The Gozo College

1. The Gozo College A Caring ForwardLooing College

2. LEARNER AUTONOMY • Autonomy is the ability to take charge of one’s own learning. (Holec) • Autonomy is essentially a matter of the learner’s psychological relation to the process and content of learning. (Little) • Autonomy is a situation in which learners are totally responsible for all the decisions concerned with their learning and the implementation of these decisions. (Dickenson)

3. Definitions (contd) • Learner autonomy means that learners are given the time and opportunity to think about how they want to go about learning (techniques, resources needed, location and pacing); which criteria will be used, and in what ways to determine whether the learning experience was satisfactory and worthwhile. (Bocket and Hiemstra)

4. In simpler terms … • Students take responsibility for their learning and work in partnership with tutors and other students; • It is about learning to learn and developing assessment for learning; • Students reflect on their experience and are able to create their own meanings; • It requires tutors to trust students’ abilities and promote the use of student directed learning.

5. Why learner autonomy? The only (person) who is educated is the person who has learned how to learn; the person who has realised that no knowledge is secure, that only the process of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security. (Karl Rogers)

6. Why learner autonomy? • If they are actively engaged with their learning, it is likely to be more efficient and effective, because more personal and more focused than otherwise; • If learners are proactively committed to their learning, the problem of motivation is by definition solved; • Learners are different: theory of multiple intelligences, different learning styles, left and right brain …; • Life-long learning.

7. Facilitating Learner Autonomy The teacher’s role is to create and maintain a learnng environment in which learners can be autonomous in order to become even more autonomous. Vygotsky emphasizes the interdependence of the cognitive and social-interactive dimensions of the learning process

8. Facilitating learner autonomy • Adoption of bottom-up approaches implying the element of discovery through personal work instead of the distribution of ready-made input; • Pedagogy of choice: different approaches, different activities to address different learning styles and intelligences; • Pedagogy of time: giving learners time to answer questions, to solve problems, to understand new input in an atmosphere of tolerance of error; • Pedagogy of cooperation: exchange of ideas, opinions, information with other learners; pair-work and group-work are forms of social organisation that lead to autonomy; • Pedagogy of resources: training learners to be able to use available resources independently.

9. Philosophies of learning • Constructivism: the basic idea is that knowledge cannot be instructed by a teacher, it can only be constructed by the learner. Knowledge cannot be taught but only learned (constructed); • Humanist views: these advocate respect for the learner; giving learners opportunities of taking decisions about their own learning; cooperation among learners; the teacher as facilitator of learning; • Cognitive views: the learner’s active involvement in the process of learning; the constant use of strategies for processing information.

10. Promoting learner autonomy (General) • Fostering teachers’ autonomy; • Pre-planning: learners identify their objectives and determine/negotiate how they will achieve them; • Planning-in-action: here, learners may change their objectives and reconsider the ways in which they will go about achieving them; • Training in cognitive strategies: resourcing (ex: dictionaries), note-taking, questioning for clarification, inferencing, deduction …; • Training in metacognitive strategies: concentrating on general or specific aspects of a task, self-monitoring (observing and checking one’s performance), self-evaluation ( appraising one’s performance in relation to one’s own), self-re-inforcement (rewarding oneself for success)…; • Training in social and affective strategies: cooperating in a group, group dynamics, self-esteem (evaluation the learner makes of himself with regard to learning a subject a learning in general).

11. Promoting learner autonomy (specific) • Introspective self-reports: assigning a task and have learners report what they are thinking while they are performing it; • Retrospective self-reports: learners are asked to think back on their own learning; • Diaries; • Well-planned group-work; • Well-planned project work; • Portfolios: example: ELP: (a) passport: summarises the owner’s linguistic identity; (b) language biography: helps reflects on the process of learning; (c) dossier: in which the owner collects evidence of his proficiency in language learning; • Using ICT: on-line communication…; • Resource (class)rooms plus subject self-evaluation learning kits…

12. TEACHER WORK-SHOPS • Which elements of the presentation have you found most interesting? • At present, how is learner autonomy being promoted in your subject area? • Following the ideas put forward in this presentation, what concrete steps might be taken to enhance learner autonomy in your subject area? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please elect • a chairperson, • a time-keeper, and • a rapporteur Please hand in a legible copy of your report to the College Coordinator

13. WORK-SHOP (Head & Ass. Heads) • Which elements of the presentation have you found most interesting? • How can you, as administrators and curriculum managers, help, concretely, in the implementation of learner autonomy in your school? • What extra resources are needed to enhance learner autonomy in your school?