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Mapping Autonomy in Language Education - A Framework for Learner and

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Foreign L anguage Teaching in Europe 16
Manuel Jiménez Raya / Terry Lamb /
Flávia Vieira
Mapping Autonomy
in Language Education
This book proposes a comprehensible,
context-sensitive and flexible framework
for the development of pedagogy for
autonomy in language education. The
‘framework’ metaphor highlights the
effort to identify structuring elements in
the authors’ stance towards pedagogy for
autonomy, which fall into three domains –
the context, the learner, and the teacher.
In each domain, the authors raise ethical,
conceptual and practical issues that are
crucial to their perspective and offer a
basis for reflection on learner and teacher
development towards learner and teacher
autonomy. The book proposes a common
definition for learner and teacher
autonomy within a vision of education
as transformation and empowerment.
Pedagogy for autonomy is operationalized
through a set of ten general principles.
The Authors
Manuel Jiménez Raya is Full Professor in
the English and German Department at
the University of Granada (Spain), where
he teaches applied linguistics courses.
ISBN 978-3-631-67360-7
16 Foreign L anguage Teaching in Europe 16
Terry Lamb / Flávia Vieira
Manuel Jiménez Raya / 
Manuel Jiménez Raya / Terry Lamb /
Flávia Vieira
His research interests are pedagogy for
Mapping Autonomy
in Language Education
autonomy, experiential learning, language
teacher education, and case pedagogy.
He has published numerous articles
and co-authored several books on FLT
Mapping Autonomy in Language Education
methodology and teacher education.
A Framework for Learner
Terry Lamb is Professor of Languages and
Interdisciplinary Pedagogy and Director
and Teacher Development
of the Centre for Teaching Innovation
at the University of Westminster. He has
published extensively in the areas of
learner autonomy, multilingualism and
language teacher development, and is
founder and editor of an academic journal.
Flávia Vieira is Full Professor at the
Institute of Education at the University
of Minho (Portugal), where she teaches
courses in FLT didactics and pedagogical
supervision. Her research interests are
pedagogy for autonomy, language teacher
education, case pedagogy, and the scholar-
ship of teaching and learning in higher
education. She has published numerous
articles and co-authored several books on
FLT methodology and teacher education.
Mapping Autonomy in Language Education
 FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
IN EUROPE
Edited by
Manuel Jiménez Raya, Terry Lamb and Flávia Vieira

VOL. 16

Zu Qualitätssicherung und Peer Review Notes on the quality assurance and peer
der vorliegenden Publikation review of this publication

Die Qualität der in dieser Reihe Prior to publication, the quality

erscheinenden Arbeiten wird vor der
Publikation durch Herausgeber der Reihe
im Blind-Verfahren geprüft. Dabei ist der
Autor der Arbeit den Gutachtern während
der Prüfung namentlich nicht bekannt.
of the work published in this series is
blind reviewed by editors of the series.
The referees are not aware
of the author’s name when
performing their review.
 Manuel Jiménez Raya / Terry Lamb / Flávia Vieira

Mapping Autonomy in
Language Education
A Framework for Learner and Teacher Development
 Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the
internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover image: © Flávia Manuela Ferreira Vieira

This publication has been sponsored by the Departamento de Filologías

Inglesa y Alemana- University of Granada.

Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck

ISSN 1437-3157
ISBN 978-3-631-67360-7 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-72220-6 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-72221-3 (EPUB)
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DOI 10.3726/b11095
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Table of contents

List of Tables ...................................................................................... 7

List of Figures ..................................................................................... 9

1. Introduction .................................................................................. 11

2. Pedagogy for autonomy: underlying assumptions and

general language teaching principles ........................................ 17
2.1 Pedagogy for autonomy: major assumptions .............................. 18
2.2 Pedagogy for autonomy and general language teaching
principles ................................................................................... 23

