I'm going to talk about a SIG in Poland, the members of which are all "normal" teachers who want to be a little bit more involved, and care about Teacher development and Autonomous Learning, to paraphrase Jan's words from TD Newsletter Issue 1/02.

The idea for the SIG was conceived in Kraków in May of 1998 at the IATEFL Learner Independence SIG conference Focus on Learning Rather than Teaching and was born in November of the same year in Wrocław at the IATEFL Poland annual conference. Without letting the metaphors get out of hand I would venture to suggest that its fairy godmothers were Jenny Timmer (former co-ordinator of IATEFL UK LI SIG) and Leni Dam – and I was left holding the baby, which probably makes me the midwife. I'd like to add that Leni continues to support the SIG, and made it possible for SIG members to take part in two excellent recent events on autonomous learning; a workshop held at the Danmarks Lærerhøjskole in Copenhagen in 1999 and the 7th Nordic Conference and Workshop on Autonomous Language Learning held near Helsinki in 2000.

The SIG began life as the Learner Independence SIG, a name inherited from IATEFL UK, but since that time has developed its own independent identity and has been through two name changes, ending up as the Teacher Development and Autonomous Learning SIG. No further name changes are expected.

We have about 60 members this year, the vast majority of whom are Polish women, plus a sprinkling of Polish men and native speakers. We represent a wide range of professions within ELT, including teaching across the whole spectrum of ages and teaching environments, teacher training, academia and publishing. We have produced 7 newsletters so far (thanks are due here to Jason Menayan and Zosia Grudzińska, our editors). We have our own webpages within the website of IATEFL Poland – the address can be found at the end of this piece – with selections of articles from the newsletters.

We meet at least four times a year. The number of people attending our events is not too large, as low as around half a dozen people at some events, rising to thirty or more at our annual weekend event. The high point of our calendar so far has been the weekend conference organised for the last four years in Cieszyn, the small town on the Polish-Czech border where I live.

Our meetings are characterised by a relaxed but stimulating atmosphere. We endeavour to make new people feel welcome and give everyone a chance to contribute. Having been in existence for three years now we know that we can use the time profitably without programming too tightly. We quite often spend a good deal of time on introductions to get to know each other and find out what our common ground is. One thing I'd like to emphasise is that we really chew a topic over until everybody has had their say. We don't rush over anything if there are still things to be said.

I'd like to compare that with what I noticed at the IATEFL UK conference in Brighton in 2001 – my first – when the pace of some talks was almost supersonic. Sometimes no time was left for questions and often no time was given for discussion among the audience, whether "focussed" or not. At times presenters violated normal conversational conventions during small group discussions, interrupting when most pairs could scarcely have introduced themselves.

During our annual weekend residential conference we allot part of the time on the programme to impromptu discussion groups based on topics of the participants' choice. Participants can declare an interest in presenting a particular issue on their application form without it being included on the programme. And as a general principle at all our meetings we ask presenters to leave time for the audience to talk through what they've heard in small groups and then feed it back for discussion. A pleasing example of the "TD" in our name took place at this year's conference when three SIG members who have been involved with the SIG for some time made their first presentations. Something new we tried this year was to organise a weekend retreat in the mountains near Cieszyn. This idea was adopted from the Learner Development SIG of the Japan Association of Language Teachers, who share similar perspectives to ours about running events which are less structured and more participant-driven.

I consider what the SIG does (and any similar TD group) an excellent example of informal education. Let me run over what I mean by that. It is a group of like-minded individuals with a personal stake in individual development who focus on a particular area of language teaching. It's not compulsory to attend our meetings, people come of their own volition and cover their own travel costs. Our meetings are run in a pretty democratic way. Sometimes we vote on decisions, mostly we reach consensus. The participants also come as private individuals, rather than as representatives of institutions. And we run our events and invite speakers without approaching publishers. We set the agenda and – to repeat something I mentioned earlier – we allow a discussion to run its natural course. There is a real sense of people being teachers at some points and learners at others. We don't have a syllabus and there are no formal checks on what people have learned: any "results" unfold in their own time. I also have the impression that people can join our meetings whether familiar or unfamiliar with the ideas of Autonomous Learning, having put them into practice in their work already or not.

So where is learner autonomy at in Poland? Self-access centres are very much the exception here, but a number of our members have 'self-access cupboards' in their classrooms. Computer-mediated teaching is not particularly widespread but this year in the SIG we are noticing more and more interest in exploiting the potential of ICT. Incidentally, after have produced two electronic-only versions of our newsletter we are returning to the printed page for no.7 after finding out that even some of our most committed members hadn't accessed the web-based ones.

For us autonomy is about classrooms, and the teacher being in there with the learners. It's about working against the current of traditional attitudes about the role of the teacher and the learners; about teachers and learners working together as a learning community; encouraging learners to take more responsibility in all aspects of their learning; helping students become more assertive in their interactions with activities, with their fellow learners and with the teacher; using authentic materials; moving away from coursebook dependence (I'm referring to both teachers and learners); encouraging learners to contribute materials and exercises; working with portfolios; negotiating systems of grading, focussing on learning strategies, bringing the outside world into the classroom.

A considerable number of our members work in the state-system with classes of sometimes up to 30 students or more – although it should be pointed out that in Poland many language classes are divided into two more manageable groups of around 15 students. I have great admiration for any teacher trying to achieve anything out of the ordinary in the state system; with all the familiar features of low salaries, low prestige, low motivation among learners and limited resources. Many of us find it challenging enough trying to put autonomous approaches into practice in private language schools or institutions of higher education but our struggles are nothing compared with attempts to go against the grain in state primary and middle schools.

But to return to the SIG. I derive a great deal of satisfaction and inspiration from our meetings. There is an invigorating atmosphere of enquiry, and we learn a lot from each other. I attended the Teacher Development open forum at the Brighton conference in 2001, referred to by Jan in TD Newsletter Issue 1/02. One person there was critical about being a member of a teacher development group. I understood them to mean that being part of such a group is some kind of luxury or is at odds with the reality of a profession in which most people have to work alone, isolated from colleagues and support. To me the purpose or strength of our SIG and any similar group, is that you come out of your relative isolation to share your experience and ideas with like-minded colleagues, and then return to your isolation with your hunches confirmed, a clearer vision, a sense of solidarity and the knowledge that you're not the only one in the world trying to work like that.

If you live in a country bordering Poland and are involved with a similar group contact me and we can talk about organising a joint event. And Newsletter editors Sandra Piai and Kate Threadgold will recognise my final plea. If any readers out there would like to contribute an article to our newsletter Zosia and I would be most interested to hear from you. You are guaranteed a small but focussed readership.