Part 3: Inquiry into instructional practices

Feeling my way
through my thoughts
on a rainy day
Terry Lamb
University of Sheffield, UK

About Terry

Terry taught languages in English secondary schools for 16 years, during which time, forsurvival reasons, he developed an interest in motivation and autonomy. He now works at the
University of Sheffield, and enjoys meeting people around the world who can help him tosustain his own motivation and autonomy.
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Prequel: Friday morning

It's raining in Sheffield today. Quite depressing really. On the other hand, I can stay at home andwrite. A mixed blessing as it means that I'm alone and therefore cannot be distracted from thefact that I'm nowhere near ready for the new set of students arriving on Monday. Beingalone
theoretically means that I can concentrate on what I need to do, but it also allows my mind
the opportunity to wander and worry about deadlines. Shall I focus on this chapter, or shall I
develop the new Master's course,prepare my introductory lecture for Monday, organise my initialseminars, or catch up on my emails and find even more things that I should have done?

Yesterday wasdifferent. The sun was shiningin a cloudless sky, and it wasso hot that people
were wandering around in shorts, not knowing what to do with themselves because of the heat.
(Yes, it does get hot in England!) I had to go into the university, and work around short chunks oftime to do some of those "big jobs" that we are supposed to prioritise but which always seem too
big to start when you'veonly got small chunks of time... Nevertheless, I achieved a great deal.
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Why am I sharing these thoughts with you now? What possible significancecan they havein a concluding chapter of a book containing reports of a broad range of teaching and research
activity in Japan? Why should readers be interested in the changeable climate of Sheffield andin my problems with work-life balance?
To be honest, I don't reallyknow where this is leading to at this point of writing the chapter.
Well, not with any clarity at any rate. What I do know is that, as was the case when I readAutonomy You Ask! (Barfield and Nix, 2003), I am feeling liberated enough to explore mythoughts in an academically unconventional way. I feel able to, indeed I feel the need to, simply
throw myself into the chapter, to make a start, in order to encourage myself, to make myself feelthat I have something to say, to get rid of the blank screen. This is unusual for me, as I usuallyplan in detail when I'm writing, making copious notes on paper, finding the connections,organising the ideas into themes, sequencing them logically, ensuring that everything isproperly referenced and "rigorous."
So, a change in approach, from the methodical to the spontaneous. (I also feel able to write
in incomplete sentences, to split my infinitives, to address the reader in a direct way.) By theway, I've just noticed that the wall of my study is wet, that the roof must be leaking, so I now
have an additional distraction, i.e. do I need to phone someone before the house collapses
around me, and should I do it now or tomorrow when, hopefully, I'll have made some progresswith this chapter, and, whatever I decide, how will I find someone good to do the work? And
also, since my last sentence, my wife has come home full of how wonderful the children in her
German class were today - and now the rain is dripping from above onto my computer...

Reflecting on a situation (or should it be a predicament?)
Several issues emerge from this introductory passage,and they are in some ways related tothemes which have occurred to me in the second half of this book. Firstly, there is something
about context, authorship, purpose, etc.... Secondly, the complexity of individual differences
is reinforced; and thirdly, motivation is a strong theme. Running through all of the above, thecentrality of reflection can be seen, including ways of encouraging and facilitating it.
Context

I am aware that I am sitting in England at the moment, and that I have just been reading aboutautonomy in a Japanese context. I am at the same time preoccupied by developmental needs on
my own course, namely a nine-month initial teacher education course for postgraduates, which
results in them being qualified to teach in secondary schools (for 11-18 year olds) in Englandand Wales. One of these needs is the introduction of reflective journals, and I will be present
ing this to my new student-teachers on Monday. I have considerable anxiety about this as thestudents will be engaged in a highly pressured teacher education course at the end of which
they will be qualified teachers of French, German, Spanish,Japanese, or Mandarin - or indeed
a combination of these. They are not with me to learn languages, but, as graduate linguists
already, they are learning how to teach. Theywill also be spending 24 weeks of the 36-weekcourse in schools, some quite far from Sheffield. Consequently, time constraints will undoubt
edly lead to complaints unless the journals are perceived as valuable to them.
How, then, did I read the chapters on reflective journals by Amanda Bradley and Jodie
Stephenson? The answer is that I read them in a different wayfrom how I would usuallyread suchchapters; in other words, rather than considering the contentfrom the point of view of its con
tribution to our academic understanding of,for example, the nature of reflection and reflective

