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La enseñanza centrada en el
alumno como agente social,
hablante intercultural y It takes better teachers
aprendiente autónomo. El to focus on the learners
tratamiento de la diversidad en (Strevens, 1980)
la clase de inglés.

Manuel Jiménez Raya

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PEDAGOGY FOR AUTONOMY

IN MODERN LANGUAGE Learners are given the opportunity to:
EDUCATION
direct their learning procedures,
act on their inherent interests,
set their own objectives, and
THE CONTEXT THE TEACHER

Educational & social conditions

THE LEARNER
Learning competence
Teachers & learners
Driving/constraining forces
Competence to self-motivate
Centring teaching on learning
Competence to think critically
Critical view
take the most relevant decisions concerning
Managing local constraints
their learning.
Interacting with others
The result is that learners with
the learning process, for
reaching their learning goals and have a
genuine desire to learn, for
(Black
and Deci, 2000)

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Significant relationships have been found

between autonomy support and a number of Research has provided convincing evidence
positive outcomes: that “good self-regulators do better
(Zuckerman, Porac, Lathin, academically than poor self-regulators”
Smith, & Deci, 1978), (Zimmerman and Bandura, 1994: 846).
Øpreference for optimally difficult work
(Harter, 1978),
taking an active, independent attitude to
Østriving for conceptual understanding learning and independently undertaking a
(Grolnick & Ryan, 1989),
learning task is beneficial to learning
Øa sense of (Ryan & Deci,
2000), and (Dickinson 1995, p.165);
(Cordova & Lepper, 1996).

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when responsibility for the learning process

when the learner sets the agenda,
, and thus
both immediately and in the longer
term (Little 1991; Holec 1981; Dickinson 1987);
a resulting increase in enthusiasm for
learning (Littlejohn 1985);
lies with the learner, the
and living that are often found in traditional
teacher-led educational structures
(Little 1991; Holec 1981; Dickinson 1987);
without such barriers, learners should have
, and this should make them
more useful members of society and “more
effective participants in the democratic
process.” (Little 1991, p.8);

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NORMAL SELF-DIRECTED
LESSONS LESSONS
MOTIVATION 6 25
“…much of the significant language learning BOREDOM 12 0
which individuals, for a variety of reasons, 7 9
CRITICAL MIND
undertake at different stages in their lives,
occurs outside classroom walls unassisted - PASSIVITY 9 0

some would state unencumbered - by a CHALLENGE 4 19

classroom teacher” (Altman, cited in Dickinson 1987, ROUTINE 17 0
p.vii).
COLLABORATION 5 17

COMPETITION 6 2

DEMOCRACY 4 13

AUTHORITARIANISM 15 0
(Teixeira, 2014)

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leaving students to fend for themselves

sitting students in front of computers and hoping
they will learn
sitting students in lectures and hoping they will
learn
students working individually without contact with
each other or a tutor
something that students can be expected to develop
unaided
something that is only for 'bright' students
simply removing structured teaching, it may
require a greater, but different, degree of structure .

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2

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In the first 10 minutes I just thought: ‘Help me!’ My
mind was assaulted by doubts: What if they don’t try
hard enough? What if they pretend to be learning just to
please me? Will I be able to respond to all their needs
and queries? Will they manage to play an active role that
is so hard and demanding? […]
Now as I write and think about it, I feel that it was FEAR
talking: fear of letting the students assume responsibility
for their own learning; fear of my responsibility
regarding students’ (lack of) success; fear of starting our
journey; fear of not being able to be a truly democratic
teacher (we live surrounded by false democracies!).
However, Freire advocates that to deny one’s fear is to
deny one’s dream. We need to learn to command our
fears and take risks, for only then is there the possibility
to exist (Freire & Shor, 1987: 42). (Teixeira, 2014: 161, excerpt from her research
journal)
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: is it possible for a student to decide what to do in the classroom?
: no
: never?
: the teacher can turn to a student and say, for example, today it’s you
who will teach the lesson
: only if the teacher decides that we will do a group work in class
:but the teacher has to decide the theme
: can anyone get here and say: I would like to do this or I need to learn
that… is this possible?
: no
: is it really impossible?
: yes
: only if the student asks some doubt to the teacher and the teacher
clarifies it
: in the English classroom, do you think that is possible?
: no
: what if I tell you that it is possible?
: then it is
: the teacher is the highest authority in the classroom
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Create a natural language learning environment
Treat language holistically, using language in its full
complexity
Ensure that learners develop both a rich repertoire of
formulaic expressions and a rule-based competence
Focus on both implicit and explicit knowledge
Focus on both meaning and form
Create an acquisition rich classroom
Take into consideration the learners’ ‘internal syllabus’
Provide error feedback
Foster the development of intercultural competence
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Is it really a fact that students only want to do what the
teacher tells them to do, or is it simply a matter of never
having been given the opportunity to decide/negotiate?
Students’ perception that all tasks are the teacher’s
responsibility signals the controlling role of the teacher
and a taylorist educational setting where students are
limited to consuming transmitted knowledge and this is
their only responsibility. For these students, the idea that
they could decide what to do in the classroom was
unthinkable, as became evident in the interaction below,
which occurred when I tried to introduce that possibility:
16
The last interventions indicate that if the
teacher believes that it is possible to transform
the students’ role, s/he will be using her/his
authority in favour of a more democratic
education. However, transformation requires
unlearning: ‘Wisdom demands forgetfulness.
To forget is to get rid of ways of being that are
rooted in us and make us believe that things
have to be the way they are. No. Things do not
need to continue being as they always were’
(Alves, 2001: 39).
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refers to “action that is chosen;

