AUTONOMY IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING New Research Agendas Edited by Alice Chik, Naoko Aoki and Richard Smith Autonomy in Language Learning and Teaching Alice Chik • Naoko Aoki Richard Smith Editors Autonomy in Language Learning and Teaching New Research Agendas Editors Alice Chik Naoko Aoki Educational Studies Graduate School of Letters Macquarie University Osaka University North Ryde, NSW, Australia Kobe, Japan Richard Smith Centre for Applied Linguistics University of Warwick Coventry, UK ISBN 978-1-137-52997-8 ISBN 978-1-137-52998-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52998-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960759 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 Chapter 2 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license information in the chapter. 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The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom C ontents 1 I ntroduction 1 Alice Chik, Naoko Aoki, and Richard Smith 2 Learner Autonomy in Developing Countries 7 Richard Smith, Kuchah Kuchah, and Martin Lamb 3 Language Teacher Autonomy and Social Censure 29 Xuesong Gao 4 Learner Autonomy and Groups 51 David M. Palfreyman 5 Learner Autonomy and Digital Practices 73 Alice Chik 6 Researching the Spatial Dimension of Learner Autonomy 93 Garold Murray Index 115 v n C otes on ontributors Naoko  Aoki is a professor of Graduate School of Letters, Osaka University, where she teaches Japanese as a second language pedagogy. She started practising and writing about learner autonomy in the early 1990s and earned a PhD on that topic from Trinity College Dublin. She is a founding co-coordinator of JALT’s Learner Development SIG and was a co-convenor of AILA’s Learner Autonomy Research Network from 2011 to 2014. Her publications include Mapping the Terrain of Learner Autonomy published by Tampere University Press in 2009, co-edited with Felicity Kjisik, Peter Voller and Yoshiyuki Nakata; “Defending stories and sharing one: Towards a narrative understanding of teacher autonomy” in Pemberton, R., Toogood, S. & Barfield, A. (Eds.); Autonomy and Language Learning: Maintaining Control published by Hong Kong University Press in 2009; “A community of practice as a space for collab- orative student teacher autonomy” in O’Rourke, B. & Carson, L. (Eds.); and Language Learner Autonomy: Policy, Curriculum, Classroom (pp. 63–78), published by Peter Lang in 2010. Alice Chik is a senior lecturer in Educational Studies at Macquarie University. Alice’s primary area of research examines language learning and multilingual literacies in digital environments. She is especially inter- ested in exploring how language learners construct and direct their auton- omous learning in informal contexts. Alice is a leader of the Macquarie Multilingualism Research Group. Her particular interest in multilingual- ism is public discourse, representation and narratives of everyday multilin- vii viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS gual experience. She is the lead co-editor of The Multilingual City: Sydney Case Studies (Routledge, 2018). Her recent projects can be found on www.multilingualsydney.org. Kuchah Kuchah has been involved in ELT research and teacher educa- tion for over 18 years. He is currently a lecturer in TESOL at the University of Bath, UK. Previously, he worked as a teacher, teacher trainer and policy maker in his home country Cameroon and, later, as a teaching fellow at the Universities of Warwick and Sheffield in the UK. He has served as a consultant on language policy and pedagogy with the Council of Europe in Albania and with UNICEF and WTI in South Sudan and was recently recognised as one of TESOL International Association’s “30 upcoming leaders” in ELT. Kuchah’s research interests include teaching English to young learners, English medium instruction, context-appropriate meth- odology and teacher education. He is co-editor of International Perspectives on Teaching English in Difficult Circumstances (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan) and has published in Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, Issues in Educational Research, ELT Journal and Comparative Education. Martin Lamb is a senior lecturer in TESOL at the University of Leeds, UK. After a brief stint in sales and marketing, he taught English in Sweden, Indonesia, Bulgaria and Saudi Arabia, before moving into teacher training and institutional development on various British Council projects. At Leeds he teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in language teaching methodology, the psychology of language learning and language assessment. His main research interests are in learner and teacher motiva- tion, especially how it relates to identity, social context and pedagogy. His articles have appeared in the academic journals Language Teaching, TESOL Quarterly, Language Learning, System and others, and he is currently working on Handbook of Motivation for Language Learning for Palgrave Macmillan. Garold Murray is an associate professor in the Center for Liberal Arts and Language Education at Okayama University. His research interests focus on learner autonomy, social learning spaces, semiotics of place and imagination in language learning. He is the editor of the book The Social Dimensions of Learner Autonomy (2014), and co-editor of Identity, Motivation, and Autonomy in Language Learning (2011, co-edited with Andy Gao and Terry Lamb), Social Spaces for Language Learning: Stories NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR S ix from the L-café (2016, co-edited with Naomi Fujishima) and Space, Place and Autonomy in Language Learning (2018, co-edited with Terry Lamb). David Palfreyman is an associate professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Zayed University, Dubai. Since 1995 he has worked in higher education at undergraduate and postgraduate level in Turkey and the UAE. His research interests include learner autonomy, the devel- opment of academic biliteracy and the contributions of sociocultural con- text (particularly the family and peer groups) to learning. He has presented research at numerous international conferences and has published his work in journals and books. He is the editor of Learner Autonomy Across Cultures (2003, with Richard Smith), Learning and Teaching Across Cultures in Higher Education (2007, with Dawn L.  McBride) and Academic Biliteracies (2017, with Christa van der Walt); he also edits a journal titled Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives. He is currently coordinating a cluster of research projects on “Languaging and higher education in bilingual contexts”. Richard Smith is a reader (associate professor) at the University of Warwick, UK. He co-founded the JALT Learner Development SIG in 1994, and formerly edited both its newsletter Learning Learning and IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG’s publication, Independence, subse- quently co-convening the AILA Research Network on Learner Autonomy (2008–2014). His publications include Learner Autonomy Across Cultures (co-edited with David Palfreyman, 2003), as well as chapters and articles on teacher-learner autonomy, pedagogy of autonomy as appropriate meth- odology and the relationship of teacher-research and teacher autonomy. Recently he has been focusing on work with teachers in developing coun- tries in this latter area as academic coordinator for teacher-research men- toring schemes in Latin America and India. His related innovative, open access e-books include (for the British Council) Champion Teachers: Stories of Exploratory Action Research and Children and Teachers as Co-researchers in Indian Primary English Classrooms, as well as (for IATEFL Research SIG) Teachers Research! Xuesong Gao recently joined the School of Education, the University of New South Wales, as an associate professor. He used to teach at the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Institute of Education. His research and teaching interests include language learner autonomy, lan- guage teacher education, language policy, reading, second language x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS acquisition and sociolinguistics. His publications appeared in journals including Applied Linguistics, Asia Pacific Education Researcher, Asia Pacific Education Review, Educational Studies, Journal of Education for Teaching, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language Awareness, Language Teaching Research, Modern Language Journal, Studies in Higher Education, System, Teacher Development, Teaching and Teacher Education, TESOL Quarterly and World Englishes. He co-edits the System journal and the Springer book series on English Language Education. L t ist of abLes Table 6.1 Multiple timescales at the L-café 98 Table 6.2 A research agenda for the spatial dimension of learner autonomy 107 xi