3. Mapping pedagogy for autonomy ............................................ 35

3.1 Putting the context on the map .................................................. 35
3.1.1 Understanding the setting ...................................................  36
3.1.2 Understanding the propelling and constraining forces ........  40
3.1.3 Moving forward through the landscape ..............................  42
3.2 Putting the learner on the map ................................................... 44
3.2.1 Learner autonomy: definition and assumptions ..................  44
3.2.2 Competences for learner autonomy in language learning ....  51
3.3 Putting the teacher on the map ................................................... 65
3.3.1 Teacher autonomy towards learner autonomy ....................  66
3.3.2 Enabling pedagogy for autonomy .......................................  70

4. Principles for the development of pedagogy for autonomy ......  79

4.1 The need for a principled methodological framework ................ 79
4.2 Pedagogy for autonomy principles ............................................. 81
4.3 Beyond formulae: a situated view of pedagogy for autonomy .....  102

5
5. Teacher education for autonomy –
An experience-­oriented approach ........................................... 107
5.1 Reflective teacher education for autonomy ............................... 107
5.2 Case pedagogy for promoting learner and teacher autonomy ......  111
5.2.1 Analysing cases of other teachers’ experience ...................  113
5.2.2 Developing and writing personal cases .............................  115
5.2.3 Writing teacher education cases from teachers’
experience ........................................................................  118

6. Final remarks .............................................................................. 131

7. References ................................................................................... 135

6
List of Tables
Table 1. Reflection on constraints to pedagogy for autonomy and
transformation strategies .........................................................  38
Table 2. Attribution types according to locus of control ........................  59
Table 3. Reflection on promoting competences for learner
autonomy ................................................................................  64
Table 4. Reflection on conditions for enabling pedagogy
for autonomy ...........................................................................  71
Table 5. Examples of the exploration of the space of possibility in
language teaching ....................................................................  74
Table 6. Enabling conditions for centring teaching on learning
(example) .................................................................................  77
Table 7. Reflection on principles of pedagogy for autonomy ...............  102
Table 8. Teacher development activities (Richards & Farrell, 2005) ....  110
Table 9. Case on ‘Portfolios as Learning Tools’ (Jiménez Raya &
Vieira, 2011) .........................................................................  120

7
List of Figures
Figure 1. Definition of autonomy ..........................................................  17
Figure 2. Pedagogy for autonomy framework ......................................  105
Figure 3. Case structure (Jiménez Raya & Vieira, 2011, 2015) ............  119

9
1. Introduction

(…) human life will never be understood unless its highest aspirations are taken
into account. Growth, self-­actualization, the striving toward health, the quest for
identity and autonomy, the yearning for excellence (and other ways of phrasing
the striving upward) must now be accepted beyond question as a widespread and
perhaps universal human tendency. (Maslow, 1970: xii–­xiii)

The above ideas, expressed almost forty years ago, are just as relevant
today. UNESCO’s Declaration for Education 2030, which resulted from
the World Education Forum 2015 in Incheon, clearly appeals to high hu-
man aspirations by endorsing a strategic vision that calls for inclusive and
equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all. This Declaration
“is inspired by a humanistic vision of education and development based
on human rights and dignity; social justice; inclusion; protection; cultural,
linguistic and ethnic diversity; and shared responsibility and accountability”
(p. 7). Education is understood as a human right and a basis
for guaran-
teeing peace, tolerance, human fulfilment, sustainable development, full
employment, and the eradication of poverty. This is certainly an ambitious
and essential vision, requiring that “teachers and educators are empowered,
adequately recruited, well-­trained, professionally qualified, motivated and
supported within well-­resourced, efficient and effectively governed systems”
(p. 8).
In this book, our focus on pedagogy for autonomy in language education
is also motivated by high aspirations, namely the enhancement of more
democratic teaching and learning practices within a vision of (language)
education in schools as a space for enacting (inter)personal empowerment
and promoting social transformation. We are strongly convinced that the
concept of “autonomy”, which has long been researched and explored
in many different ways, continues to be central in considerations of how
education can become more inclusive and empowering for learners and
teachers, particularly because educational systems have mostly served to
reproduce and reinforce established educational and social traditions rather
than transform them. In a radical manifesto against neoliberal, market-­
driven educational policies, Giroux points out the dangers of a ‘pedagogy
of repression’ through which “students are conditioned to unlearn any