action for which one is responsible”.
“Responsibilisation” (Peters 2001: 59) means
The learners’ ability to make is
self-determination and self-responsibility in
concomitant with taking responsibility for their
educational tasks.
own learning, that is, assuming of
When students hold responsibility for their
own learning, they develop: .

Øintrinsic motivation, and can be engaging and intrinsically

motivating when the options provided are
Øself-regulation skills,
aligned with the learners’ demand for the three
Ølearn to value learning for its own sake and basic psychological needs of ,
not because of external rewards. and .

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Learners exercise their autonomy when they

make authentic choices.
does not automatically allow for the
expression of the individual’s desires or
People feel more autonomous when they are preferences, while
enabled to choose between options (Katz & Assor,
2007).
involves the existence of
alternatives and there must be a reason or
The provision of choice increases the intrinsic principle for the choice.
motivation of students and their situational
interest in the learning task (e.g., D'Mello, 2013;
Høgheim & Reber, 2015; Høgheim & Reber, 2017)

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Ø identifying learning interests and needs; US and UK educational institutions are

Ø establishing learning objectives; encouraging teachers and learners to
Ø determining learning content; develop .
Ø planning learning activities;
Ø choosing/ building learning materials;
, , , ,
Ø choosing learning methods and strategies; and or time-framed.
Ø making time and space arrangements;
Ø monitoring and assessing learning; üImprove my speaking skill vs. Meet with an
native student for coffee once a week until
Ø monitoring and assessing teaching;
Christmas.
Ø evaluating the teaching and learning process.

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The concept of self-control has three main

features:
1. it recognizes the capacity of the learner to
exercise ;

2. these levels do not indicate distinctive and

closed phases, but are placed on a
;
3. the learner may shift from a level of
control, or from , to a
level of control, according to the
circumstances (Aviram & Yonah, 2004: 3)

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v Is this principle a priority for me as a

teacher?
v If it is, why is it a priority and how do I
address it?
v If not, should/could it be made more
explicit and intentional in my practice?
v If so, why and how should/could it be
made more explicit and intentional in
my practice?

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Once a teacher gave a young student a problem to work out.

After several minutes of attempting (and failing) to solve it,
the student asked for help, and was told to return to his
chair and to THINK about it some more. At this point the
student broke into tears, exclaiming that everybody tells
him to "think," but he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what
that means! Naturally, he felt terribly frustrated. "Thinking"
was something that he could not see, feel, or touch. It
seemed to him that everyone assumed he knew the secret to
this magical process. When he was told to think about
something, all he could do was stare blindly at the problem
and panic. He kept wondering why no one would tell him the
secret. Today, schools are flooded with experimental
programs to teach students to "think", but are these
students being taught how to understand something new on
their own, let alone what it means to "understand"?

