologythat she used in her study. Finally, I conclude this book review by considering how I would respond to
Clarke’s four questions that she frames her action research with.
本稿はAutonomy in Language Learning: Getting Learners Actively Involved (Menegale, 2019)に収められている
Donna Clarke (2019)の“Exploring Autonomous Learning: A Teacher’s Experience and Learners’ Perception”の書評である。
本書のこの章は、
ブリュッセル日本人学校でのClarke自身の授業をより学習者中心にするための初めての試みについての考察である。
この章を振り返りながら、Clarkeが論じた重要な考え方に関連して、筆者が初めて試みた1学期間を通してのプロジェ

クトベースの授業の経験を振り返ってみた。
私たち双方にとって新しい教育アプローチを取り入れる際に共有し、直面した懸念、成功、
課題について論じる。
また、Clarkeが研究に用いた方法論についても考察する。
最後に、Clarkeがアクション・リサーチの枠組みとして掲げた4つの質問に対して、私ならどう答えるかを考えてこの書評を締めくくる。

Keywords
Japanese university students, learner-centred approach, out-of-class learning, project-based learning, reflection
日本の大学生、学習者中心のアプローチ、授業外学習、
プロジェクトベースド学習、
リフレクション

Donna Clarke’s (2019) “Exploring Autonomous Learning: A Teacher’s Experience andLearners’ Perception” in Autonomy in Language Learning: Getting Learners Actively Involved,edited by Marcella Menegale (2019), is a reflection on her attempt to make her class more
student-centred. Reading it reminded me of when I first taught a semester-long projectbased course in the English Language Programme (ELP) at a university in central Japan.
Like Clarke, at that stage of my career and without a background in education or TESOL/
TEFL, I was unfamiliar with the concept or practice of learner autonomy.
This practice-based book review is an extended reflection on my first attempts toimplement a more learner-centred approach in the classroom, in relation to some of
the key ideas discussed by Clarke. The students’ comments I refer to in this review werecollected on the last day of classes with their consent for the data to be used in any future
research or publication. My notes were recorded on the lesson plans that I prepared in mynotebook for each class and included my classroom observations with comments on how
I might do things differently in the future.

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Mizuka Tsukamoto

Clarke’s Study

Clarke conducted action research when she first attempted to switch from a teachercentred classroom to a more learner-centred one. Her study took place at the Japanese
School of Brussels between April and July in 2011. It was an immersion-style class in which
she spoke in English only, and the curriculum focused on English for travel purposes. The
students were aged between 14 and 15 years of age and met three times a week for 45
minutes. She had a Japanese support teacher in each class, whose role is not specified in
the chapter�
Data for Clarke’s study comprised a diary she kept during her year teaching, learningjournals her students were required to keep, a questionnaire, and several interviews she
conducted with students based on gender and ability. The questionnaire used a 4-point
Likert scale and was submitted to the author by the last day of the term. Clarke writes
that the students were given one week to return it to her. The learning journals were kept
throughout the year, but how frequently they were kept and when they were submitted
are unclear. The interviews were conducted before the questionnaires were collected at
the end of the semester�
Clarke’s discussion is focused on two main concerns she had incorporating
autonomous learning in her classroom: first, the novelty and unfamiliarity of the practice,and secondly, her concern not to impose upon her students a Western form of learning.
These two concerns are elaborated in terms of four central questions that frame herreflections:
1. Could the approach be implemented successfully?
2� If she encountered problems with implementation, would she be able to findsolutions?
3. Would the students’ cultural backgrounds inhibit their autonomous learning
engagement?
4. Would the students see the approach as advantageous to their learning?
Clarke’s second concern, that she not impose on her students a Western form oflearning, is based on the notion that autonomy is a concept “central to European liberaldemocratic and liberal humanist thought” (Pennycook, 1997, p. 42). Her concern was
founded in personal observations and literature she had read which stated that Japanese
students, often coming from traditions of obedience to authority, see teachers as
figures who convey knowledge rather than as mentors who facilitate learning (Liu, 2008).
However, Clarke was also guided by other researchers that discussed the possibility ofsucceeding with autonomous learning within a Japanese educational context (e.g., Dias,
2000; Sakai et al., 2010).
Clarke’s two concerns can be related to Dam’s (2019) discussion (also in the same
volume edited by Menegale) regarding the teacher’s role in the classroom. In a teachercentred classroom, the teacher’s role is clear, as they are positioned at the front
instructing the students. However, with a learner-centred approach, the teacher’s role
may be more ambiguous. How much they get directly involved with the students, and towhat extent they address or approach the students, is very much a negotiated practice.
This is challenging for instructors as well as students, although perhaps particularly with
Asian students, who are generally perceived to be more passive and to expect teachers tosimply tell them what to know (Littlewood, 1999; Liu, 2008).
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Some Thoughts on Implementing a New Teaching Approach

