Leamer Autonomy in Language Learning: Defining the Field and Effecting Change

BAYREUTH CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOTTODIDACTICS

BAYREUTHER BEITRAGE ZUR GLOTTODIDAKTIK

Ed. UdoO. H.Jung

Vol.S

PETER LANG Frankfurt am Main Berlin Bern New York Paris Wien

Sara Cotterall David Crabbe

(eds.)

LEARNER AUTONOMY IN LANGUAGE LEARNING:

DEFINING THE FIELD AND EFFECTING CHANGE

PETER LANG Europiiischer Verlag der Wissenschaften

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme

Leamer autonomy in language learning: detining the tield and effecting change I Sara Cotterall ; David Crabbe (eds.).-Frankfurt am Main; Berlin; Bern; New York; Paris; Wien: Lang, 1999

(Bayreuth contributions to glottodidactics ; Vol. 8) ISBN 3-631-34890-8

ISSN 0721-409X ISBN 3-631-34890-8

US-ISBN 0-8204-4337-9 Peter Lang GmbH

Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main I 999

All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any

utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,

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Printed in Germany I 2 3 4 6 7

n.muellerTextfeldISBN 978-3-653-02293-3 (eBook)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ............................................................................................................... lX

Part 1: Defining the Field

David Crabbe Introduction .................................................................................................. 3

David Little Learner autonomy is more than a Western cultural construct .................. 11

Naoko Aoki and Richard C. Smith Learner autonomy in cultural context: the case of Japan .......................... 19

Philip Riley On the social construction of 'the learner' ................................................. 29

Part II: Effecting Change

Working with Groups

Sara Cotterall Introduction ................................................................................................. 4 3

Steven McDonough A hierarchy of strategies? ........................................................................... 51

Andrew D. Cohen Language learning strategies instruction and research .............................. 61

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David Nunan, Jose Lai and Ken Keobke Towards autonomous language learning: strategies, reflection and navigation .................................................................................................... 69

Michael M tiller-V erweyen Reflection as a means of acquiring autonomy ........................................... 79

Leni Dam and Lienhard Legenhausen Language acquisition in an autonomous learning environment: learners' self-evaluations and external assessments compared ................. 89

Working with Individual Learners

Sara Cotterall Introduction ................................................................................................. 99

Gail Schaefer Fu Guidelines for productive language counselling-tools for implementing autonomy ........................................................................... 105

Peter Voller, Elaine Martyn and Valerie Pickard One-to-one counselling for autonomous learning in a self-access centre: final report on an action learning project.. ................................... Ill

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Alison Hoffmann Discourse surrounding goals in an undergraduate ESL writing course ............................................................................................ 127

Working with Teachers

David Crabbe Introduction ............................................................................................... 139

Vera Maria Xavier dos Santos and Viviane Horbach EFL teacher and class management: teaching and learning strategies ... 143

Flavia Vieira Pedagogy for autonomy: teacher development and pedagogical experimentation - an in-service teacher training project ......................... 149

Cecilia Thavenius Teacher autonomy for learner autonomy ................................................. 159

David Crabbe Postscript ................................................................................................... 165

References ............................................................................................................. 169

List of contributors .................................................................................................. 183

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PREFACE

This publication is the outcome of a Symposium on Leamer Autonomy held at the AILA World Congress in JyvaskyHi, Finland in August 1996. The papers were written by presenters at the Symposium and have been developed into a collection that ranges across the diversity of thought and action that is subsumed under the name ofleamer autonomy.

We have divided the collection into two parts. The first section is concerned with definitional issues, an inevitable focus when dealing with a broad concept like Ieamer autonomy that takes on different emphases in different contexts. The second section includes reports of attempts to effect change in Ieamer and teacher roles in the task of language learning. We have arranged the papers according to whether they report on working with groups of learners, with individual learners, or with teachers. Although all the papers are directed towards a common goal of enabling learners to make their own learning decisions, again, there are strong contextual influences here and we are pleased that the collection includes papers from Europe, Asia, North and South America and New Zealand.

We thank the contributors for their original work and for their patience in waiting for this collection to be published. We would also like to thank Karen Kleppin and Isa Winkler for earlier work on editing and formatting, and finally Udo Jung for including the collection in his Bayreuther Beitrdge zur Glottodidaktik series.

Sara Cotterall, David Crabbe, Wellington, January 1999

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Part I Defining the Field

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DEFINING THE FIELD

INTRODUCTION

David Crabbe

We have at one time all been learners in a formal education system. Within that system, we played our role as learners in the same classroom drama as teachers played their role as teachers. The exact nature of the roles varied according to context and the personalities involved but it is not difficult to suggest some universals in those roles. The core responsibility of a teacher in formal education has always been to present, to explain, to encourage, to set standards and to assess. The core responsibility of the learner has always been to seek and display understanding and skill, to apply knowledge, to achieve standards. These respective core responsibilities are almost part of the definition of a learner and a teacher and one cannot imagine them being seriously challenged. In recent times, however, there has been a serious challenge, not so much to the core responsibilities listed above, as to the degree of control the learner might have in deciding how the responsibilities are performed and to what purposes. This is a challenge to the role relationship between learners and teachers. There have always been individual teachers in different societies who have challenged traditional interpretations of learner roles, but the challenge is currently something that might be described as a 'movement': an attempt by an international group of educationists to examine the relative roles of teachers and learners. The questioning of learner and teacher roles has now almost become a fashion, so that what started as a fringe concern has, in some places, moved closer to the centre of educational discussion and practice. The movement is generally referred to as 1earner autonomy' although there are a number of other labels. The focus of the learner autonomy movement is on the ability to take charge of one's own learning (Holec 1979, Dickinson 1987, Little 1991). The heart of the concern is decision-making in the learning process. In performing their core responsibilities, teachers have traditionally made the decisions about goals and paths to those goals. The challenge for the learner autonomy movement is to take greater account of learners' ability to set learning goals and to organise their own learning activity. This does not mean to say that learners automatically know how

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to learn. If they already have the ability, then they need the opportunity to exercise and develop it; if they do not, they need to be guided in developing it. In either case, one is looking for greater flexibility in classroom practice and the ability of learners to profit from that flexibility. Such an approach implies that the teacher is not only an expert in the language and in the organisation of appropriate large group or small group activity but is also an expert in individual learning in all its variability, and attends as far as possible to the development and exercise of that individual learning ability. Thus the role of the teacher is changed, his or her expertise is expanded, classroom activities, and the performance of the core responsibilities of teachers and learners in those activities, will be different, the discourse about classroom expectations will be markedly changed. This collection of papers represents some of the effort already made in these directions. If autonomous language learning is not a passing fashion, soon to be replaced by a new band-wagon perspective on learning, it has the potential to add new dimensions to the theory and practice of language learning and language teaching. But if the challenge is to be taken seriously in this way, then there are a large number of questions to be answered about autonomous language learning. This work has already started. The appearance in recent years of several books (Dickinson 1987, 1992, Wenden 1991, Little 1991 ), and collections of papers on autonomy (Dickinson and Wenden 1995, Pemberton et all996, Benson and Voller 1997) bear witness to this. The publications are increasingly research-orientated and include useful reports of practical experience in fostering autonomy and guidelines for best practice. The range of investigations within the field so far can hardly be called coherent in the sense that a common set of questions is being addressed. The work that is being done arises from different concerns in different contexts, often informed by differing principles of language learning. The reports under the umbrella term 'autonomous language learning' therefore cover many areas of activity, from learner strategy training to learner counselling to teacher training and this collection of papers is also a reflection of that diversity. Much of the work is question-raising rather than question-answering. The first section of the collection is about defining the field. If the goal is to work towards a theory of autonomy in language learning by identifying certain factors that help to explain language learning and teaching, then we need to work towards defining what those factors are. What cognitive factors are there - that is, factors to

