Until June last year I taught English in the municipal adult education in Sweden. I have worked with adult education for more than twenty years and the last eight years I have tried to promote ”learner autonomy” in my classroom. Since August last year I am a doctoral student in the department of education at the University of Örebro. My research interest is learner autonomy in language learning and the concept of autonomy in relation to democracy. This means that my interests are educational, philosophical and political-educational.

On study-days I have mainly spoken about how to organize work in the classroom to promote autonomy, but now I would instead like to draw attention to various meanings of the concept of learner autonomy and various consequences of these different meanings for education. Learner autonomy became, at least in Sweden, a buzz-word and like such words it soon lost meaning. Each and every teacher used it in his or her own way. I would therefore like to contribute with an analysis of the concept of learner autonomy and I welcome a discussion on such an approach.

My experiences are limited to language teaching and learning in Sweden. When I have met Swedish teachers and asked them the question: “Why do you want to promote learner autonomy?” most of them have replied “because I want my pupils/students to learn more”. This is of course all to the good, but to my mind this reply mirrors a view that learner autonomy is a means by which to enhance efficiency in language learning. We need to relate that to the fact that we live in a society where everything is about efficiency – fast seems to be the key-word: fast food and fast learning. Perhaps it also shows that many teachers are unaware of or forget that learner autonomy also has other dimensions: it can also be regarded in relation to communication, a social context and democracy. I would like to draw attention to differing meanings of the concept of learner autonomy, because these meanings or perspectives are all key aspects of learner autonomy, but the consequences for the pupils’/students’ learning process and personal development or for society will differ depending on what aspects are emphasized by the teacher.

My own experience of promoting learner autonomy is with adult students within the municipal adult education, mainly upper secondary education. Many of these students are actually rather young. They have just left school and come to the municipal adult education to get better marks/grades for entrance to the university. This work is guided by the same curricular regulations as for teenagers in secondary education. This means that freedom is restricted by an overall curriculum, special subject and course goals, and a marking system. Irma Huttunen has expressed such restrictions in the following way:

 A learner is fully autonomous when he is working individually or in a group, taking responsibility for the planning, monitoring and evaluation of his studies; the learner cannot, of course, be fully autonomous within the framework of a nationwide curriculum, but the more responsibility he is given in any of the three areas of planning, monitoring and evaluation, the more autonomous he is. (Huttunen 1986:95 p. 33)

On the one hand, students who participate in formal educational settings normally do not have the freedom to allow themselves to direct their learning so as not to obtain a certificate. And our marking system sets limits to freedom. On the other hand, in Sweden the goals of the modern language syllabuses are very wide: the goal is to communicate better in the target language, to develop reading, speaking, listening and writing skills. Neither content nor methods are mentioned. It is up to the teacher and the pupils/students to decide how to reach these goals.

The overall goals in the curriculum are also helpful for teachers who want to promote autonomy. There is a strong emphasis on pupils’/students’ independence and responsibility for their work and their learning:

The teacher shall

· assume that the pupils/students want to and can take personal responsibility for their learning and their work at school

(My translation from: Lpf 94 p.33)

The school shall strive to ensure that each pupil/student

· takes responsibility for his/her own learning and for the result of his/her studies

· can assess the results of his/her studies and his/her need to develop in relation to the demands in the syllabuses

(My translation from: Lpf 94 p.35)

The syllabus for English in upper secondary school and adult education states:

•   The school shall strive to ensure that each pupil/student takes more and more responsibility for developing his/her linguistic ability.

                                                   (My translation from: Skolverket Gy Språk 2000:18 p.85)

To pass the course the syllabus states:

•  The pupil/student takes responsibility for planning, carrying out and evaluating his/her work and uses adequate educational aids.

(My translation from: Skolverket Gy Språk 2000:18 p.88)

Even if there is a strong support for learner autonomy in our curricula and syllabuses, I think we need to ask questions like What is the purpose of ‘learner autonomy’? Is it to enhance efficiency in language learning? Is the purpose of school to prepare for working-life, that is, a market-oriented purpose? or is the purpose democratic citizenship thus offering pupils/ students the opportunities to work in a democratic environment which provides democratic experiences? Depending on the purpose of school our interpretation of learner autonomy will have different consequences.