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journals and how it relates to existing literature, I read them in a far more personally engaged way,
hungry for some support in my own work. Through reading them in this way, I believe that I got
to know the people involved to a certain extent, noticing their motivations, their responses, their
enthusiasms. As such, I found that I was able to "get under the skin" of the authors and their stu
dents, and "sense" in some small way the experience that was had of using the journals. Throughthe voicesof the actors, I was able to learn useful lessons for my own project, such as the need tofind waysof encouraging my students not only to objectivisetheir own experiences, but also tounderstand the impact of such experiences on them as people, to bend the experiences back onthemselves and articulate the implications of what they have learnt through reflection not only
for themselves as learners (or teachers) but also as human beings. Through Jodie Stephenson's
work with classnewsletters, I learned of the value of making some of the personal reflections
public, and of issues to consider when doing so. Of course, I did not find ideas which could betransplanted direcdy into my own context, nor was it even possible to be tempted as the learners
in these chapters are language learners rather than student-teachers. Nevertheless I gained inspi
ration, in the sense that reading about another context in this way freed up my mind, enabling me
to interrogate my own situation critically, and to find new, appropriate approaches to try out. It
can be argued that, without the stimulus of these chapters, I may have looked for a ready-madesolution, particularly given my time constraints; but reading them has clarified my own purposes,
and has challenged some assumptions that I may havehad about the nature of journals. I have,inshort, been supported in finding a context-relevant starting-point, influenced of course, but notconstrained by,any previous beliefsI may have held. The context-specific nature of educational
interventions, including those which are aspiring towards some manifestation of autonomy, hasbeen reinforced for me, but I have also been moved to reflect not only on whatwe can learn fromother contexts,but also howwe might learn from them in a meaningful way. The spirit of thechapters, as much as the content, has remindedme that it is not necessary to remain dispassion
ate when readingsuch publications, in order to benefit; indeed,by"feeling," albeit at second hand,the experience, I am able to transfer the "feeling" to my own context, and discoverwhat is needed
for it to be adapted appropriately. This lesson was reinforced throughout the entire second half ofthe book, culminatingin Stephen Davies' powerful allegory, which intentionallyappeals to us not
only as critical academics, but also as emotional human beings.
Authorship

When reading the chapters, I was also highlyconscious of the significance of the authors'
motivations, both in the senseof past eventswhich had inspired them, as wellas futureaspirations whichweredrivingthem. In some chapters the keyinspirationswere veryclear: bothRobert Croker and BradDeacon writeabout their previous experiences of peer teaching whentheythemselves were young learners, aswell as a desire to enhance theirstudents' autonomy,
with Brad addingthat the innovation was further inspired by Robert's example and by student
demand. Yoko Morimoto's starting point isa problem which needs to be addressed, namely
studentdrop-out from an already innovative course. Denise Haugh's clear passion for thedramatic arts isthe inspiration for her use of dramatised role-plays in the classroom. Though
NanciGraves and Stacey Vye do not explicitly state the drivers which led them personally to theresearch which is reported in their deeply illuminating and significant chapter, their concern for
the emotional health of English teachers working far from home, and theirstronghumanistic
message of the needto connect the personal and professional, clearly (to mymind at least),suggests that it has grownout of their own experiences. In thisway, the chapters serve to reinforce
that wemust read such work through the eyes of the author in order to understand it in afundamentalway; they also remind us of the importanceof writing ourselves into our research, a