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do with individual processes of decision making and learning? What social factors are there, that is, factors to do with roles and patterns of interaction around those roles? Is intervention by a teacher or institution likely to have an effect or not on the influence of these factors? The distinction made above between the cognitive and the social is one that commonly underpins discussion in recent literature. Little (in this volume) is perhaps the strongest advocate of the distinction. Associated with the cognitive is the notion of universality - of features that are a part of the biological nature of the human mind. Associated with the social is the notion of relativity - of variations from society to society in the way learning and teaching are organised. This is not to say that there are no social universals or that there are no cognitive variations from person to person or from culture to culture (although this Whorfian view has been largely abandoned), but the mainstream concerns in discussing and re-searching the nature of language learner autonomy seem to fall into two principal areas. On the one hand there are studies of implicitly universal features of human cognition that account for learners making decisions about their learning based on awareness and monitoring. On the other hand there are studies of culturally specific patterns or norms of behaviour that allow an autonomous learner's role to develop in a particular learning context. In addition to the conceptual studies on the nature of learner autonomy, there are of course the intervention studies and discussions. Again, these tend to be biassed either towards the social or towards the cognitive. In principle, interventions made to foster autonomous language learning need to be based on clearly articulated statements of what it means to take charge of one's own learning and what the benefits of that are. Evidence for or against the stated claims can then be sought and used in theory building. The second and third parts of the collection include papers that are concerned with interventions. The first paper in this part of the collection, by David Little, is devoted largely to clarifying the distinction mentioned above between cognitive universals and social behaviour within a specific culture. Little begins by dealing with the claim that autonomy is a 'western cultural construct and, as such, an inappropriate pedagogical goal in non-Western societies'. This is a pertinent claim as it is raised regularly by those who do not, perhaps, feel comfortable with the change to existing practices that such a goal might entail. Little refutes the claim by pointing out that autonomy is a minority pursuit in Western society (although this does not make it any the less western), that its tenets also appear in the 'wisdom' literature of non-western

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cultures (although, again, these may be minority perspectives) and that there are universal biological limits to the cultural diversity of human kind - that we are more the same than different (although the minor differences may well be the ones at issue). Although the points that Little makes carry weight in countering the claim, the underlying issue is perhaps teachers' (and learners') attitudes towards changing established practice. Change is not brought about by logic alone and so the concern moves from the definition of autonomous learning to an understanding of stakeholders and how to effect change in particular contexts. This is an issue touched on by Aoki and Smith in their paper and is a focus in the second part of the collection. Little goes on to introduce his main theme - autonomy as a universal human capacity. He suggests that autonomy is 'the goal of all developmental learning' and is, moreover, 'fundamental to its processes'. He contrasts developmental learning (including first language acquisition) with learning in a formal domain (including most second language acquisition). Developmental learning, according to Little, produces knowledge that is implicit, but it gradually becomes explicit so that the learner can talk about the knowledge at least to some extent, depending on the individual and the educational opportunities. In the case of formal learning, on the other hand, Little claims that success depends on the explicit understanding and managing of learning from the beginning. The degree to which learners do understand and manage learning, he suggests, determines the level of autonomy and the level of success they achieve. This is where the social context is a key factor. The situation in which one is learning may foster or suppress the development of that explicit critical understanding and management of the learning process. Little's paper raises several interesting points. The first is about the status of the study of autonomy. If 'autonomy' is used to refer to key metacognitive knowledge and process in language learning, then why do we need a special term to refer to what should be a part of general language learning theory? This brings up the essentially political history of the idea of autonomy. Those engaged in its promotion are concerned with change. The term 'autonomy' is a flag for that change. Might the flag be lowered one day if the changes have become an integrated part of language learning and language teaching theory and practice? The second and third points are related to the first. The second point is the question of what this explicit knowledge needed for language learning is. How might it develop and when it comes to doing something about it, what individual factors

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might influence the acquisition and availability of the knowledge? The third point is the old issue of nature versus nurture. Little suggests that the degree to which we develop explicit knowledge as 'second order intentional systems' is dependent both on genetic and environmental factors. Without further understanding of the relationship between the two, it is clear that teachers have to assume that the environment plays a sufficiently important part to justify action to modify it. The paper by Naoko Aoki and Richard Smith picks up the issue of whether autonomy is a product of Western culture and therefore limited in its application to other cultures. They do not disagree with the claim that taking charge of one's own learning is peculiarly Western in origin but instead grapple with the issue head on and put forward arguments why autonomy should be adopted as an appropriate educational goal in Japan in particular. Their principal line of reasoning is that the dynamic nature of culture makes it open to change and change from the outside is not always bad. Although the political dimension cannot be ignored in setting autonomy as a goal, they suggest that the evidence shows that Japan is not as fully collectivist as is supposed, and the changing nature of the economy and society make the goal more relevant. They report positive student evaluation of two courses which aim to foster learner autonomy, in order to show that the pursuit of autonomy, at least in that context, is viable. Aoki and Smith's views in relation to Japan highlight the cultural appropriateness issue. Autonomy has to be understood and accepted as a goal by both teachers and learners in order for any meaningful progress towards it to be made. The acceptance of the goal may partly depend on cultural context and culture but, as Aoki and Smith emphasise, cultures are not usefully defined by national boundaries. The fact that the autonomy of language learning is understood and accepted in a given cultural context is sufficient counter to any categorical claim of general cultural inappropriateness in that context. As already suggested, claims of inappropriateness may be based on individual stakeholder difficulties with the change that the concept implies and this is a political issue. Following Little's perspective, Aoki and Smith's work is a concrete example of how the universal base to autonomy might be worked with as a goal in different ways in different cultures. Some of the classroom (and intrinsically social) practices followed in western countries to achieve goals of autonomy might be unacceptable in other places, but the notion of learners being responsible for their own learning is surely not. The interesting question is, given acceptance of the underlying universal

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principle, how is that acceptance manifested in different traditions of educational interaction and in what way do those traditions adapt to new perspectives? The way in which the social roles and changes to them might be examined is suggested by Philip Riley's paper. Riley addresses the way in which the learner is 'constructed' in the discourse of teachers, textbooks, and no doubt by the learner himself. Understanding the way in which learners are given social identity is an important component in our understanding of how autonomous behaviour might be encouraged or suppressed. Traditional roles are encoded by discourse and Riley suggests that, when working in new roles (as learning counsellors), educators 'need a new discourse because they are trying to construct new identities, new positions, both for themselves and for the learners'. This need will be addressed again in the second section of Part II: Working with Individual Learners. To a certain extent Riley is dealing with social universals - the fact that we all play roles, that these roles are constructed and constrained by discourse. This perspective draws on research paradigms from anthropology and sociology. Riley is more concerned, however, with the ways particular discourse in particular contexts represents the learner. He suggests that one key area to look at is 'membershipping' - the way in which learners, for example, assign teachers to particular teacher roles. In the same way, teachers assign learners to traditional learner roles and Riley provides us with a list of metaphorical representations of the learner. It is, of course, not surprising that the social dimension rather than the cognitive dimension is Riley's focus. His place of work, CRAPEL, is renowned for its work in challenging ways of delivering language education and experimenting with self-directed learning with the support of counsellors. The implicit axiom is that if the learner is in a controlling role, the quality of learning is likely to be better because, in Little's terms, learners will be better able to develop explicit knowledge by drawing on their capacity to plan and try things out in an exploratory way. The traditional teacher control of learning does not support this exploratory process. The political dimension of implementing autonomy becomes more salient when talking in these terms because one is talking about change of a radical kind that questions the very heart of teacher-learner communication. A re-examination of teacher roles is forced when the mode of learning itself changes. CRAPEL has done this by providing individual learner access to a counsellor as an alternative to classroom teaching. The counsellor acts as an advisory specialist in language learning but the learners manage the process for themselves.

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In summary, these three introductory papers address important aspects of autonomy -its cognitive base as a part of language learning theory, the way in which it can be encouraged or discouraged in particular cultural or social contexts and the function of discourse in doing this. Each of these aspects indicates further research that needs to be carried out. The first is the cognitive base itself, particularly the ways in which learners represent the problems of language learning and the associated strategies they adopt. Further understanding of how teachers support or discourage the exercise and development of autonomy will require ethnographic accounts of classrooms in a wide range of contexts with particular attention to elements of behaviour that might be positively or negatively related to learner autonomy. A major part of those accounts will include an examination of the discourse that is used in that context and the effect it has on role expectations.