One very special reason why I became interested in how the autonomous learner has been described in the literature about learner autonomy is some of the students I have met in my classes. Each term I met a small number of what I would call extremely independent, autonomous students. They took responsibility for their learning, did not expect me to control that they did what was expected of them and they reflected on what they did. They did not do tasks just because I demanded it. They usually had very good knowledge and skills in various fields, but this was often not the kind of knowledge valued by schools. They had gained this knowledge by reading a lot or by sharing other people’s knowledge and experiences, had utilized their experiences and in this way developed their thinking. What especially characterized them, however, was their motivation. They seemed to be somewhat or completely independent of external influences and driven by an internal will, an inner wish to achieve their best for their own sake, to develop, to be allowed to work with things that were of interest and important to them, even if these things were not rewarded in the institutional learning setting. They were also flexible – they easily adapted to teacher-planned work if it was necessary and thus accepted that they could not direct all learning themselves, but many regretted it. They could be critical and provoking for teachers, a consequence of their following their own principles. “We’re in the cafeteria if you need us”, is what one of these students told me, when his base group left my classroom to work somewhere else. Another of these students reacted, for moral and political reasons, strongly against the subjects given for the essay in our National Test in English, ‘Young People and Money’ and “Learning to Handle Money” and wrote a devastating criticism of the topic in excellent English instead of the essay he was expected to write. This student also told me he usually lost out being awarded the top mark by acting in this way and that he sometimes asked himself afterwards if it was worth it. At the same time he believed that he had to act according to his conviction; to do what he felt was the right thing to do.

I would like to describe such students as a little bit rebellious, I have named them “the rebellious autonomous learner” and they have, as I mentioned earlier, to a great extent contributed to awakening my interest in how the autonomous pupil/student has been described in the literature about learner autonomy.

I am now going to briefly discuss four different perspectives on, or classifications of, learner autonomy or the autonomous learner. I have called them:

• autonomy – efficiency in language learning
• the obedient autonomous learner
• autonomy, a social context and communication
• autonomy – democracy

It is, however, important to stress that these perspectives are not exclusive of each other. They overlap. My intention or wish is that they should be used as a tool to help teachers reflect on what learner autonomy is about.

What the autonomous pupil/student is supposed to be able to do can, as I have mentioned earlier, be summed up in the following way:

To take charge of his/her learning which means having the responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of this learning

• determining the objectives
• defining the contents and progressions
• selecting methods and techniques to be used
• monitoring the procedure of acquisition properly speaking (rhythm, time, place, etc.)
• evaluating what has been acquired

(Holec 1981 p. 3)

This implies, as I think we all know, that an autonomous learner is capable of setting goals and objectives, choosing material, methods and tasks, carrying out and evaluating his/her work/learning. As I have shown earlier, this is one of the goals in the Swedish syllabuses: pupils/students should be able to plan, carry out and evaluate their work.

Key words in this perspective are: responsibility, reflection, awareness of both language as a system and language learning and metacognition.

Typical characteristics of such a learner are:

• diligence

• ability to concentrate

• motivation

• conscientiousness,

• an ability to reflect critically on what one does

• an ability to correct oneself

• an ability to choose tasks based on one’s language ability

• an awareness that different tasks demand a different type of knowledge - for example what it means to know a word in different contexts,

• an awareness of how we learn and how to progress: of the learning process

This is all to the good, but we also need to look at this perspective from a critical point of view. I am myself critical of relating diligence, ability to concentrate and conscientiousness to autonomy. I cannot see the relationship between these characteristics and autonomy.

One problem related to this perspective, is that there can be too strong a focus on the individual. Politically this perspective can be said to relate to liberalist ideals about the individual and his/her right to fulfil his/her own potential, to create his/her own fate and to take responsibility for the consequences.

In the classroom conversation tasks are often tasks where the pupils/students follow prefabricated patterns; they fill in missing words or replace parts of a sentence with expressions from a list. Nothing in this conversation is new or spontaneous like in real life. In a way they do not even need a conversation partner. The dialogues that pupils/students are asked to create and read out are often not dialogues but monologues.