Clarke does not specify how she organised her classes, nor the methods she used to
implement more autonomous learning, what the students were assigned to do in eachclass, or how this was all different from what she did before. The reader however caninfer from her questionnaire results that the students were able to direct their classroom
learning, for example, choosing which units of the textbook to study, what activities to do,
and which expressions to remember. The students also seem to have been able to choose
their own homework.
Details aside, Clarke found implementing her new learner-centred pedagogicalapproach challenging, but her students responded positively. For example, thequestionnaire results showed that 85% of the students either disagreed or strongly
disagreed that teachers should be responsible for choosing classroom activities, 78% of
the students appreciated being able to choose which units from the textbook to study,
and 69% found choosing their homework to be useful for their learning.
On the other hand, she also discovered that students found working in groups to bea challenge. The questionnaire did not ask for feedback on group work, but responses
from all four interviewees showed that they did not have positive impressions. Clarke
speculates that part of the reason for this may be that students did not have enough time
to experience the benefits of support and feedback from others in their group work.

Clarke’s Action Research Methodology

Clarke’s data collection is unclear on two points, which, if clarified would give more insight
into the strength of her methodology. First, she mentions that her students had one
week to complete and submit the course questionnaires and that the interviews took
place before the questionnaires were due. Therefore, the interviews took place before
the semester had fully ended. Thus, although the students were told that participating in
the interview would not affect their grades, one wonders whether they were comfortable
sharing their thoughts on their teacher’s pedagogy, especially if their feedback may havebeen critical. Furthermore, the questionnaire was administered on a 4-point Likert scale(i.e., strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree), which may have influenced somestudents’ response as it did not provide a neutral option for those who neither agreed nor
disagreed. If Clarke had chosen to use an even number of options on the questionnaire,so as to force the respondents to choose a particular position or perspective, some
explanations might have been helpful for understanding why she did this.
The second point regards whether the students’ learning journals were included intheir grade assessment. Clarke says she asked her students to keep learning journals“throughout the year” (p. 26) but does not specify how often the students were required
to keep them, nor whether she collected them before the end of the semester. These
points are important because keeping a learning journal might seem like a lot of work forstudents if it is not part of their grade, which, in my experience, would discourage many
students from writing their learning journals regularly. The content of the journals mightalso turn out to be superficial and not reflect students’ real views. If the journals were notcollected or checked on a regular basis, some students may even have completed all theirreflections in a short time before submitting them.
A related concern regarding students’ journals is that they were asked to make theirentries in the target language. Citing Dam and Little (1999), Clarke emphasises the value
and appropriateness of using the target language as a way for students to develop theirskills. However, she also writes that her students struggled with their journals because
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Mizuka Tsukamotoof difficulty expressing themselves in English. While I agree with Dam and Little on using
the target language to develop language skills, one wonders what perspectives or insights
the students may have shared were they permitted to write in their first language. Clarke
does of course mention the difficulty she would have had reading the journals in thestudents’ first language, but her comprehension may have been prioritised at the cost of
the content and quality of the students’ feedback.