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LEARNER AUTONOMY IS MORE THAN A WESTERN CULTURAL CONSTRUCT

David Little

A working definition of learner autonomy In formal educational contexts, the basis of learner autonomy is acceptance of responsibility for one's own learning; the development of learner autonomy depends on the exercise of that responsibility in a never-ending effort to understand what one is learning, why one is learning, how one is learning, and with what degree of success; and the effect of learner autonomy is to remove the barriers that so easily erect themselves between formal learning and the wider environment in which the learner lives. In this definition autonomy is a capacity for a certain range of highly explicit (that is, conscious) behaviour that embraces both the process and the content of learning. Essentially, the definition rests on three arguments: (i) learners cannot help but do their own learning; (ii) this being the case, learning will be more efficient when learners are critically aware of goals and methods; and (iii) it is through the development of such critical awareness that learners are empowered to transcend the limitations of their learning environment.

Learner autonomy and the Western democratic ideal Much of the current debate about autonomy in second language learning has its origin in Henri Holec's Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning (first published in 1979), which is concerned in the first instance with adult learners. Holec takes as his starting point the argument that the purpose of adult education should be to prepare the individual learner for participation in the democratic process. According to Janne (1977), for example, adult education should become

an instrument for arousing an increasing sense of awareness and liberation in man, and, in some cases, an instrument for changing the environment itself. From the idea of man 'product of his society', one moves to the idea of man 'producer of his society' (cit. Holec 1981 :3).

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Arguments of this kind carry powerful implications for the politics of education; they also unmistakably associate the ideal of learner autonomy with the Western tradition of participatory democracy and the related ideal of self-reliance. This no doubt helps to explain why it has sometimes been suggested that learner autonomy is just one more Western cultural construct, and as such an inappropriate pedagogical goal in non-Western societies. There are, I think, three ways of responding to this suggestion. First, one might point out that learner autonomy is an implausible tool of cultural imperialism. It is true that the idea of learner autonomy, expressed in a variety of ways that are broadly in tune with my working definition, crops up regularly in European philosophies of education; and it is also true that over the past decade or so an increasing number of national and regional school curricula in Europe have expressed a renewed commitment to the development of "critical thinking", "learner independence", and the like. In practice, however, learner autonomy remains a minority pursuit. Clearly, it does not flow naturally and inevitably from whatever the cultural basis of Western educational systems may tum out to be. The second way of responding to the suggestion that learner autonomy is an exclusively Western cultural construct is to point out that wherever systems of formal learning put a premium on the development of critical thinking and independence of mind, learner autonomy is at least an implicit educational goal. This no doubt helps to explain why ideals of self-knowledge, self-reliance and self-determination figure with equal prominence in the Wisdom literatures of very different cultural and religious traditions. Compare, for example, the Christian humanist idea of learners as "individuals with intentions who take responsibility for the effects of their acts" (Riley, this collection), with the image of the learner that underlies these words of Chu Hsi, a 12th-century Sung Dynasty scholar:

If you are in doubt, think it out by yourself. Do not depend on others for explanations. Suppose there was no one you could ask, should you stop learning? If you could get rid of the habit of being dependent on others, you will make your advancement in your study. (cit. Pierson 1996:56).

Examples of this kind - and they could be multiplied many times over - invite the argument that human beings in different cultures are more alike than is often supposed. The third way of responding to the suggestion that learner autonomy is an exclusively Western cultural construct is to extend this argument in one way or another. For example, Strawson (1996:21) claims that the "sense of the self' -which he defines as "the sense that people have of themselves as being,

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specifically, a mental presence, a mental someone, a conscious subject that has a certain character or personality, and is distinct from all its particular experiences, thoughts, hopes, wishes, feelings and so on" - is a biologically determined universal in human nature, and that "when it comes to the sense of the self, the difference between those who can't sleep and those who can may be more important than any cultural differences". Another way of extending this argument is to point out that human cultural diversity, though great, cannot be infinite because it is always constrained by our common biological endowment. For our present purposes it is important to note that this line of argument does not entail a denial of the impact of social interdependence on human development, phylogenetic as well as ontogenetic. Goody (1995:2), for example, reminds us that "effective social living requires anticipation of the actions of others" and suggests that "anticipatory interactive planning [ ... ] set challenges which generated increasing intelligence in the hominid line" (ibid.:3; see also Byrne 1995); while from the same premise Levinson (1995) argues persuasively that there is a strong interactional bias in human thinking. This position is closely related to Vygotsky's argument that higher cognitive functions develop in the child as internalizations of social (that is, interactive and intersubjective) functions (see Vygotsky 1981:163). The arguments that follow are developed within this general perspective.

Autonomy as a universal human capacity

In formal educational contexts the most successful learners are autonomous in the sense elaborated in my working definition. That is, they accept responsibility for their learning; they constantly reflect on what they are learning, why they are learning, how they are learning, and with what degree of success; and their learning is fully integrated with the rest of what they are. Put a different way, all successful scholars and researchers fit into my working definition of learner autonomy. Now, it is necessary to recognize that many (perhaps most) successful scholars and researchers do not owe their autonomy to the pedagogical tradition in which they have been educated. This is an important point, for two reasons. First, it reminds us that there is nothing new about learner autonomy: it has existed for as long as there have been successful learners, and it can develop quite independently of teachers. Second, and at first sight perhaps paradoxically, it suggests that learner autonomy may be a special instance of a more general set of human capacities, so that in

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principle it is available to anyone, and not just to those with special intellectual or academic gifts. I shall develop this argument in relation to developmental learning. Understood as a capacity for independent behaviour, autonomy is the goal of all developmental learning. Whether we focus narrowly on first language acquisition or more generally on processes of socialization and acculturation, it is clear that development is incomplete until the individual can operate as an independent member of the society of which he or she is a member. Clearly, "independent" in this context carries an infinity of possible implications, all determined by local cultural constraints; but this does not impair the basic argument I am making. Not only is autonomy the intended outcome of developmental learning, however: it is also fundamental to its process. As Premack (1984) has pointed out, there is an undeniable pedagogical element in child-rearing. But this does not alter the psychological fact that, in interaction with parents, siblings, and in due course the wider social environment, children cannot help but construct their own knowledge. It may be culture, to begin with in the person of parents and siblings, that "provides the tools for organizing and understanding our worlds in communicable ways" (Bruner 1996:3), but it is the individual child who must appropriate those tools and learn how to deploy them in the construction of his or her own meanings. In the normal course of development the human child learns to think and develops beliefs: thinking and believing are characteristics of first-order intentional systems. But the child also learns to think about thinking and develops beliefs about beliefs: thinking about thinking and developing beliefs about beliefs are characteristics of second-order intentional systems (cf. Astington 1994, pp.23f.). Our potential for autonomous behaviour derives directly from the fact that we are second-order as well as first-order intentional systems. The American philosopher Geoffrey Dworkin (1988:20) puts the matter thus:

"autonomy is conceived of as a second-order capacity of persons to reflect critically upon their first-order preferences, desires, wishes, and so forth and the capacity to accept or attempt to change these in light of higher-order preferences and values. By exercising such a capacity, persons define their nature, give meaning and coherence to their lives, and take responsibility for the kind of person they are."