Consequently there is a risk that a social context and social experiences will be excluded, if there is a strong focus on this perspective.

Another problem is that the content can be too fixed. The pupil/student can write down a list of assignments from, for example, a textbook, do them in a mechanical way and then tick them off.

Very close to this perspective we find “the obedient autonomous learner”.

 The obedient autonomous learner

I have described “my rebellious autonomous learner”, and as a contrast to that learner I would also like to mention the learner I would call “the obedient, autonomous learner”. This is a learner who does exactly what the teacher says without reflecting, whether the teacher tells him/her to do chapter 5 in the textbook and learn the 20 new words in the wordlist or to plan, carry out and evaluate his/her own work:

• He considers the planning of group objectives fruitful and acts efficiently in such situations.
• In the monitoring phase he makes effective use of the materials available and acquires extra materials when necessary for the learning task.
• He works in a concentrated way, participating in group and pair activities where appropriate … 

(Huttunen 1986 pp 178-179)

In this description the autonomous learner acts efficiently and makes effective use of the materials available. He works in a concentrated way and participates in group and pair activities where appropriate.

As I mentioned earlier, I am myself critical of relating efficiency and concentration to autonomy. In my opinion this has more to to with instrumentalism than with autonomy. My rebellious autonomous learner could, of course, work in this way but could just as well make resistance to such expectations.

The consequences of too strong a focus on this perspective are, I would say, the same as for the perspective “Autonomy – efficiency in language learning”.

What I would like to draw attention to again in both these perspectives is the fact that learners do not become autonomous just because we ask them to plan their work etc. This can be done in a very mechanical way without reflection, a critical approach or a personal motivation to learn.

In this perspective the individual learner learns in a social context. Learning a modern or foreign language presupposes a social context.

The political theory behind it can be exemplified by communitarianism and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. Both the individual and the social context, society, are highlighted. The good of the individual and the good of society are interdependent. The individual needs society to develop his/her full potential and society needs autonomous citizens to function as a democratic society.

Philosophically it is built on ideas of progressivism or reconstructionism: the task of education is to promote learners who can contribute both to the preservation and the development of a democratic society.

Thus communication is central in this perspective:

… all learning is the product of interaction: learner autonomy does not arise spontaneously from within the learner but develops out of the learner’s dialogue with the world to which he or she belongs. 

(Little 1994 p. 431)

Learning is never solitary:

In our concern for the learner as an individual, with his or her own cognitive style and preferred learning strategies, we may overlook the fact that learning is never solitary or solipsistic.  The psychological interaction that drives developmental and experiential learning typically proceeds within a framework of social interaction;… It is sometimes thought that learner autonomy necessarily entails total independence – of the teacher, of other learners, and of formally approved curricula. But this is not so: total independence is not autonomy but autism.

(Little 1995 p. 178)

The overall goals in the Swedish national curriculum have a strong focus on both the individual and the community he/she is part of, the social context. Our course goals in modern languages and English highlight the aspect of communication.

It is also in this perspective I would like to place the idea that 

The autonomous learner has the means to transcend the barriers between learning and living 

(Little 1995 p.175)

– to show that what is learnt at school should have relevance in life and vice versa.

Key-words or key phrases in this perspective are: a social context, dialogue, communication, interaction and the relation between the individual and society.

A positive consequence of this perspective is that communication will be as authentic as it can be in an institutional learning setting. The contrast is the prefabricated dialogues/monologues I mentioned earlier.

To some teachers the fact that pupils/students will spend the whole lessons talking about “unnecessary things” could be regarded as a negative consequence.

This perspective is very close to the next one and the last one:

Before the reform which introduced our 9-year-compulsory school in Sweden, the right to learn a foreign language was reserved to a rather small, privileged group. One part of the democratizing process in Sweden was that all citizens should have the right to learn at least one foreign language: English. This right later became a duty and now pupils/students learn two foreign languages. The right to learn a foreign language has extended into a right to have an influence on the contents and the work forms, to participate in the teaching/learning process on one’s own terms. The politicians have very clearly stated that students’ influence is a societal interest. Democracy is central.