My First Attempt at Student-Centred Learning

The class I taught involved first-year advanced-level students, who were classified as“advanced” based on the university’s classification. They were aged 18 or 19, and most ofthem had spent some of their earlier years living and studying outside Japan or came froma culturally mixed background. Only a few students, three out of 20, had not experienced
any schooling whatsoever outside Japan. From previous teaching, I was familiar withhaving students work in groups for discussions and presentations, but this course wasdifferent in two ways. First, unlike most of the 90-minute-per-week, one-semester courses
I had taught until then, this course was held twice a week for 90 minutes, and I wasteaching the same group of students for two successive semesters. Second, most of thecourse design was open to my determination including whether to use a textbook and, if
so, which textbook. The only instructions issued by the ELP were that students in the firstsemester were to learn reading skills and writing skills, and in the second semester they
were to practice those skills through project-based learning.
Accordingly, I had more control of the content and schedule in the first semester, given
the students’ need to develop particular skills, and the students had more control in thesecond. Thus, in the first semester, students were directed to complete assigned tasks
on reading, writing, and presentations in each class. In the second semester, by contrast,
students decided which topics they would study and how they would use the time ineach class. Apart from a few deadlines I set for submissions, including a project scheduleand weekly progress reports, groups were free to decide how they would manage theirlearning. My role in the second semester was focused on tracking how well they werecompleting their projects, providing support for identified issues, and occasionally offering
advice to the whole class if a group was encountering difficulties.
At the beginning of the second semester I did not share Clarke’s concerns, as I
assumed that a more learner-centred approach would be welcomed by the students.
This confidence, however, was somewhat misplaced. Although most students actively
communicated with each other and participated in group work, my classroom
observations and the students’ end-of-semester reflections showed some were clearly lostin their classroom autonomy�For example, Ayaka (pseudonym) showed a considerable change in behaviour fromthe first semester to the second. In the first semester, she actively responded to my
instructions and was never late handing in assignments. She was also usually firstto respond to questions I would pose to the class. In the second semester, I kept myinstructions to a minimum to allow groups to expand their ideas in their own ways andonly ask for guidance when they felt necessary. Ayaka’s work fulfilled the minimum of
my instruction but did not go beyond, and she was far less active in the classroom and ingroup work. In the end-of-semester reflection she wrote, “In the first semester, I felt I waslearning something new from the teacher every week. I don’t feel like I learnt anything
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Some Thoughts on Implementing a New Teaching ApproachOn the other hand, and similar to Clarke’s findings, there were also pleasant surprises.
Kosuke (pseudonym) was a quiet student who rarely interacted with other students inthe first semester. Initially, I had concerns about how he would cope with the second
semester’s student-centred approach. Kosuke, however, not only actively worked on thegroup project, but also pursued his interests and asked lots of questions, both duringclass and via email. In his end-of-semester reflection he wrote how much he had enjoyedworking on the project with his group and that he understood why the first semester had
been taught as it had: to provide him and his fellow students with the necessary skills forthe following semester�Ayako and Kosuke demonstrate that not all activities or teaching approaches arewelcomed by all students, an issue that most teachers probably face. Dam (2019)
discusses how “letting go and taking hold” (p. 96) is an ongoing challenge for teachers
trying to allow more autonomy for students in learning, both inside and outside theclassroom. Students need leeway to learn in their own ways, but still need guidance in
how to do this: Teachers cannot be completely hands-off. How much teachers should let
go seems even harder when considering work outside the classroom. With group work in
particular, if work is assigned for outside the classroom, then teachers need to monitor
how each individual is contributing, or students may be treated unfairly. One way of
dealing with this is to “let go” of homework assignments and allow students to manage
their course workload themselves.
Clarke’s findings revealed that 69% of her students were happy to be able to decide on
their own homework. Assigning homework or out-of-class learning was not something I
considered in my second semester. Throughout the course, groups worked at their own
pace, managing their project schedules, and deciding what work to do in or out of theclassroom. The amount of homework they chose to do was therefore an uncontrollable
factor for me. Even mentioning work outside of the classroom was not something I
wanted to do, since it might have come across as interference or made some students feel
I did not see them as responsible.
At the end of the semester I found that all groups had managed their projects
successfully and independently. Moreover, one student went far beyond the firstsemester’s standards, teaching himself how to make a website to better present his
group’s findings. I had expected students to make slides for their final presentations on
the basis of the first semester presentation skills they had studied. The student explainedin his end-of-semester comments that he had suggested creating a website to his groupand the group had collectively agreed to it. Making the website may not have helped thestudent improve his English language skills, but the opportunity to discover new interestsand pursue them was invaluable.
This case may be a clear example of how “taking hold” and “letting go” at the righttime can be effective regarding outside-the-classroom work. Indeed, looking back at thestudent reflections I collected, no one referred to the amount of homework they had given
themselves. Reading Clarke’s chapter made me consider, however, whether I should haveconsidered asking the students what they thought about having control over their own
homework. Given the case of Ayaka, for example, I wonder if I sometimes let go of thestudents too much, and whether I should have sometimes held on more.

