Teacher Autonomy and A Pedagogy for Autonomous Learning

Teacher Autonomy and A Pedagogy for Autonomous Learning: CALL Environment

Helping teacher to help themselves by Thomas Robb. In Teacher Education in CALL. Hubbard and Levy (eds)

The emphasis on self-directed learning and lifelong learning have highlighted the importance of autonomous learning of both learners and teachers

>> Long and Guglielmino 2004 “The increased recognition of the importance of lifelong self directed learning and the proliferation of information and technology have added the mission to develop lifelong learners for educational institutions at all level.”

>> Warschauer 2002: 457 “…. Teachers should be able not only use today’s CALL software but should have successful strategies for evaluating and adapting the new waves of software that will come.”

>> Little 2007 “Learner autonomy now seemed to be a matter of learners doing things not necessarily on their own, but for themselves.”

Confessore & Park (2004: 45-46) discuss the various psychological constructs that related to autonomy and self-direction developed by Ponton 1999.

>> Goal-directedness – establishing a learning goal that will lead to a valued level of learning and subsequently working to accomplish this goal

>> Action-orientation: “An action-oriented individual creates and enacts learning plans quickly.”

>> Overcoming obstacles: the learners’ continual engagement in a learning activity despite the presence of impediments such as a lack of confidence in learning ability, lack of resources, time constraints.

>> Active approach: a learner that does not wait on someone else to solve his or her problems

>> Self-starting: will not wait on others to create learning goals.

Supporting autonomy in CALL at the program level

Supportive environment for the integration of technology into the curriculum is more important than any training course, hardware, or software. Most instructors require overt measures of support such as those offered below. ****

> Survey your institution’s technical support environment
> Hire a CALL specialist who can advise others, help solve problems and encourage the implementation of CALL related activities may be of more benefit than a training program
> Recognize and reward self-training
> Reward innovation
> Set up faculty development program
> Allocate a sufficient amount in the budget for training and resource personnel
> Encourage networking for staff to see each other and have opportunities to converse
> Provide release time and funding for teachers to participate in technology-related conferences and other events
> Requiring the use of technology in the class (the brute force method)

`Tessie said' = The more I read they more I have seen the discrepancies between the reality of technology use the situated instruction. Most of IT use in Thai education context is the top-down fashion. Teachers are required to attend seminars and training about CALL application but very few of them have practices the IT-enhanced teaching in reality.