Here it is necessary to recall again the definition with which I began: in keeping with the goals of critical thinking and independence of mind, autonomy in formal learning is a highly conscious phenomenon. By contrast, autonomy as a feature of developmental learning begins as an entirely implicit phenomenon, and the extent

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to which it becomes explicit is infinitely variable. Consider, for example, first language acquisition, which according to Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) account entails a process by which implicit knowledge (knowledge in the mind) gradually becomes explicit (knowledge available to the mind). In its earliest stages, this process makes possible creative language use in the Chomskyan sense; whereas in its later stages it enables the child to talk about linguistic forms and their use. If we accept this as a general working model of first language acquisition, we must nonetheless concede that the emergence of explicit metalinguistic knowledge will vary greatly from individual to individual. This may be due in part to differences in genetic endowment, but it is certainly also due to environmental influences. The child brought up in a home where language itself is often the subject of conversation, for example, is likely to develop a much greater store of explicit metalinguistic knowledge than the child brought up in a home where conversation is sparse. For most learners, nevertheless, the pursuit of autonomy in formal learning contexts entails a decisive shift from the implicit to the explicit. This part of my argument can be summarised as follows: (i) learner autonomy (as I have defined it) has always existed independently of particular pedagogies; (ii) this fact invites the argument that autonomy in relation to formal learning is a special case of a more general human capacity for autonomous behaviour; (iii) this more general capacity derives from the fact that we are second-order as well as first-order intentional systems; (iv) this in tum explains why autonomy is at once the goal of all developmental learning and fundamental to its processes; (v) in the developmental domain we achieve autonomy with infinitely varying degrees of explicitness (due perhaps in part to differences of genetic endowment but certainly also to environmental influences); (vi) in domains of formal learning, explicitness -in planning, implementation, and evaluation - is fundamental to the development of learner autonomy from the very beginning.

Taking account of cultural differences If the potential for autonomy is a human universal and the purpose of education is to help learners to develop tools for critical reflection, it follows as a matter of principle that learner autonomy is an appropriate pedagogical goal in all cultural settings. But precisely because autonomy in formal learning is a special case of a more general human behavioural trait, we must always pay careful attention to the cultural setting in which learning takes place. Learner autonomy cannot be

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externally imposed as a form of behaviour modification; it must grow, quasi-organically, out of the ongoing encounter between the critical goals of the educational enterprise and the particularities of cultural context. "The way we talk to children-as-learners determines the kind of learners they

become" (Riley, this collection). An important implication of this argument, as of the larger argument in which it is embedded, is that children reared in one social knowledge system are likely to have difficulty coming to terms with a formal pedagogy that derives from a quite different social knowledge system. This argument holds not only for differences between cultures (Riley's focus), but for differences within cultures. According to my working definition, the effect of learner autonomy is to remove the barriers that so easily erect themselves between formal learning and the wider environment in which the learner lives. Explicitly or by implication, these barriers have been a central concern of much work in the psychology and sociology of education in recent decades (one thinks, for example, of Britton 1970, Barnes 1976, Illich 1979; the work in adult education drawn on by Holec 1981; and more recent work on the role of discourse in learning, e.g., Engestri:im 1991, Mercer 1995). According to Vygotsky, learning is the product of social interaction.! More specifically, it arises from supported performance in the "zone of proximal development", which he defines as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky 1978:86). Although in this formulation Vygotsky is concerned with developmental learning, his concept of the "zone of proximal development" also applies to experiential and formal learning; for all learning is socially situated and culturally constrained. It is thus hardly surprising that the Vygotskian paradigm has yielded research results that are centrally relevant to our present concerns. For reasons of economy I shall limit myself to one major example. Tharp and Gallimore (1988) report on a long-term educational project designed to promote autonomy in learning (although they do not themselves use the term, their

1 Since so much recent discussion of learner autonomy has been associated with self-access learning, it is worth pointing out that according to this view, self-instruction depends on a capacity to internalize social interaction as psychological process. This is by no means easy to sustain; hence the burgeoning literature on different forms of support for self-access learning

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pedagogical goals coincide with my working definition). The purpose of their project was to find ways of shaping the primary education of Hawai'ian and Navajo children, for whom English was a second language, so that they were not linguistically disadvantaged when they made the transition from primary to secondary school. Essentially, they had to enable the children to use English, the medium of their formal learning, as a tool of critical reflection and analysis. Noting that "one of the principal errors of the early applications of behavior modification was its presumption that new behaviors were to be created whenever a problem arose" (ibid: 170), they adopted the method of "observing children in their natal activity settings and identifying existing cultural repertoires that could be elicited through designing activity settings and using the means of assistance within them" (ibid.). In other words, they recognized the importance of exploiting the tools for learning that their primary school pupils already possessed. Their approach enabled them to identify, for example, the ways in which adults praise child behaviour in Hawai'ian society and to use these as a form of assistance in their classroom practice (ibid: 171 ). It also enabled some of their associates to improve classroom management by adjusting the frequency and intensity of teacher responses to suit the norms of Navajo culture (ibid: 171f.). It is hardly an accident that both the general approach and, always allowing for cultural differences, the specific pedagogical procedures successfully implemented by Tharp and Gallimore also characterize successful learner autonomy projects in foreign language learning (cf., for example, Dam 1995).

Conclusion: towards an appropriate research agenda

In the last few years I have noted a tendency for exponents of autonomy in second language learning to assume that our central research task is to find ways of "proving" that learner autonomy "really works". Empirical research that uses comparative means of one kind or another to demonstrate the efficacy of learner autonomy (see, for example, Dam and Legenhausen 1996) is of course to be welcomed. However, according to the argument I have developed in this paper, learner autonomy "works" by definition. This means, I think, that our research effort, both theoretical and empirical, should centrally concern itself with firstly autonomy as a general human behavioural capacity - what it is, where it comes from, how it develops, and so on - and secondly the relation between social knowledge systems and the discourse by which learning is mediated. In other words, we need to focus both on our common biological inheritance, which

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detennines the capacities we are able to develop, and the socio-cultural factors that give those capacities their distinctive shape from one setting to another. Only in this way, I believe, can we gradually arrive at a fuller understanding of how to develop learner autonomy in specific formal learning environments. As we attempt to convert that understanding into appropriate pedagogical practice, we should be encouraged by the thought that critical thinking is not in itself inimical to ethnic particularity. On the other hand, where critical thinking is discouraged or suppressed, we may feel impelled to question, and perhaps even challenge, the motives of those responsible for the discouragement or suppression.

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LEARNER AUTONOMY IN CULTURAL CONTEXT: THE CASE OF JAPAN

Naoko Aoki and Richard C. Smith

Introduction

Although learner autonomy is not yet widely discussed among Japanese teachers of second languages, the concept will probably become a focus of interest in the decade to come, in the same way other "fashionable" Western ideas have been imported in the past (the "communicative approach" being the most current example). Mirroring the response to other imported buzz words, there are likely to be teachers who claim that because autonomy is "Western" in inspiration it is inappropriate in the Japanese context. Indeed, the possibility that autonomy may be incompatible with certain cultures has begun to be raised in relation to other Asian contexts (cf. Riley 1988a, Farmer 1994, Ho and Crookall 1995, Jones 1995). We agree that the questioning involved here is in itself healthy. Too often in the past, assumptions have been made that what is valid in one context should be equally valid in all, and have subsequently been shown to be misguided. However, when the validity of learner autonomy in a particular cultural context is questioned, we would suggest that definitions of both "culture" and "autonomy" need to be carefully considered. In this article we discuss a number of possible misconceptions with regard to these terms, state our own points of view, and argue on this basis that autonomy can be seen as a valid educational goal in the Japanese context. We conclude this argument with testimonials from Japanese university students, who support in their own words the "pedagogies for learner autonomy" in which we have been engaging them.

Misconceptions about "culture"

When doubts are raised or claims made about the validity of learner autonomy in a particular cultural context, the following qualifications would appear to be necessary in relation to three common misconceptions about "culture":

Misconception 1: A culture is coextensive with a political unit, i.e. a nation.

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In his attempt to develop a framework for achievement of appropriate methodologies in social context, Holliday (1994) suggests that cultures can be of any size, ranging from national (and international) to family cultures. He also points out that there can be temporary cultures for specific activities, as well as relatively permanent ones, such as religious, class, or gender-related cultures. He then goes on to say that "the classroom is part of a complex of interrelated and overlapping cultures of different dimensions within the host educational environment." (ibid:28). He argues that national cultures are, "if indeed they are identifiable, so complex and vast that they are no longer useful devices for investigating what is happening in the classroom between people" (ibid:21). When claims are made about cultural inappropriacy (or for that matter, appropriacy), it is important to be particularly wary with regard to the simplistic equation often drawn between nation and culture.