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5

Learners are not always to accept the
challenge of learner autonomy and will
therefore need to be supported.
It is possible to develop one’s
through an explicit focus on learning
strategies and related aspects.
fosters the students’
capacity to reflect on and verbalize their own
learning process through metalearning
activities in order to improve their learning
effectiveness (Jiménez Raya, 2003)
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Ø Berners’ belief systems can impede productive
SRL
Ø Learners struggle with human biases,
probabilistic heuristics, and difficult reasoning
Ø Learners may not be able to benefit from errors
Ø Learners do not often seek help usefully
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refers to
autonomous, academically effective forms of
learning that involve:
v metacognition,
v intrinsic motivation, and
v strategic action.
Self-regulated learning requires effective use
of metacognitive strategies
Teachers have a key role in creating a
classroom climate that is motivationally
positive.
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Winne and Nesbit (2009) hold that:
Ø Learners are poor judges of what they know
Ø Learners are unschooled about tools for
studying effectively
ü To exercise metacognitive control, learners need to be
able to apply effective study tactics and to exercise
strategic judgment about the effects of patterns of
learning strategies.
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is the ability to and
in learning. Individuals should be able to
organise their own learning, including through
effective management of time and information, both
individually and in groups. Competence includes
awareness of one’s learning process and needs,
identifying available opportunities, and the ability to
handle obstacles in order to learn successfully. It
means gaining, processing and assimilating new
knowledge and skills as well as seeking and making
use of guidance. Learning to learn engages learners to
build on prior learning and life experiences in order to
use and apply knowledge and skills in a variety of
contexts – at home, at work, in education and training.
Motivation and confidence are crucial to an
individual’s competence. (Key Competences for Lifelong
Learning)
34
"When planning for a year, plant corn.
When planning for a decade, plant trees.
When planning for life, train and educate
people."
Chinese proverb: Guanzi (c. 645BC)
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Many students behave like what my
college mentor fondly referred to as "one
trick ponies." They have a strategy or
two (trying to memorize everything
being the most common strategy); and, if
that strategy does not work or is
inefficient, they have nothing else in
their repertoire. If instructors teach
students learning strategies that best fit
the structure of the knowledge of course
content, they are creating a win-win
situation. (Doyle)
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I have always believed that intelligence can, to
some extent, be taught, can be improved in every
child, and I deplore the pessimism that this
question often evokes.
The basic idea is that intelligence can be
developed, with exercise and training. We can
improve our attention, our memory, our capacity
of judgement, and literally become more intelligent
than before, and so on until we reach our limit.
(Binet, 1985:323)
39
Stop and think
From her experience, Clara, a secondary
school teacher, points out 6 major gains
from helping her students learn how to
learn. For each one of them, write a brief
comment on how they may contribute to
teacher and learner development in
language education.
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There is in instructional psychology a revived
pedagogical optimism.
Many researchers now believe that it is
possible to improve self-regulation of learning,
thinking, intelligence and problem-solving.
This optimism stems mainly from the
remarkable results of training studies:
Ø Palincsar and Brown (1984) on reading
comprehension,
Ø Schoenfeld (1985) on mathematical reasoning
Ø Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Steinbeck (1984) on
writing processes
Ø…
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Ø Adequate choice of learning goals
Ø Adequate orientation to the learning goals
Ø Adequate planning of learning activities to
match the goals set
Ø Awareness of goals and their relevance
Ø Intrinsic motivation for goals
Ø Ability to activate prior knowledge
Ø Volitional and emotional strategies (getting
started, paying attention, self-esteem,
persisting)
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1. Students’ positive opinions about the value
of learning competences for themselves as
(language) learners
2. Students’ growth in terms of self-
confidence, motivation to learn, awareness of
learning, participation, and responsibility for
learning
3. Heightened awareness of the role of learner
variables in pedagogical settings (e.g.,
dissatisfaction with school, lack of self-esteem,
poor habits of reflection, teacher-dependence,
etc.)
4. Strong belief that teacher and learner
reflectivity and collaboration can increase
learning success
5. Refusal to give up struggling for better
pedagogical solutions to learning problems
6. Continuous personal and professional
growth
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When you read there may be some vocabulary in the

passage which you don´t understand. Here are two All listening comprehension or reading comprehension
techniques/ strategies you can use to guess the general activities which ask the learner to focus on a specific part or
sense of an unfamiliar word. aspect of the message serve to develop this learning skill.
Materials
a) Decide what part of speech the word is. Look at the
Any recording
following words and decide whether they are nouns, verbs
or adjectives...
Present meanings of key words.
b) Look in the context for clues to its general sense
(students are given words and possible meanings) Give learners practice in identifying key words when
called out at random.
c) If there are any more words you don´t understand, write
them and then use the two strategies to try to guess their
general meaning. Then you can use your dictionary.

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Ask learners to focus on the key words of the day.

Make it clear they do not need to try to understand v The learner acts at least partially as his/her
.
everything.
v The focus of change is his/her own
Learners listen to the tape and tick the appropriate and .
box every time the key word is heard.
v This requires that learners be able to
Check their listening skill. their own learning process
and be able to pay attention to how they go
Discuss the purpose of this exercise, and how to about learning.
apply it in new situations (other tasks, outside the
v This learning can only be carried out
classroom...). productively in situations which
the learner.

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The situation conducive to the

spontaneous use of strategies is
characterised by:
v the learner’s perception of the situation as v effective with
from ; primary emphasis on and
v material which is to the and and
learner, and/or learning experience and .
process which are perceived as relevant to the
learners’ life experiences;
v presentation of information through a
, with
sufficient repetitions and variations on themes;

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1) is inappropriate for the

The approach to learner training in the learner because it does not reflect an
classroom is likely to be one of information, understanding of the process of
questioning and creating an awareness of student learning.
different possibilities. Learners should be
2) is impossible to follow
encouraged to think about their reasons for
because what is described is
language learning and schooling generally
impossible.
and the strategies they employ and have
found helpful. Learners should also be 3) involves a threatening attack
encouraged to experiment on the existing ways that students have
of doing things.