If I have interpreted the aims The Council of Europe originally had for promoting learner autonomy correctly, a central aim was democracy: to foster pupils to act as democratic citizens.

If we wish to develop democratic institutions and practices we must foster in our young people attitudes of independence combined with social responsibility. We will choose methods that encourage them to work together rather than against each other, so as to produce by cooperation something better than they could achieve alone. We will encourage them to respect authority based on knowledge and experience, but we will wean them off blind obedience to it. We will expect them to take responsibility for their own actions and decisions but to learn to weigh evidence, to take advice, to discuss decisions with others affected, to accept a majority decision work loyally to implement it, but to avoid humiliating or crudely overriding a sincerely-held minority view. Again, it is not just a matter of the efficiency of learning methods, though it is certainly true that if students are self-aware and educated to independence as learners, they will be likely to make better progress than others once the disciplines of school life are withdrawn.

The young person concerned will be a better citizen of his own country and of Europe, and as such will have more to contribute to European communication through speech and writing.

(Council of Europe CC-Lang (95) Report on Workshop 13 A 1993 Trim p. 24)

One problem in this perspective is that the democratic goal is no more than an overall goal in the Swedish schools. We do not have a marking system which includes such goals. Our marks are mainly subject-related. Will pupils/students take such goals as seriously as those they must reach to get a certain mark/grade?

On the other hand, if such goals were included in the marking system there would be a paradox from a democratic perspective: disciplining would increase. The aim is to promote freedom and independence but an authority exerts its power both by setting the aim and controlling that it is reached. Students/pupils only have the freedom that the system has allowed them to have.

Another negative consequence is that if abilities like taking responsibility are to be given marks/grades, more students will also probably be excluded – fail.

I need to stress once again that these four perspectives do not exclude each other. They overlap and my intention in discussing them separately is to create some kind of instrument with which to analyse “learner autonomy”, an instrument which could be helpful when we reflect on what we want to achieve or create when we promote “learner autonomy” in our classrooms. We also need to have a critical approach to “learner autonomy”: to see both risks and possibilities.

I would like to finish with a few questions which these perspectives raise:

• Which pupils/students will have difficulties planning, carrying out and evaluating their work?
• Which pupils/students will be unable to take the responsibility that is demanded?
• What will the consequences be if there is a very strong focus on the individual?
• Do obedient autonomous learners exist?
• How do we look upon the rebellious autonomous learner?
• What happens to the communication aspect if there is too strong a focus on the individual?
• What about the democratic goal expressed at any rate in the Swedish curriculum? Can it be reached if we focus on the four perspectives I have discussed?
• Is it possible to reach the goals of learner autonomy in a school system where marks/grading exists?

Holec, Henri (1981) Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. Council of Europe. Strasbourg: Pergamon Press. (First published in 1979. Strasbourg: Council of Europe)

Huttunen, Irma (1986) Towards Learner Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning in Senior Secondary Schools. Oulu: Acta Universitatis Ouluensis.

Little, David (1994) Learner Autonomy: A theoretical construct and its practical application. In Die neueren Sprachen 93:5 (1994). Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg. pp 430-442.

Little, David (1995) Learning as dialogue: the dependence of learner autonomy on teacher autonomy. In System Vol.23.No2. Great Britain: Elsevier Science Ltd. pp175-181.

Lpf 94. Läroplaner för det obligatoriska skolväsendet och de frivilliga skolformerna. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. (The curriculum for the obligatory and voluntary schools in Sweden.)

Skolverket Gy 2000:18 Språk. Kursplaner, betygskriterier och kommentarer. Stockholm: Fritzes. (The Swedish syllabus for languages including criterias for marks and comments.)

Trim, John L. M. (1993) Workshop 13A in the context of the Council of Europe’s Project: “Language learning for European citizenship”. In Language learning for European citizenship/Apprentissage des langues et citoyenneté européenne. Report on Workshop 13A. Flora Palamidesi Cesaretti & Nora Galli De’Paratesi (eds). CC – lang (95) Strasbourg: Council of Europe. pp 24-25.