11
respect for democracy, justice, and what it might mean to connect learn-
ing to social change”, arguing that “this is a pedagogy that kills the spirit,
promotes conformity, and is more suited to an authoritarian society than a
democracy” (Giroux 2013, para. 15). As a result of the lack of democracy
in educational settings, “millions of children leave school all over the world
each day no better able to engage in democratic action and make changes
in their communities to meet their needs than when they entered”, and
therefore we need to “construct curricula for challenge, for change, for the
development of people and not the engineering of employees” (Schostak,
2000: 50). This appears to be a central justification for promoting pedagogy
for autonomy in schools.
Generally speaking, autonomy refers to both a goal of education and
a pedagogical approach to attaining that goal. The development of au-
tonomy as an educational goal can be interpreted as “the development
of a kind of person whose thought and action in important areas of his
life are to be explained by reference to his own choices, decisions, re-
flections, deliberations—­in short, his own activity of mind” (Dearden,
1972: 70). Additionally, autonomy is seen as crucial to the development
of lifelong learning in ‘the learning society’. Indeed, acting autonomously
as a responsible, self-­determined agent is fundamental for democratic
citizenship and for moral decision-­making in a world characterized by
swift changes. Accordingly, a focus on autonomy in education is intrinsic
to such significant values as democracy, liberty, justice, rights, and some
versions of equality (Kerr, 2002). The concept of autonomy conveys the
belief that all individuals, to some extent, have the right to participate in
democratic life and to choose for themselves how to live their own lives.
A democratic society is thus expected to foster the use of reason in social
life and autonomy as an educational goal. The principle underlying the
different perspectives on education as emancipation is the commitment to
educational goals related to the Kantian idea of rational autonomy (Carr,
1996). According to Aviram & Yonah (2004), even current changes in the
post-­modern world that demand personal creativity, initiative, lifelong
learning and independence make the notion of autonomy a valid goal for
education.
Even though the explicit promotion of autonomy is largely absent
from many school practices, it is present as a goal of language educa-

12
tion in many European curricula (see Lamb, 2008; Jiménez Raya, 2011;
Miliander, 2011; Trebbi, 2011; Vieira 2011). Furthermore the language
policies set by the Council of Europe in the Common European Frame-
work of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001a) stress the
need to support the implementation of language teaching approaches
that “strengthen independence of thought, judgement and action, com-
bined with social skills and responsibility” (p. 4). In addition, autonomy
has been the focus of research and experimentation for decades world-
wide (Lamb, 2017) and learner autonomy is currently acknowledged as
one of the main dimensions of foreign language education, as evidenced
by Benson’s (2016) contribution to a handbook on English Language
Teaching edited by Hall (2016). It is important to note, however, that
despite past and current developments, pedagogy for autonomy remains
a marginal trend. For example, it is not mentioned in Howatt & Smith’s
(2014) historical account of English Language Teaching from a British
and European perspective.
The main purpose of this book is to propose a framework for the
development of learner and teacher autonomy in language education.
The framework was first developed as one of the products of the project
EuroPAL – A European Pedagogy for Autonomous Learning – Educating
Modern Language Teachers Through ICT1, on the basis of the premise
that learner autonomy and teacher autonomy are closely interrelated in
a school context and should be defined within a vision of education as
empowerment and transformation. The first version of the framework,
published in 2007 (Jiménez Raya, Lamb & Vieira, 2007)2, was the basis
for developing the present book by updating and expanding the initial
one, which went out of circulation when the publisher closed. Our ti-
tle  – Mapping Autonomy in Language Education  – A Framework for
Learner and Teacher Development – stresses two metaphors used in the

1 EuroPAL was funded by the SOCRATES programme, action Comenius 2.1,

and developed from October 2004 to October 2007 under the coordination of
Manuel Jiménez Raya.
2 The authors were part of the EuroPAL team and were responsible for this first
publication, although it was discussed with other team members: Charalambos
Vrasidas, Michalinos Zembylas, Enrica Flamini, Ivan Shotlekov, June Miliander,
and Turid Trebbi.

