AUTONOMY, CRITICAL THINKING AND

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

MATERIALS DESIGN AND CALLYAMITH J. FANDIÑO

LA SALLE UNIVERSITY, BOGOTÁ, MARCH, 2015

INTRODUCTION

AUTONOMY: DEFINITION (Chitashvili, 2007)

Autonomy is a complex socio-cognitive system, manifested in different degrees of independence and control of one’s own learning process, involving capacities, abilities, attitudes, willingness, decision making, choices, planning, actions, and assessment either as a language learner or as a communicator inside or outside the classroom.

AUTONOMY: ASPECTS

• Involvement of self-confidence• Usage of individual learning strategies• Learners’ willingness to take responsibility for their own learning• Relation to meta cognitive strategies: planning, making

decisions, monitoring and evaluation.

AUTONOMY: LEVELS

AUTONOMY: ACTIVITIES

• Self-reports• Diaries and evaluation sheets• Persuasive communication• Strategy instruction • Self-monitoring • Learner-generated quizzes or exercises

CRITICAL THINKING: DEFINITION (Rezaei & Derakhshan, 2011)

Two central components of critical thinking: the first one is the ability to assess reasons properly and the second one is the willingness, desire, and disposition to base one's actions and beliefs on reasons.

CRITICAL THINKING: TASKS

Buskist and irons (2008) mention that such an enterprise requires students to learn several subtasks which include: a. Developing a skeptical approach to problem solving and decision making; b. Breaking down problems into their simplest outcomes; c. Searching for evidence that both supports and refutes a given conclusion; d. Maintaining a vigilant attitude toward their personal bias, assumptions,

and values that may interfere with making an objective decision.

CRITICAL THINKING: FEATURES

Have a strong intention to recognize the importance of good thinking; Accurately explain their decisions; consider alternative explanations for any state of affairs; Develop and present reasoned and persuasive arguments; distinguish between primary and secondary sources of information; distinguish opinions from facts;

CRITICAL THINKING: ACTIVITIES

a. Engaging oneself in constant questioning in the reading process by inquiring into the purpose, information, interpretation, assumption and implication of an issue

b. Debate/forum/discussionc. Media analysisd. Problem solving tasks and activitiese. Self and peer assessment assignments

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: DEFINITION (Burke, 2002)

The monitoring of student process throughout the duration of a course or unit of study. It shows how far students have progressed along the path toward acquisition of the target language.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: ACTIVITIES

The teacher may adopt a variety of tools for observing learner advancement: written tasks, tests, student seminars, and conferences, through to portfolios, presentations, and reading or listening comprehension activities.

These activities may used formal (standardized - systematic) or informal (spontaneous) procedures.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT: BENEFITS

• Opportunities to become active in planning the direction of the learning process. • Encouragement of autonomous learning, self-assessment and

awareness of instructional goals and objectives.• Promotion of students’ monitoring of their use of language in

and outside the classroom.

REFERENCES

Burke, R. (2002). Formative assessment procedures and the second language curriculum. TESL CANADA JOURNAL, 19(2), 87-91. Chitashvili, N. (2007). The concept of autonomy in second language learning. Georgian electronic scientific journal: Education science and psychology, 2(11), 17-22.Google images (2015). Characteristics of autonomy, critical thinkers, and formative assessment. Retrieved from https://images.google.com/ Rezaei, S., & Derakhshan, A. (2011). Critical thinking in language education. Journal of language teaching and research, 2(4), 769-777.