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point which is well known by ethnographers and other qualitative researchers,but which can be"felt"in a different and somehow more powerfulwaythrough reading these chapters.
In terms of purpose, all authors have the enhancement of their learners' learning as a majoraim, either directly or, in the case of Nanci Graves and StaceyVye, indirectly through theirfocus on teachers' self-reflection practices.The chapters also reveal, however, that teacher clarity
about the focus and intentions of the intervention enhances the experience. Denise Haugh, forexample, raises the question of teacher objectives,and in so doing reminds us that autonomy
can be an end in itself or a means to an end, namely enhanced learning of a foreign language.
Both can be justified; what is important is that the teacher can justify in his/her own context.
So going back to my preoccupation referred to earlier,why am I wanting to introduce reflective
journals? I would say that there are a number of reasons. Firstly, my research into learnerautonomy in young learners has helped me to recognise the importance of listening to learners'
beliefsabout learning and the ways in which they describe their metacognitive knowledge, andthen offering them experiences to challenge the constraints of such beliefs (Lamb, 2005). My
student-teachers are, of course, learners too, and they bring with them a whole host of beliefs
about what it means to be a teacher and what it means to be a learner, as well as more specifically
about how to teach languages in schools. Through articulation of such beliefs, a basis is createdfor critical reflection in dialogue with the self and with others (as highlighted by the teachersin Nanci Graves' and StaceyVye's research). Secondly, I want them to understand better the
relationship between theory and practice. My approach to this is by trying to demystify theory,
encouraging the students to acknowledge that they already have personal theories about teaching
and learning, which are based on prior experience, but that at the same time others havedifferent theories which can challenge their own. In addition, I want them to recognise that theirexperienceson the course can be used to develop their personal theories further, so that they
see the theory-practice relationship as a dynamic one, each informing the other in a constantprocess of refinement and a spirit of inquisitiveness. Hopefully this will help the students to bring
together the university- and school-based parts of the course, as well as the language pedagogy/
methodology and the general educational and professionalstudies elements of the course,
encouraging them not to disconnect one element from another.
Thirdly, I also wish to enable them to take charge of their professional development, partly
because they will hopefully learn how to be "lifelong teaching learners," willing and able togrow professionally throughout their careers, to find strategies for coping with varied teachingsituations, and to develop innovative and motivating experiences for their learners; and partly
as a way of them building on their own unique starting-points, coming as they do with a whole
range of experiences, including in some cases considerable teaching experience in countries
such as France, Germany, and Japan. I would like to think that my student-teachers will beteachers like the ones writing throughout this publication, motivated to identify their interests,
to analysetheir contexts, take action, and make a difference.
Individual differences

The chapters in this publication reflect in many ways, albeit mostly implicit, the fact that weare all different. We see this in the motivations of the writers, in the styles of presentation, inthe content of the learners' journals, and through the other types of data which are shared by
the authors. This is not the place to enter into a lengthy discussion of the need to consider in
dividual differences when we are working with students or indeed with teachers (see, instead,
Jimenez Raya and Lamb (2003)). However, I am particularly moved by the clear picture which
emerges that individual differences are not fixed or somehow pathological, and that, on the
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Guest w r i t e rcontrary, context plays a central role in shaping the ways we learn (see, for example,the situa
tion of teachers workingin a Japanese context, or the learners'responses to the experience ofpeer teaching in BradDeacon's and RobertCroker's chapter).As teachers we need to be mind
ful of this, and self-critical enough to recognisewhen we are labelling a learner in any way- as
an underachiever, a motivated/demotivated person, a kinaesthetic learner, etc....

Looking back to the prequel of this chapter,the complexityof individual differences can also
be seen in the way in which I have approached this task. Just as personal experiences and emo
tions are placed on the map in many of the chapters in this book, my own approach to writing,my writing style (which in this chapter is very closely linked to my learning style, given that I
am learning what to write through the process of writing itself) is deeply affected by the weath
er,by the other commitments I haveto contend with today, by my preoccupations, and by theeffects of these contextual factors on my feelings, concentrations levels, worries etc.... And
indeed, the nature of this very publication, and its resonances with Autonomy You Ask!, a bookwhich I found compelling in its energy, has also influenced the way in which I have approachedthis task. In other words, our individual differences are also made more complex by the changing nature of context, from day to day, moment to moment. Writing this chapter has made me
become even more aware that ultimately I have to take responsibility for identifying my own
approach, for justifying it, for coming to terms with it, and for adapting what I wish to achieve
to the specific circumstances, finding waysthrough the difficulties rather than being frozen by afixed expectation of how I am to work or what I am to do.
Motivation

