Teacher development for autonomy: an exploratory review of language teacher education for learner and teacher autonomy

ABSTRACT

The development of autonomy is acknowledged as a prominent educational goal in discussions of language education, but it is hardly a reality in many schools. One of the reasons for this discrepancy is the lack of teacher education programmes addressing teacher and learner autonomy as valid educational concerns. Because teacher education is vital for the enactment of autonomy in classroom practice, this paper reviews previous work on the development of language teacher education initiatives for teacher and learner autonomy. It analyses different aspects of these initiatives (e.g. conceptual framework, teacher development strategies, outcomes, etc.) to draw relevant conclusions for future action in the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• learner autonomy
• teacher autonomy
• language education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Borja Manzano Vázquez is a Ph.D. student working at the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Granada (Spain). His research interests are in the field of the teaching and learning of English as a FL: learner and teacher autonomy in modern language education, bilingual education, and FL teacher education.

Notes

1 DIVA: D (Democracy), I (Individuality), V (Vie, French word for life) and A (Auto-sufficiency).

2 Available at http://archive.ecml.at/mtp2/fte/pdf/C3_Epostl_E.pdf.

3 Norwegian acronym for Innovation with ICT in Initial Language Teacher Education.

Additional information

Funding

I want to thank the support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education [research grant FPU12/03899].