Reflexive and reflective thinking: a crucial link between agency and autonomy

Abstract

As the construct of agency has generated considerable discussion among language educators recently and has become a buzz word, there is a need for it to be further conceptualized and operationalized in autonomy research. Drawing on Margaret Archer's theorization of ‘internal conversation,’ this paper theorizes language learners' agency as a precondition to their efforts to take control of the learning process. It proposes reflexive/reflective thinking as a means to examine how agency enables language learners to discern and deliberate their concerns, desires, and visions in the light of contextual and structural conditions and assuming control of their language learning. To this end, language learners' narratives are used to illustrate how they are enabled by agency to conduct reflexive/reflective thinking for regulated language learning. The paper concludes that such an understanding of agency and autonomy may be foundational to language educators' efforts to promote autonomous learning.

Keywords:

• agency
• learner autonomy
• internal conversation
• reflective and reflexive thinking

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors and the reviewers for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of this paper. This work was partially supported by Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (No. 201111159073) at the University of Hong Kong.