Thus it is that I come to the theme of motivation, which for me leaps out of the chapters in a
number of ways. Firstly,I have already written about the different motivations of the authors,
their passions, enthusiasms, and convictions. However,it is interesting that in a book about au
tonomy, the connection with motivation is so apparent. Of course this is not a surprise to manyof us; when we read work such as Ushioda (1996,2003), Lamb (2001), or Dickenson (1995), therelationship between motivation and autonomy, though contested in its direction (is it unidirec
tional or dynamic?), is clear. And so in this collection we find that Yoko Morimoto's innovativeinterventions are themselves motivated explicitlyby a need to motivate her learners. Nanci Graves
and StaceyVyefocus to a certain extent on teacher motivation and ways in which this is affectedby self-reflection, and part of Amanda Bradley's rationale for encouraging learners to keep journals has to do with motivation. All of these chapters remind us that increasing autonomy is a wayof increasing motivation. However we also see that motivation is not static, that it dips and rises
for all kinds of reasons, just as my own motivation, referred to in the prequel, cannot always be
relied on. Recognising this is important for sustaining motivation in fact; I ask my student-teachers to plot their motivation levels so that they can see that a dip does not usually mean a slippery
slope downhill, and that they will be feeling motivated again soon; and for the same reason it isimportant that they are not disheartened by their own learners' poor motivation as they, as teachers, reallydo have the power to influence this. This is another example of the ways in which ateacher's or a learner's autonomy can be manifested; taking responsibility for one's own motiva
tion through making it explicit and then finding waysof dealing with it.
For the authors of these chapters, participation in the production of this book has itself beena highly affirming and motivating experience. I asked them to let me know how involvement in
the project had affected them and their sense of autonomy as teachers, and received a numberof responses. Keythemes which emerged pointed towards the interrelationships between motivation, collaboration, and reflection, both for learners and for (learner-jteachers. Finding

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new and appropriate ways of enhancing their learners'autonomy meant that they themselves
had to be autonomous; and such autonomy, worked for through sustained reflection, led to aheightened sense of motivation, responsibility, and collaboration with their learners. In addition, working collaboratively with colleagues in the MAYA project offered different viewpoints,
which was a stimulus to greater creativity and criticality, providing a forum in which assump
tions could be questioned and motivation could be sustained. Indeed, there is a sense in which
working with others on the research has not only motivated but also strengthened their resolve;
as one author put it, it has helped to develop"pro-autonomy muscles," which offer strength toclarify purposes and commitments, to defend them if need be.
Conclusion: reflecting on my reflections

How does one conclude what could be described as jottings, a series of thoughts whichhave emerged from my reading of these chapters? Have I got anywhere in this, for me,
unconventional approach to writing? Have any clear ideas emerged?
It would make sense to say something about the ways in which autonomy has manifested
itself in this book, so that will be my starting point. Indeed the chapters contain many examplesof learners being encouraged to develop their autonomy, with autonomy revealing itself morein the sense of learners taking charge of their metacognitive processes, through reflection andcollaboration, than of having choices (though choices are included in some chapters). This isechoed when we consider teacher autonomy, which is largely about the teacher taking chargeof his/her motivation and resolve, identifying links between the personal and the professionalin an attempt to understand one's identity as a teacher; and this is, as with the learners, ap
proached through reflection and collaboration. Furthermore, it is echoed in my own reflections
on my autonomy in writing this concluding chapter: its consideration of context, purpose andmotivation; its articulation of metacognitive constraints (beliefs, emotionality, resolve, prioritisation, etc...), as well as strategies for pushing through these in ways which are manageable andappropriate; and the sense that I can dare try something new gained from my own collaboration, though limited, in this project.
Benson (1997) has described three versions of autonomy: technical, psychological, andpolitical. On the basis of my work on MAYA, I would suggest that, whichever form autonomy
takes, it needs to embrace the non-logical, the passionate, the feeling, emotional, and affective
in some way. Getting in touch with oneself is not just about intellect; it is also about understanding how one is feeling. And, autonomy in this sense is about dealing with how one is feeling, knowing how to adapt, supporting oneself, galvanising into action, etc... so that one is notfrozen into inactivity but able to do something about it.
Reflecting on the process of writing this chapter, I realise that there are many alternative
approaches I could have taken. I could, for example, have started with the final chapter by
Stephen Davies,which in fact also contains all of the above themes in its pages. I'm sure thatwould have produced a satisfactory outcome. However, for reasons described above, I had tolaunch myself into writing the chapter rather than planning it more systematically, allowing it
to unfold as I worked under the dripping ceiling. Having done this, I now feel very strongly that
I have learnt something about myself, and, even at my age, about new ways of working, which I
find enlightening and exciting, and which gives me new insights into my own autonomy.
Now where is that telephone book???

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