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v Encourage students to how they are

GENERAL MODEL OF HOW TO TEACH STRATEGIES doing when they are using strategies.
v Encourage of and
v Teach one or two strategies at a time, intensively
generalization of strategies.
and extensively, as part of the ongoing
curriculum. v Increase students’ to use strategies
by heightening student awareness that they
and new strategies. are acquiring valuable skills that are at the
again and strategies in ways that heart of competent functioning.
are sensitive to aspects of strategy use that are v Emphasize rather than
not well understood. speedy processing;
v Explain to students and to use high anxiety in students; encourage students
strategies. to so that
they can attend to academic tasks.
v Provide , using strategies for as
many appropriate tasks as possible.

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An eight-week metacognition training package

was incorporated into the academic writing
programme of the experimental group. Students
in the experimental group improved their ability
to plan, monitor and evaluate a writing task
more than students in the two control groups.
Planning became the most often exercised skill,
followed by evaluating and monitoring.
Improvements in writing were maintained on a
delayed test. Overall, the study suggests that
strategy-based instruction in the form of
training learners in task-specific metacognitive
self-regulation improved learners’ autonomy in
both learning and their writing ability. (Le Thi Cam
Nguyen and Yongqi Gu, 2013)
We have done exercises about our learning experience.
They have been very interesting, because I have never
asked me about my learning experience: When I have
done these exercises, I have understood that English
has been important for me, and I have given some
reasons, but I have understood that I haven’t studied
English very well, too.
In these exercises, there have been some advices to
study English well. They have been good and we have
hold and tell that we are going to consider them and
we are going to use them.
But the most important thing for me has been this
sentence: "Learn how you learn" It isn’t long but it is a
very good advice, and it is new for me" (Antonia)

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use a dictionary set learning goals

use grammar books detect needs and identify problems
keep records (vocabulary, grammar points, …) write questionnaires, letter, reports,…
correct their own mistakes negotiate with classmates and teachers
take notes work in groups
make summaries develop speaking, listening, reading…
prepare and give a short talk acquire meaningful input,
negotiate with meaning …
reflect on their day to day learning
assess themselves and others

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Do my homework
Give myself homework The only man who is educated is the man
Be attentive in class
who has learnt how to learn; the man who
Choose activities in class
Choose a theme to work on has learnt how to adapt to change, the man
Train until I master the difficulties
who has learnt that no knowledge is secure,
Set up aims for a period
Make plans for a lesson that only the process of seeking knowledge
Do exercises gives a basis for security (Carl Rogers).
Help others
Evaluate myself

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By creating opportunities for learning how to

learn and self-regulation, teachers will help
their students become more aware of what
language learning entails and more strategic
and efficient as language learners. Moreover,
teachers will better understand their students’
attitudes, values and abilities, as well as their
difficulties and the coping strategies they use.
This will allow them to take an active role in
reshaping students’ learning approaches when
needed. (Jiménez Raya, Lamb & Vieira, 2017)

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vIs this principle a priority for me as a v Integration of communicative and learning

teacher? competences
vIf it is, why is it a priority and how do I
address it? v Pedagogical explicitness enhances a dialogic
vIf not, should/could it be made more approach whereby teachers and learners
become co-managers of the curriculum and
explicit and intentional in my practice?
critical agents of change.
vIf so, why and how should/could it be
made more explicit and intentional in
my practice?

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Teachers usually include activities that

incorporate strategy work for learners-
Specific time for training
However, these learning strategies are not
made explicit in the language classroom. Integrated with language learning tasks
This means that learners perform particular
strategies without being helped to understand
their , , and Blind training
, i.e. what a strategy is useful for Informed training
and when it is appropriate to use it.
Self-control training

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The communicative language

classroom
Chamot, A. U., Barnhardt, S., El-Dinary, P. B., &
Robbins, J. (1999). The learning strategies handbook.
White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman.

Communicative Process competence Chamot, A. U., (2009). The CALLA handbook:

Linguistic competence
Socioliinguistic competence
Discourse competence
Strategic competence
Intercultural competence
Intrapersonal competence
Interpersonal competence
Project competence
Implementing the cognitive academic language
learning approach (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY:
Addison Wesley Longman.
Ellis, G. & Sinclair, B. (1989). Learning to Learn
English – a Course in Learner Training. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press (teacher’s and learner’s
book).

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vIs this principle a priority for me as a

teacher?
vIf it is, why is it a priority and how do I
address it?
vIf not, should/could it be made more
explicit and intentional in my practice?
vIf so, why and how should/could it be
made more explicit and intentional in
my practice?

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