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Mizuka Tsukamoto

Final Reflection: Considering Clarke’s Four Questions

In closing, I return to the four central questions that Clarke uses to frame her reflections
on her action research. In so doing, however, I should note that whilst Clarke’s reflections
are central to her study, mine are speculations based on my notes and the comments I
received from my students. Clarke’s first and second questions concern the instructor’s
discomfort or anxiety in transitioning from a teacher-centred approach to a more learnercentred approach and embracing the idea of instructors “letting go” (Dam, 2019). Her thirdand fourth questions concern the students’ discomfort in becoming more autonomousin their learning. In order for a new teaching method to “work” in the classroom, a certain
amount of confidence is required from both the teacher and the students, in themselves
and each other. Instructors need to have confidence in their ability to use the teaching
method and in the students’ capacity to engage with it. Students, on the other hand, needto have confidence in themselves and in the value of learning in a way they are unfamiliarwith�
For my own part, when designing the course for the second semester, I had confidence
both in the course structure and the students’ ability to autonomously learn. I was also
not concerned about imposing a Western concept on the students nor with finding
solutions if problems arose. This was due to my experience in the first semester, because
most of the students had schooling experience outside Japan, and because I assumed any
problems that arose would be minor.
Kosuke proved that the course could be successful, and his work in the second
semester rewarded my confidence that the students could autonomously learn. Ayaka, on
the other hand, was one of the students who had studied abroad, so my assumption that
she would be prepared for autonomous learning was misplaced. Moreover, my efforts to
help her and other struggling students may not have been enough. The question then iswhether my overall confidence in the course was too strong or not. It could be that somestudents need more preparation before being able to fully benefit from autonomous
learning, or it could also be that some may only recognise the benefits of a learnerautonomy approach afterwards when they later reflect back on their learning experiences.
Conversely, another possibility is that some students may just not be interested inautonomous learning�In autonomous learning, students need to take initiative in solving their own inquiries.
As the process itself is a learning opportunity for them, it is my continuing hope thatmy students will eventually move away from the teacher-as-guru model to see learning
as an engaged and participatory effort between themselves and me as their instructor.
Therefore, I conclude, as Clarke concludes, that for instructors to organise a moreautonomous classroom, communication with the students so they understand andappreciate the methods used may be required.

Author Bio

Mizuka Tsukamoto (EdD) has been involved in English education at universities in Japanfor over 10 years. Her research interests include learner/teacher autonomy, teacher
education and development, and teachers’ professional lives.

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

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