Misconception 2: Culture is static and given. Triandis (1995:4) argues that "culture is to society what memory is to individuals. It includes the things that have 'worked' in the past." However, as social, economic, and political situations change, what worked in the past will not necessarily work in the present or future. Culture is susceptible to change, although this change, especially of "subjective culture", may tend to be slow (cf. Azuma 1994). Change is. however, inevitable, and not always unfavourable. By claiming that such and such a people have such and such a culture, we may run the risk of disempowering them, as this kind of positioning denies their potential to be active agents of change, i.e. participants in the creation of cultures. If we agree that it is part of our job as language teachers to "help our students become authors of their own worlds," as Pennycook suggests it is (Pennycook 1997), we should be careful not to limit their potential through cultural stereotyping.

Misconception 3: Influence of one culture on another is necessarily unfavourable. As Funabiki (1988) suggests, cultures do not have clear-cut boundaries. They overlap where they meet, and inevitably influence each other. This influence is certainly problematic when participants in one culture attempt to impose their values on participants in another. When this is not the case, the favourability or unfavourability judgements involved are more complex, and more bound up with social, ideological, or idiosyncratic differences. Indeed, it might be impossible to achieve successful interaction without participants mutually adapting themselves to their interlocutor's norms of thinking and behaviour (Calhoun 1995). In our view,

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then, a classroom or educational institution is inevitably a meeting place of cultures. Although teachers do need to be aware and wary of the danger of imposing their values on learners, since "language learning and teaching are intimately bound up with issues of power" (Benson 1996:31), they cannot avoid influencing learners' cultures, while their own patterns of thinking and behaviour can be influenced in tum by those of their learners. Indeed, as joint members of a learning community, learners and teachers can together create a new culture of their own, and it is the resulting "negotiated culture" which might need to be most considered in evaluations of appropriacy or inappropriacy, with evaluation taking full account of the views of the participants in question.

Misconceptions about autonomy

Little (1991:3) indicates five misconceptions about autonomy which have formed the basis of "strong hostility in some quarters": 1) autonomy is synonymous with self-instruction, 2) autonomous learners make the teacher redundant, 3) autonomy is a new methodology, 4) autonomy is a single easily described behaviour, and 5) autonomy is a steady state achieved by certain learners. On the basis of Little's subsequent theoretical work in autonomy (in particular, Little 1997, 1996a, 1996b ), we would like to elaborate on the third of these misconceptions and refer to two additional misconceptions relating to the alleged cultural incompatibility of autonomy.

Misconception 1: Autonomy is a (new) methodology It is important to recognize that autonomy is not an approach enforcing a particular way of learning. It is, rather, an educational goal, as Holec (1981) explicitly states. Objections to autonomy based on students' current incapacity to learn in a wholly self-directed manner therefore lack validity in any context. As Little ( 1991:4) makes clear, "autonomy is likely to be hard-won and its permanence cannot be guaranteed, and the learner who displays a high degree of autonomy in one area may be non-autonomous in another". The nurturing of autonomy does, we would agree, need to be appropriate to the current strengths and weaknesses of learners, but accepting this methodological proposition does not necessarily entail a "retreat from autonomy" (Jones 1995), if autonomy is seen as an educational goal and not as a methodology.

Misconception 2: Autonomy entails individualism

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Concepts of autonomy began to be developed in the philosophical context of eighteenth century rationalism and have tended to be associated with individualism. Claims have been made in various fields, however, that autonomy does not entail total independence (see, for example, Ryan, 1991 on the connection between autonomy and relatedness in personality development, and Nedelsky, 1989 for a reconception of autonomy in legal theory). In the context of second language education, also, Little takes pains to emphasize that: "because we are social beings our independence is always balanced by dependence; our essential condition is one of interdependence. Total detachment is a principal determining feature not of autonomy but of autism." (Little 1991 :5)

.. .in formal educational contexts as elsewhere learning can proceed only via interaction, so that the freedoms by which we recognize learner autonomy are always constrained by the learner's dependence on the support and cooperation of others. (Little 1997:204).

As Holec (1985:175) suggests, assuming responsibility for one's own learning "can be done together with other learners .... or with outside help". Indeed, Little (1996a:4) refers to work by Leni Dam with Danish secondary school learners in suggesting that, in a classroom context, "the development of a capacity for independent thought and action arises most effectively from pedagogical processes that emphasize interdependence and collaboration in learning." (emphasis added). Arguments that learner autonomy is individualistic and therefore does not suit a "group-oriented society" do not appear to reflect emerging social views of autonomy, according to which group-orientedness can be seen as a basis for autonomy, no less than individualism might be. In other words, neither independence nor interdependence is in itself sufficient for autonomy, but either could constitute a basis on which the other may be developed.

Misconception 3: Validity of autonomy depends on psychological/cultural considerations Ultimately, decisions for or against the pursuit of learner autonomy- in any context - may rest on political rather than "cultural" or "psychological" considerations, even when objections are phrased in terms of "cultural" or "psychological" inappropriacy. As Benson (1996) argues, taking control of one's own learning involves change in the power structures in which learners and teachers are involved, while Little (1997) argues that: " .... the challenge of learner autonomy is essentially and inescapably political, and ..... its unique value is to pose this

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challenge at every level and every stage of our educational systems" (ibid:?) Since the concept of learner autonomy has political dimensions, involving as it does notions of freedom to reflect critically and to learn/speak for oneself in negotiation with others ( cf. Little 1997), it is to be expected that there will be objections to it for political reasons. Thus, the legitimacy of autonomy may be contested on the grounds that it is inappropriate in terms of current learning styles or that it is an imported or imposed Western/liberal-democratic ideal, but we should be aware that arguments against the aspirations of people and/or for the political status quo in a particular context can easily be masked by stereotyping or arguments against cultural imperialism.

Autonomy in Japan

On the basis of the points made above, we would like to argue the following in connection with learner autonomy in Japan: a) As we have already suggested, cultures are not necessarily co-extensive with

"nations", nor are cultures static. Although usually characterized as "collectivist" (Triandis 1995) or, at least, "sernicollectivist" (Hofstede 1983:89), Japan has not always been a group-oriented, or collectivist society. Nor is it entirely collectivist within its various sub-cultures. Schooler (1990) claims that Japan had an "individualistic period" in the sixteenth century, and attributes the cause to economic and technological development at that time. Naoi & Schooler (1990) have found that self-directed work increases contemporary Japanese women's self-directive orientation, while Moeran's (1986) analysis of cliches in Japanese shows that the language reflects ways in which individualism has acquired a place in present-day Japanese society. Indeed, in her introduction to a collection of papers on the Japanese sense of self, Rosenberger (1994: 13) claims that "Japanese self emerges as neither entirely collective nor completely individualistic," and argues that research needs to focus on "what shifts occur as Japanese people make .... concepts of individuality part of their own processes of self and social relationship." In sum, as a number of recent publications make clear, blanket definitions of "the Japanese" as collectivist may have a tendency to over-simplify reality, obliterate real differences between individuals, and discourage attempts by those individuals to "author their own worlds."

b) In fact we do find that many of our Japanese students respond well to group work intended to foster learner autonomy. This may well be related to their

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"group-oriented" nature or may relate to the fact that they welcome the chance to give expression to their "individualistic" side, usually denied in more "top-down" educational arrangements. In any case, as we have already argued, there is no contradiction between interdependence and the development of autonomy, nor- as we have suggested in the previous paragraph - should it be viewed as surprising if Japanese students do show an ability to take independent decisions. In the same way as Pierson (1996) casts doubt on the determining role of Chinese culture in influencing Hong Kong students, who are often characterised as "passive", or "other-directed" in stereotypical terms similar to those often applied to Japanese learners, we suspect that, to a large extent, it is authoritarian transmission modes of teaching which (re )produce dependence on and deference to the teacher in Japan (cf. Yoshida, 1996:96, Fujimura-Fanselow 1996:38-9). In our experience with Japanese university students, if the "rules of engagement" are renegotiated, many respond eagerly in a more active, self-directed manner.

c) Learner autonomy can be seen as a legitimate goal in Japan, as in any other society, in the same way as (different conceptions of) human rights may be, even though, as goals, both human rights and autonomy may be perceived as threatening by stakeholders in the status quo. Indeed, for socially aware educators, autonomy may be a particularly important goal to pursue with Japanese students at the present time, given the uncertain economic situation and the wide range of unresolved social and political problems affecting their lives. As one of the present authors has argued elsewhere (Aoki 1994b), the description of contemporary (Western) civilisation as "a vast marketplace of competing ideologies, images and slogans from advertising and politics, and in general, as an environment of relentless change" (Nicoll 1994: II) would appear to apply also to present-day Japanese society. From this point of view, autonomy, conceived of as entailing "an increasing sense of awareness and liberation" (Janne 1977; cit. Holec 1981:1), may be considered to be equally worthy of pursuit in the Japanese context as in other areas of the world.