13
book. The “mapping” metaphor emphasises the need to bring forward the
role of contexts, learners and teachers in shaping the ends and means of
pedagogy for autonomy. Contexts, learners and teachers are understood
as the structuring elements of a “framework” aimed at raising ethical,
conceptual and practical issues that are crucial to our perspective and of-
fer our readers a basis for reflection on learner and teacher development
towards learner and teacher autonomy.
Throughout the book, our main concerns relate to what makes pedagogy
for autonomy distinctive: What vision of education does it entail? What
is the relationship between learner and teacher autonomy? What factors
facilitate or hamper both? What learning and teaching competences are
involved in pedagogy for autonomy? How might teachers enable it? What
principles might guide their action? How can teacher education enhance
pedagogy for autonomy? These kinds of question both orient our reasoning
and proposals and inform teachers’ local choices at the level of language
teaching strategies and materials. In this way, we hope to help teachers
consider the rationale and implications of pedagogy for autonomy so that
their choices become more informed and critical.
The book is primarily directed at foreign language (prospective) teach-
ers and teacher educators, although it may be of interest to other educa-
tional agents, especially school administrators, coursebook writers, and
syllabus designers. By providing a comprehensive, flexible framework
for the development of pedagogy for autonomy in school settings, we
hope to promote critical reflection and purposeful, context-­sensitive ac-
tion towards the development of autonomy, favour comparative enquiry
into pedagogical approaches in diverse language education contexts, and
encourage a cross-­disciplinary approach to autonomy issues. Although
our concerns relate to language education in the school setting, we would
like to stress the cross-­disciplinary and cross-­contextual potential of the
book, which enhances its usefulness by encouraging a broad perspec-
tive on autonomy issues. Therefore, readers might wish to consider its
applicability across different language and non-­language pedagogical
contexts, at different educational levels, and in various cultural settings.

