Learner Autonomy: Learning from the Student's Voice. CLCS Occasional Paper.

This paper focuses on learner autonomy, noting that learner autonomy is not a matter of institutional mode but of learners' internal attitudes, and that learner autonomy entails an awareness of both self-direction and collaboration between the teacher and students and between students and students. The paper suggests that a teacher's attitude toward his or her students might hold the key to learner autonomy. After describing learner autonomy and learner development, the paper examines several studies that investigated students' attitudes toward the learner's role and classroom learning. Data from focus group interviews, individual interviews, and journals written by English-as-a-Foreign-Language students at a Japanese university indicate that students were aware that they needed to be active as learners, and they seemed to seek interactions with others in their classroom learning. The main problem appeared to be in the gap between their awareness and their actual behavior (their internal perceptions of their need to participate versus their external passivity). (Contains 37 references.) (SM)