Evidence from two classrooms Our argument so far has reflected our views as teachers, but has not shown how these views have developed out of our experience with Japanese students. We believe, however, that judgements relating to the concerns of this article may be

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most appropriately made by those most immediately concerned, that is students (as well as teachers) actually engaged in pedagogies for learner autonomy in particular contexts. In this section we shall therefore contextualize and present some of our students' views on our practice, not in the belief that these statements will be sufficient to persuade all parties, but rather to indicate that the voices of students (as well as teachers) should be heard in any discussion of the appropriacy of autonomy in cultural context.

An example of practice Smith (1996) has described his current approach to weekly English classes for Japanese university students as involving negotiation and facilitation of arrangements for self-directed (usually group-based) language learning during class time, combined with individual counselling in relation to outside-class learning. Students determine their personal learning goals, then plan, engage in and reflect on self-directed learning activities (both inside and outside class) over periods lasting about 4 weeks. A recurring whole class session every fifth week is the main focus for re-negotiation via writing and private discussion of overall learning arrangements, including consideration of whether to continue with self-directed classroom learning or engage in whole class instruction; over the last three years, students - with very few exceptions - have always expressed a preference for continuing with and improving on the former. These consistent votes of overall support for self-directed learning arrangements in class have tended to renew the teacher's belief in the appropriacy of his approach in this particular context. A few of the more positive end-of-year evaluations from students will have to suffice here to indicate possible reasons students themselves may find the approach both valid and useful:

Usually, it is teacher who decides what to teach according his/her own aim of the class. Students tend to be passive in that kind of class and won't think of what are they taught for .... I haven't even noticed this boring system of English classes clearly until I took this class and got chance to think of my aim of learning English. It was a great experience for me to find that there are much more ways to brush up my English than I had expected. By working in groups, we could get other students' ideas for that issue .

. ... this type of class needs students' responsibility to study voluntarily and willingly. Therefore, this class has become my stimulus of working harder and reminded me of the necessity of studying more.

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I think that to ask students, "What do you want to do to improve your English?" is an effective way because it makes students consider what they want to do and should do, why and how it is effective, and they will do it more actively than what is forced to do by teacher.

This type of class is very unique. Though looking for activities on our own is difficult and a bit idealistic, this is what we would have to do in our future after we graduate.

You respect our independence, and we can not only improve English .... but also learn to think up by ourselves how we should do to improve. The latter is the more important, I think. Once we learn how to study, we can improve after this class comes to an end. If we are lazy, we can't improve any, but if we really want to improve, we study hard. This is how university education should be.

Another example of practice Aoki (1994a, 1995, 1996, in press) has reported on her efforts to promote learner autonomy in teacher in preparation in Japanese as a second language methodology courses. In a nut shell her approach can be summarized as involving students in decision making processes concerning what, why, how to learn and how to monitor and evaluate the learning while trying to create a psychologically secure environment where students would not feel threatened to voice their wishes and needs of their own. This approach is intended to invite students to reconsider their beliefs and attitudes about formal learning. Following are some students' comments on a course which operated on the idea of learners' rights. Although only a few comments can be included in this section for the reason of space, they show how students might meet and learn about the concept of learner autonomy. The first student describes how she has learned about taking responsibilities.

In the beginning I was simply very happy that our learners' rights were very much respected in this course. As the course progresses, however, I realised exercising one's rights entails taking responsibilities. We'd chosen to work in groups on a topic of our choice. I felt we had to carry on even in difficult moments. I thought a teacher-centred course would have been a lot easier. But this doesn't mean I didn't like the group work.

The second student expresses her initial confusion about a new way of learning.

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It was a form of class I'd never experienced. I didn't trust you in the beginning. I kept wondering 'Is it really OK to do this?', 'Is she really going to be true to her words?' etc etc. Now I understand this way of learning has a lot

of merits, but it's so different from the teacher-learner relationship we know. I often didn't know what to do ...

The last student's comment is on self-evaluation.

I appreciate this way of evaluation very much because our effort is recognised. I couldn't think of any better way for me. I think everyone in this group has a clear conscience about this. I believe this evaluation satisfactorily represents our achievement.

Conclusion In this article we have suggested that - while the appropriacy of autonomy as educational goal in non-western cultural contexts should not be taken for granted -a number of clarifications need to accompany any questioning of its validity. With regard to "culture," we advised caution regarding potential misconceptions that (1) a culture is coextensive with a political unit, i.e. a nation, (2) culture is static and given, and (3) influence of one culture on another is necessarily unfavourable. Regarding "autonomy," we drew attention to the following possible misconceptions: (1) autonomy is a (new) methodology, (2) autonomy entails individualism, and (3) the validity of autonomy depends wholly on psychological/cultural (as opposed to political) considerations. On the basis of these clarifications, we argued that autonomy can be seen as a valid educational goal in the Japanese context: (l) Japan is not, and has never been a homogeneously "collectivist" society; (2) in our experience, Japanese students respond positively to arrangements intended to foster learner autonomy; and (3) given the uncertain economic, social and political future they face, autonomy may be seen as a particularly appropriate goal to pursue with Japanese students at the present time. We concluded this argument "for more autonomy" (cf. Kenny 1993) with anecdotal evidence from two classrooms, including testimonials from Japanese university students who support the "pedagogies for learner autonomy" in which we have been engaging them. While further investigation is needed of the appropriacy of autonomy as educational goal in non-western cultural contexts, and much work remains to be done, also, concerning appropriate methodologies in this area, we hope we have at least shown in this article why we believe the continuing pursuit of such research is legitimate in present-day Japanese contexts.

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ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF 'THE LEARNER'

Philip Riley

Theoretical background This paper sets out to investigate the ways in which social representations of 'the learner' are constructed and maintained in and through discourse. Who is the person 'the learner' spoken about in scientific articles, taught by teachers, apostrophized in textbooks? What is our image of 'the learner'- how do we recognize a learner when we see one? How does the characteristic learner' relate to the other parameters of social identity? For its conceptual and methodological framework, this study calls on several disciplines. In order to acknowledge intellectual debts clearly and to avoid repeated references to original sources throughout the text, it is probably best to mention them together now. The sociology of knowledge was developed in the German social sciences by Karl Mannheim (1936). The overarching theme of this meta-discipline is the relationship between social structures and thought, and the ways in which both scientific and everyday knowledge is socially conditioned. Main subdivisions include, firstly, the description and analysis of the social knowledge system (Holzner and Marx 1979, Habermas 1987, Riley 1996a): from this perspective, society is seen as a set of functions and structures for the management of knowledge, including knowledge creation, organization, distribution, storage, legitimization and utilization. Secondly, the sociologist of knowledge tries to obtain an 'insider's perspective' on social reality, that is, the set of practices a group uses to construct, maintain and account for its phenomenological world (Schlitz 1962, Berger and Luckrnann 1966, Cicourel 1973). The principal mechanism of both the social knowledge system and group praxis is discourse. Discourse analysis therefore involves the investigation of the relationships between discourse and the social knowledge system on the one hand, and discourse and communicative practices on the other. The first of these tasks has been addressed by historians and social theorists interested in the conditions of production of ideologies (Marx and Engels 1848 et passim, Durkheim 1925, Foucault 1966, Althusser 1971, Billig 1987, Fairclough 1992, Potter and Wetherell 1987). The second has been undertaken by analysts originally inspired and trained by ethnomethodology

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(Garfinkel 1967, Leiter 1980, Benson and Hughes 1983). A different approach to the same problem has been adopted by ethnolinguists working within the anthropological, contrastive paradigm baptized the ethnography of communication by Del Hymes, its 'founding father'. (Hymes 1964, Calame-Griaule 1965, Gumperz and Hymes 1972, Farb 1974, Saville-Troike 1982, Scollon and Scollon 1995). Despite very considerable differences in terminology and methodology, as the presence of the root 'ethnos' ('a people', or more generally 'group) shows, these two approaches share an interest in the identifying relationship between a group and its communicative practices.