14
Foreign L anguage Teaching in Europe 16
Manuel Jiménez Raya / Terry Lamb /
Flávia Vieira
Mapping Autonomy
in Language Education
This book proposes a comprehensible,
context-sensitive and flexible framework
for the development of pedagogy for
autonomy in language education. The
‘framework’ metaphor highlights the
effort to identify structuring elements in
the authors’ stance towards pedagogy for
autonomy, which fall into three domains –
the context, the learner, and the teacher.
In each domain, the authors raise ethical,
conceptual and practical issues that are
crucial to their perspective and offer a
basis for reflection on learner and teacher
development towards learner and teacher
autonomy. The book proposes a common
definition for learner and teacher
autonomy within a vision of education
as transformation and empowerment.
Pedagogy for autonomy is operationalized
through a set of ten general principles.
The Authors
Manuel Jiménez Raya is Full Professor in
the English and German Department at
the University of Granada (Spain), where
he teaches applied linguistics courses.
ISBN 978-3-631-67360-7
16 Foreign L anguage Teaching in Europe 16
Terry Lamb / Flávia Vieira
Manuel Jiménez Raya / 
Manuel Jiménez Raya / Terry Lamb /
Flávia Vieira
His research interests are pedagogy for
Mapping Autonomy
in Language Education
autonomy, experiential learning, language
teacher education, and case pedagogy.
He has published numerous articles
and co-authored several books on FLT
Mapping Autonomy in Language Education
methodology and teacher education.
A Framework for Learner
Terry Lamb is Professor of Languages and
Interdisciplinary Pedagogy and Director
and Teacher Development
of the Centre for Teaching Innovation
at the University of Westminster. He has
published extensively in the areas of
learner autonomy, multilingualism and
language teacher development, and is
founder and editor of an academic journal.
Flávia Vieira is Full Professor at the
Institute of Education at the University
of Minho (Portugal), where she teaches
courses in FLT didactics and pedagogical
supervision. Her research interests are
pedagogy for autonomy, language teacher
education, case pedagogy, and the scholar-
ship of teaching and learning in higher
education. She has published numerous
articles and co-authored several books on
FLT methodology and teacher education.
 Reviews
Mapping Autonomy in Language Education:
A Framework for Learner and Teacher Development
M. Jiménez Raya, T. Lamb and F. Vieira
Peter Lang, 2017, 157 pp., £20.95 (ebook)
ISBN 978 3 631 72220 6
‘Autonomy? A great idea, but how do we put it into
practice?’ A long and convoluted answer begins,
but before it can be completed … ‘Oh, I see. But
sorry, I only have 15 minutes to prepare my next
class. Let’s continue this conversation later…’.
Those who spend a good deal of time thinking
and talking about autonomy will recognize this
as the problem of implementing autonomy. How
do we take this high-flown and transparently
desirable goal of education and implement it in
the day-to-day practice of language teaching in
all of its varied contexts and settings? This is the
problem that the authors of Mapping Autonomy
in Language Education have been addressing
through the concept of pedagogy for autonomy
for many years now. In their latest book they
come very close, I believe, to providing the
solution.
The risk in this enterprise is twofold. On the one
hand, an overly theoretical approach risks proposing
broad-ranging solutions that ‘will not work in my
context’. On the other hand, an overly practical
approach risks narrowing autonomy down to a set of
classroom activities that may lead to better teaching
and learning, but are disconnected from any longer-
term educational goal. The greatest strength of this
book is that the authors carefully construct a pathway
through these risks by mapping three dimensions
of autonomy—context, learner, and teacher—and
proposing a framework that connects this mapping to
ten pedagogical principles. Importantly, this is not just
a pathway for the authors to follow. There are enough
reflective tasks and instruments along the way to
make this a usable pathway for teachers and teacher
educators.
ELT Journal Volume 74/3 July 2020
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
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There has been talk of ‘stronger’ and ‘weaker’
versions of autonomy. The weaker versions tend
to see autonomy in the classroom as a means to
better or more relevant learning, while the stronger
versions also emphasize broader educational and
social goals. Mapping Autonomy in Language Education
veers towards the stronger end of the continuum and
offers a unique subject-free definition of autonomy in
education that embraces both learner autonomy and
teacher autonomy:
The competence to develop as a self-determined,
socially responsible and critically aware participant
in (and beyond) educational environments,
within a vision of education as (inter)personal
empowerment and social transformation. (p. 17)
This definition is followed by a step-by-step
explanation of each of its key terms. ‘Self-
determination’ and ‘socially responsible’ highlight the
individual and collective dimensions of autonomy,
while ‘critically aware’ highlights the goal of cultivating
an inquiring independent mind. The educational
vision of ‘empowerment’ and ‘social transformation’
points to a conception of autonomy as ‘a moral and
political phenomenon whose goal is to transform
(rather than reproduce) the status quo’ (p. 18). One
of the strengths of the book is that, even at its most