Pedagogical background

Although the overall thrust of this article is unashamedly theoretical, it has as its background the CRAPEL's ongoing interest in various types of 'autonomous' or 'self-directed' learning systems.! In practical terms, such schemes invariably require provision of learner support of at least two kinds: access to a wide range of materials through some form of resource centre2. and access to a person specialized in independent language learning, i.e. a 'counsellor' in our terminology. Counsellor-learner discourse, as the instantiation of the system, is therefore a major focus for our research, though as yet the literature on this topic is nothing like as rich as that on classroom discourse) Questions being asked include: what is the position of systems of this kind within the overall social knowledge system? How are the roles of counsellor and Ieamer enacted in discourse? How does counselling differ from teaching in terms of objectives, social relationships, discourse and methodology? How can counsellors and learners be trained? What does their discourse tell us about learners' and counsellors' linguistic representations? Is it possible to make judgements about learners' progress by studying their discourse?

I Reports on specific schemes are regularly published in the CRAPEL's own journal, Melanges Pedagogiques. A selection of papers by members of the CRAPEL in English translation is to be found in Riley 1986b. More recent publications include Holec 1988, 1994, Gremmo and Riley 1995. The latest issue of the Melanges Pedagogiques (No. 23) is a Special Number on Resource Centres. See also Dickinson 1987, Sheerin 1988, Little (ed) 1989, Gardner and Miller 1994, Riley 1997, Pemberton, Li, Or and Pierson 1996, Benson and Voller 1997)

3 Recent articles include: Regent 1993, Bailey 1994, Gremmo 1994, Riley 1996b, 1997.

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I

The question asked in this paper, however, is both broader and narrower in scope. Narrower, because it focuses on the construction of the social category 'learner', which is, as it were, upstream of the kinds of questions which have just been mentioned. Broader, because it is not limited to counsellor-learner discourse, to the internal functioning of the self-access system, but instead tries to give some indication of the range of factors which contribute to or impinge on the social construction of identity.

Social identity

Social identity can be defined as the sum of all the groups of which the individual is a competent and acknowledged member. It is a complex configuration of 'memberships', some of which we are born to, whilst others are achieved or thrust upon us. Categories or parameters of social identity are numerous, diverse and may be either exclusive or matters of degree. Schematically, an individual's social identity might be represented thus:

Parameters of social identity Examples

Sex Man, woman

Age Child, teenager, adult, middle-aged, pensioner ...

Place of birth/of residence Nancy, JyvaskyHi, Wellington, Mtarfa ...

Political loyalty Liberal Democrat, Conservative, National Front, Communist, Green ...

Pastimes Synchronized swimming, embroidery, rugby, chess, Morris dancing, DIY ...

Nationality/ethnicity French, English, Maltese, Finnish, Breton ...

Occupation Plumber, lawyer, shop-assistant, taxi-driver, teacher ...

Socio-economic level Middle-class, on income support, old aristocracy ...

Marital status Married, single, divorced, engaged, living-together-in-a stable-and-caring-relationship

Religion Catholic, Muslim, Lutheran, Bahai, atheist ...

Education No formal qualifications, Ph.D., butcher's apprenticeship, ...

Different configurations of these parameters will describe group and individual social identities: "Humphrey Barkynge-Madde is a middle-aged married man with

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I

I

i I

I

an MAin Applied Linguistics, born in London but living in JyvaskyHi, where he works as a teacher, and spends his free time skiing ... " Clearly, this approach needs to be handled with care, because it so easily tends towards stereotypes: but this danger exists precisely because the parameters of social identity are so numerous and complex that no attempt to list them can ever be really representative, let alone exhaustive. But apart from its mind-boggling level of simplification, this table calls for a number of remarks: a) It is possible to change categories of social identity: you get married, register as

unemployed, celebrate your eighteenth birthday, pass the driving test, convert to Catholicism, retire, join the Young Conservatives or the tennis club, etc. Such modifications are usually marked by rites of passage, largely enacted through discourse. These rites will generally include testing or affirmation of the individual's knowledge and beliefs, and a proclamation of the change. (cf.. Van Gennep 1909)

b) Social identity is first and foremost social, that is, constructed and legitimated by and with others.

c) Different facets of social identity are relevant to different communicative situations and to different categories of interaction.

Point (a) largely provides the theoretical context for the discussion which follows, but is obviously too wide a topic to be pursued here, so in this paper I will be focussing on Points (b) and (c), under the headings Althusser's Gendarme and Membershipping.

Althusser's gendarme To illustrate the way in which "ideologies interpellate individuals", the French philosopher Louis Althusser, gives the example of the policeman who is called to the scene of a crime, and who sees someone running away.

"Hey, you!" he cries (or some suitably Gallic equivalent thereof) "Stop! You're under arrest!"

Invested as he is with authority and power, shown symbolically by his uniform, literally by his pistol, the policeman's discourse, his 'voice', categorizes the shadowy figure as 'suspect' or 'criminal'. 'You' is both the (grammatical) subject of and subject to his discourse. 'You', that is, is a criminal, 'you' is someone under arrest, because the policeman says so.

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We are all surrounded by policemen. And by waiters, spouses, librarians, shop assistants, ticket inspectors, teachers, examiners, bank managers, dentists, doctors -and they all spend as much time as necessary telling us who we are. We are Gullivers, put and held in our places by countless threads of discourse. This is what we mean when we say that social identity is constructed and legitimated in and through discourse, and it explains why a mismatch between the individual's self-categorization and the categorization which is socially attributed to him or her inevitably leads to social dysfunction, going from mild embarrassment to violent conflict. This does not mean, of course, that we cannot 'resist' the social identifications others try to impose upon us. But the patient who refuses to "Open wide!" when requested to do so by a dentist soon discovers that he or she is excluded from the interaction in question (probably at some expense and certainly without having attained his or her objective) or is simply forced to acquiesce. Social identities, then, are constructed in the discourses and the interpretative repertoires which others use to talk to and about us. They are, that is, the products (positions, roles) of the socialization process which all individuals must undergo to become competent and recognized members of the group. (Riley, 1988b) This includes becoming a competent teacher, parent, shopper, patient - and a competent 1earner' - in short, a competent 'self. The production of competent selves is achieved through the process of socialization, which is largely realized through socially-warranted rearing practices, whereby children acquire the sociocultural knowledge and skills expected of adults. Just how much the socialization process can vary can only be fully appreciated by comparing the practices of cultures other than our own. At the risk of trivializing two outstanding pieces of anthropological research in this field, I would like to mention briefly "From child to human: Chewong concepts of self' by Signe Howell (1988) and "Personal autonomy and the domestication of the self in Piroa society" by Joanna Overing (1988). Howell's study deals with the Chewong, an aboriginal group living in the Malay Peninsula rain forest. She argues that the concept of 'self - "what it means to be a human being" - is central to cognitive development: "The process of acquiring knowledge can be delineated only by eliciting socially agreed expectations of what it is that a child is to become". How a 'child' is changed into an 'adult' is best revealed by "perceived shortcomings in small children ... By emphasizing how children fail to measure up to certain standards, the Chewong express the