practical, it does not lose sight of this goal.
Following an introduction that explains the genesis of
the book and its main ideas, the book is divided into four
chapters. Chapter 2 covers the underlying assumptions
of pedagogy for autonomy and links them to general
principles of language teaching. This raises the question
of whether autonomy does, in fact, imply alignment with
particular approaches to language teaching, rather than
others. The authors insist that their pedagogy does not
mean breaking away from communicative language
teaching, but they also suggest that the communicative
approach is not sufficient to promote learner autonomy,
which requires additional attention to learning
awareness, strategic learning, decision-making, and a
critical view of education.
349
Chapter 3, ‘Mapping Pedagogy for Autonomy’, is
divided into three parts covering the three dimensions
of context, learner, and teacher. By ‘mapping’, the
authors essentially mean laying out the various factors
and questions that demand attention under each
heading. There is a detailed discussion of factors of
setting and context and how they might constrain
autonomy or propel it forwards. The authors are
clear that autonomy ‘entails a whole-school project’
(p. 23), but they also make the valuable argument
that at the same time, for the teacher, it is a question
of ‘exploiting their professional context in ways
which will move them forward rather than hold
them back’ (p. 35). The second section covers the
familiar but important ground of previous definitions
of autonomy and the competences that have been
associated with autonomous learning in the literature
to date, which are classified under the headings of
learning competence, competence to self-motivate,
and competence to think critically. The third section,
on the teacher, tackles an issue that is not well
discussed in the literature to date. It is worth recalling
that the authors’ definition of autonomy embraces
both learner and teacher autonomy. By bringing the
dimensions of context, learner, and teacher together,
they emphasize that autonomy is as much a matter of
teacher development as it is of learner development.
The idea of Chapter 4 is to bring these dimensions
together into a framework of ten principles of
pedagogy for autonomy. There is, perhaps, an
inevitable risk that these principles will be viewed
prescriptively. They are intended, however, to be more
of a heuristic device for teachers to reflect on their
approaches to teaching: ‘Are they part of my teaching
priorities, and should they be made more intentional
in my practice?’ In the spirit of connecting pedagogy
for learner autonomy with teacher development, the
concluding chapter discusses an experience-oriented,
case-based approach to teacher education for
autonomy, in which teachers write and share stories of
their professional experiences.
Mapping Autonomy in Language Education is one of
the most comprehensive accounts of the theory and
practice of autonomy in language education that
I have read. However, it also led me to think about
two areas that might well be covered in such an
account. First, the focus is firmly on teaching and the
350 Reviews
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school/classroom setting, but is there also a place for
attention to out-of-class/out-of-school learning within
this focus? Work on the implementation of autonomy
has to some extent bifurcated into work on in-class
and out-of-class settings in recent years. Is there an
opportunity to bring them back together, especially
at a time when language learners themselves seem
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/article/74/3/349/5868246 by Universidad de Granada - Biblioteca user on 23 January 2022
to be making more and more use of technologies to
bridge the classroom and the world beyond? Second,
the authors make clear their belief in the ‘cross-
disciplinary value of autonomy as an educational
goal’ (p. 22). Pedagogy for autonomy is not just a
matter of pedagogy for language learning, but also of
the contribution of autonomy in language learning to
broader individual and societal empowerment and
transformation. But does this also imply a need to
consider the senses in which language learning itself,
and autonomous language learning especially, may
be both empowering and transformative? Language
teachers have been among the most enthusiastic
advocates of autonomy in education. What does
this tell us about the roles of language learning in
educational empowerment and transformation?
Overall, Mapping Autonomy in Language Education is
a volume that deserves wider attention. It is worth
adding that it is also a highly usable book. Its tools for
mapping dimensions of autonomy and for reflection
on approaches to teaching are especially valuable,
making the book an excellent resource for a short
course or series of workshops, or indeed as a resource
for teacher self-development.
The reviewer
Phil Benson has taught in Algeria, Kuwait, Seychelles,
Malaysia, Japan, and Hong Kong, and he is now
Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of
the Multilingualism Research Centre at Macquarie
University. His main research interests are in
autonomy and informal language learning beyond the
classroom, language learning histories, and urban
multilingualism and language learning environments.
He is the author of Teaching and Researching Autonomy
(Pearson, 2011) and co-author of Narrative Inquiry in
Language Teaching and Learning Research (Routledge,
2014).
Email: philip.benson@mq.edu.au
doi:10.1093/elt/ccaa026