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characteristics of humanity in negative rather than positive forms". All strong expressions of emotions are regarded as potentially destructive and controlled by numerous rules which are constantly referred to. There is no formal machinery of law and punishment, just the rules and superhuman retribution. The Chewong avoid conflict and acts of aggression. Indeed, extravagant behaviour of any kind is in general suppressed, with children being allowed two emotions, fear and shyness. 'Children' become 'adults' after marriage, on the birth of their own first child. Children learn knowledge from adults, and adults learn knowledge from superhumans. The concept of knowledge (baeratu') is enormously important and the acquisition of knowledge is one of the three main factors (together with the assimilation of elements of 'self and the growth of the body) which contribute to the transition from child to human. There is no simple opposition between 'practical' and 'theoretical' knowledge. Children are 'not knowing', that is, they do not know the rules and they do not understand the implications of their acts. They need, therefore, to be both protected and educated by adults. There are no gender differences in names, toys or roles, and there is no competitiveness. However, education - learning to be your 'self - is based on two distinct approaches. Firstly, there is knowledge which has to be asked for and which one learns best from example and individual initiative. Secondly, there are the rules governing behaviour, which are learnt best by specific, enforced instruction, where rules have names and are constantly called out to children: "Don't touch (etc.) or a tiger (bogeyman) will get you." Overing's study deals with the Piaroa, a jungle people dwelling along tributaries of the Orinoco in the Guiana Highlands of Venezuela. They live on some fifteen territories, each of which is led by a wizard who controls knowledge and keeps disease and death away. However, this power is not coercive: indeed, the wizard preaches against coercion. He is a knowledgeable teacher of virtues such as autonomy, equality and tranquility. Personal autonomy is valued very highly: one is free to hunt or not as one wishes, or prefer to do something else, such as making artefacts. It is regarded as very rude to comment on such decisions and especially on their relative worth. The overall aim of education is to learn the wizardry to lead a tranquil life. There is no physical punishment of children: strong anger is expressed by silence. There are no real stages in development, since the individual is constantly in transformation, and anyway one can be 'mature' in one aspect and a child from another point of view.

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The Piaroa have a highly developed theory of mind. They stress the value of autonomy, moderation and intelligence and regularly discuss the relationships between reason and the emotions, reason, knowledge and madness or reason, consciousness and behaviour.. They distinguish between two main forms of knowledge, ta 'kwanya and ta 'kwakomena. Ta 'kwanya refers to the acquisition of cultural capabilities: it includes the knowledge and capacity for using customs, language, social rules, rituals, cuisine, etc. Ta 'kwakomena, on the other hand, refers to the acquisition of one's own consciousness of and responsibility for such capacities. It is one of the most ordinary words in their language.4 These articles clearly illustrate the ways in which different social knowledge systems give rise to different informational economies, leading to different patterns of socialization and a diversity of communicative practices. The forms of social reproduction necessarily correspond to the ideological structures they are reflexively expressing and maintaining. That is, the way we talk to children determines the kinds of learners they become. "We" here is to be understood as referring to the set of discourse voices to and of which the individual is subjectS Amongst the voices participating in the social construction of 'the Ieamer' we can identify the following in highly schematic form: not surprisingly, if one accepts the approach to discourse outlined above, most of those in the first group are institutional. 'ABOUT'

The Ministry of Education The Council of Europe The Church The media Doctors

4 In an earlier paper (Riley !996b) I have discussed the relevance of such studies to the debate on whether 'autonomy' is a culturally biased value giving rise in some social contexts to inappropriate approaches to language teaching/learning. I argued that the Piaroa theory of mind, with its explicit insistence on the importance of autonomy and with a clear opposition between what we might call 'cultural competence' and 'metacognitive awareness', demonstrates that such notions and values are certainly not limited to western culture.

5 Obviously, varying configurations of voices may specify other aspects of social identity, roles, power, etc., besides those which impinge on \he learner', but for the sake of clarity of exposition, this will not be followed up here.

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'TO'

Publishers Employers' associations Schools (reports, parent-teacher meetings, rules, statements of aims etc.) Teaching associations, unions Academic discussion (seminars, books and articles in learned journals in the field of linguistics, language didactics, developmental sociolinguistics, educational philosophy etc.

Teachers Examination boards (examiners, exam papers etc.) Textbooks, material Parents and caretakers Friends Other learners etc.

Ideologies speak through such institutions and individuals to construct different kinds of 1earner' (or, in most cases, 'child'). These include: a) The Ieamer as primitive organism. The prototypical exemplar of this approach

is to be found in behaviourist psychology: learners are 'conditioned to respond to stimuli'. Although academic discussion of the learning process has little time for behaviourism these days, it is massively present in folk models, as can be seen, for example, in the widespread belief that learning is a matter of repetition.

b) The learner as computer (information science, artificial intelligence, connectionist language processing). Learners 'process data'.

c) The learner as disciple of guru or conjurer (for a detailed discussion, see Riley 1997).

d) The learner as Christian humanist. The work of the Council of Europe, and the communicative approach in general, where individuals with intentions and goals 'take responsibility' for the effects of their 'acts' seems to illustrate clearly the Protestant ethic. This is closely related to the notion of ...

e) The learner as Postlapsarian man. Here, the learner is seen as an individual in a state of sin and ignorance, who needs to be shown the error of his ways, hence

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the ambiguity of terms such as 'discipline', 'authority' and 'rule', which refer at the same time to the teacher's knowledge and to the power necessary to impose that knowledge.

f) The learner as worker or employee. One does not need to accept lock stock and barrel Foucault's theories about the simultaneous emergence of modem barracks, schools, hospitals and factories in the nineteenth century to appreciate the profound influence the capitalist approach to social relationships has had on models of learning: learners "need to be made to work", they work on "materials", carry out "tasks" and "produce results".

g) The learner as consumer. The discourse of the free market has been introduced into the world of education, with predictable results: 'education markets' or 'fairs' are now held to attract 'clients', who may wish to carry out a 'survey' before 'investing' in a particular 'portfolio'. The commercialisation of much language provision and the commodification of language-learning materials has reinforced this trend.

h) The learner as mother/womb. This is the Socratic or maieutic approach, where the teacher is seen as midwife, helping learners to give birth to ideas which are developing inside them.

i) The learner as flower or plant. In this approach, often attributed in its modem European form to Rousseau, the aim of education is to provide a largely passive environment for 'natural' development to occur. Learners 'mature' or blossom', though they may be late developers'.

j) The learner as savage. This approach is, of course closely related to (i), but with the additional premiss that the child's!learner's development parallels that of the species, going from 'savagery' to 'civilisation' and recapitulating the different stages in the process. Socialisation is seen as a struggle between a learner wanting to gratify his or her impluses, and a caretaker.

k) The learner as clay for moulding. In this view, the learner is seen as passive, being 'formed' by the environment.

Such a list needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt: it is nothing like exhaustive, and the various 'approaches' are much more likely to occur as ingredients in mixtures rather than in a pure and undiluted form. Nonetheless, it does illustrate, albeit in an informal and piecemeal fashion, the ways in which discourse constructs

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various aspects of identities.6 Since it is out of the question to carry out a detailed discourse analysis of even one of these approaches, I would like to focus on an aspect which I feel to be particularly relevant to our present concerns: membershipping.

Members hipping

The term 'membershipping' refers to one of a range of discursive practices involved in the social construction of identity. Its function is to foreground and specify the parameter(s) of social identity relevant to a particular interaction. As such, membershipping strategies are a constitutive element in the negotiation of role, since speakers appeal to social categorisations which may legitimate their right to perform certain acts, or which might impose or prohibit the obligation to do so on their interlocutors. Ordinary-life examples of this process testify to its frequence and fundamental importance:

Big boys don't cry. Shouldn't you be in the kitchen? Sorry, members only. Open wide. Compare and contrast ...

Such expressions represent attempts to identify individuals as boy', 'cook-woman', 'non-member',' 'dental patient', 'examination candidate', etc. Of course, as we saw earlier, it is possible to resist such classifications, which is precisely where the work of negotiation of role begins:

Who do you think you're talking to? You Brits (Parisians, teachers, smokers, etc.) always think you can ... Are you asking me as your friend or your bank manager? Call yourself a handyman (lawyer, etc.)? You can't even ... Look, the receptionist does car-hire here, not the doorman.

6 It also clearly illustrates the discursive role of analogy and metaphor in the classification process, a topic of great richness, since it also promises to provide insights into learners' and counsellors' representations. Cf. Cortazzi and Jin 1996, Riley 1996b.

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This brings us back to counselling and the ways in which counsellors and learners negotiate their respective roles. As any counsellor knows, one of the most difficult situations is the (very common) one where the learner insists