Developing Student Autonomy in Learning

David Boud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136616655
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1987. The assumption about the purpose of education, to which the authors of this book subscribe, is that it is to produce autonomous lifelong learners. This book is about a very important goal of education and how it can be translated into practice. It concerns ways in which teachers in higher education can enable students to become more autonomous in their learning; that is, assist students to learn more effectively without the constant presence or intervention of a teacher.

Part 1
Issues

Chapter 1

Moving Towards Autonomy

David Boud

Introduction

Autonomy is a term that is used in many different ways in education. What do people mean when they talk about student autonomy? What are autonomous learning methods? The notion of autonomy in learning is a many-faceted one and is subject to much debate. The aim of this chapter is to throw some light on the ways in which both philosophers and teachers use the word ‘autonomy’ in order to identify the key issues for someone who wishes to promote the idea of autonomy or autonomous learning with their students. In addition to clarifying some of these ideas, I will also examine research on student learning which identifies aspects of teaching and course design that appear to do most to promote or inhibit autonomy in learning.

The notion of autonomy encompasses three groups of educational ideas. First, it is a goal of education, an ideal of individual behaviour to which students or teachers may wish to aspire: teachers assist students to attain this goal. Secondly, it is a term used to describe an approach to educational practice, a way of conducting courses which emphasizes student independence and responsibility for decision-making. Thirdly, it it also an integral part of learning of any kind. No learner can be effective in more than a very limited area if he or she cannot make decisions for themselves about what they should be learning and how they should be learning it: teachers cannot, and do not wish to, guide every aspect of the process of learning.

These three aspects of autonomy are usually treated quite separately in discussions of teaching and learning, and each of these areas has come to be influenced by different groups. Philosophers of education have dominated discussions of autonomy as a goal for education, innovative teachers have influenced practices which aim to give students responsibility for what and how they learn, and researchers interested in student learning have recently begun to consider the structure of knowledge in different disciplinary areas and how students need to exercise autonomy in coming to understand and utilize this knowledge. So far there has not been much cross-fertilization of ideas between groups: philosophers have not given serious attention to what teachers are actually doing; practitioners could benefit from clearer thinking about what they are and are not trying to achieve; and researchers need to broaden their view from some of the relatively simple learning tasks with which they have become preoccupied. I cannot in a brief chapter do more than point to some of the issues which need to be examined, but by setting discussions of these three areas beside each other in the first part of this book I hope to provide a foundation for thinking about the case studies on autonomous learning approaches which form the main section.

This chapter considers the first two of these areas – autonomy as a goal and the use of autonomous methods in courses in higher education – and also introduces some of the research that has been conducted in recent years on student learning. Joy Higgs in Chapter 2 discusses how to plan learning activities using autonomous approaches, and Philip Candy takes the third area – autonomy with respect to subject-matter –as the main theme for Chapter 3 and focuses on what he calls epistemological autonomy. John Heron in Chapter 4 elaborates on issues concerning the forms of assessment which are compatible with ideas of autonomy in learning.

Before considering any educational practices designed to promote autonomy in learning, it is first necessary to clarify what it is that we are discussing. What is meant by autonomy? What does it mean to pursue the goal of autonomy in learning?

Autonomy as a goal of eduction

The most common notion of autonomy is as a goal of education: what can be referred to as the goal of individual autonomy. A fundamental purpose of education is assumed to be to develop in individuals the ability to make their own decisions about what they think and do.

The concept of autonomy can be traced back to Ancient Greece and to a political context. It was concerned with the property of a state to be self-ruling or self-governing. Its educational usage, by analogy, refers to the capacity of an individual to be an independent agent, not governed by others. R.F. Dearden defines it thus:

A person is autonomous to the degree, and it is very much a matter of degree, that what he thinks and does, at least in important areas of his life, are determined by himself. That is to say, it cannot be explained why these are his beliefs and actions without referring to his own activity of mind. This determination of what one is to think and do is made possible by the bringing to bear of relevant considerations in such activities of mind as those of choosing, deciding, deliberating, reflecting, planning and judging. (Dearden, 1972, p 461)

Benjamin Gibbs elaborates on this:

an autonomous individual must have both independence from external authority and mastery of himself and his powers. He must be free from the dictates and interference of other people, and free also from disabling conflicts or lack of coordination between the elements of his own personality. He must have the freedom to act and work as he chooses, and he must be capable of formulating and following a rule, pattern or policy of acting and working. (Gibbs, 1979 p 119)

In a later paper Dearden gives a further description of the qualities which could be observed in a person who would be thought of as autonomous:

(i) wondering and asking, with a sense of the right to ask, what the justification is for various things which it would be quite natural to take for granted;
(ii) refusing agreement or compliance with what others put to him when this seems critically unacceptable;
(iii) defining what he really wants, or what is really in his interests, as distinct from what may be conventionally so regarded;
(iv) conceiving of goals, policies and plans of his own, and forming purposes and intentions of his own independently of any pressure to do so from others;
(v) choosing amongst alternatives in ways which could exhibit that choice as the deliberate outcome of his own ideas or purposes;
(vi) forming his own opinion on a variety of topics that interest him;
(vii) governing his actions and attitudes in the light of the previous sort of activity. In short, the autonomous man has a mind of his own and acts according to it. (Dearden, 1975, p 7)

These definitions encompass the important distinction made by Riesman (1950) between self-direction, other-direction and inner-direction. The autonomous person must be free not only from direction by others external to himself, but also from his or her own inner compulsions and rigidities. Autonomy is more than acting on one’s own. It implies a responsiveness to one’s environment and the ability to make creative and unique responses to situations as they arise rather than patterned and stereotypical responses from one’s past (Jackins, 1965).

Individual autonomy is also context dependent. Chene defines autonomy as

one’s ability to be free in regard to established rules or norms, to set the goals of one’s actions and to judge its value (Chene, 1983, p 39)

and she points out that

the existence of norms is a necessary part of autonomy. On the one hand, norms set the boundaries; on the other, they allow the judging of values. Furthermore, autonomy cannot be separated from the valued. (Chene, 1983, p 39)

In other words individual autonomy is shaped by and relates to the situations in which it is manifest. What would be regarded as autonomous in one setting judged against one set of values might not be so regarded in another. At a simple level, the approach adopted by someone meeting a body of knowledge for the first time might be regarded as autonomous whereas it would be considered merely the following of a convention if exhibited by someone expert in the area.

Philosophers of education in the rational-liberal-democratic tradition have tended to treat autonomy as if it were something good which can hardly be questioned. As Dunlop puts it

all promoters of autonomy [as a goal of education] have openly or implicitly appealed to things that lay beyond all local ideological allegiance, such as the value of faithful conscientious dissent and the disvalue of undiscriminating conformity. (Dunlop, 1986, p 153)

As long as autonomy remains as an abstract concept divorced from any particular situation it can be an ideal to which we can aspire but it is not something which we can realistically expect to emerge from any given course. However, even at this level these views have been challenged, by Phillips (1975), who finds difficulty in distinguishing an autonomous person of the type defined by Dearden and a person lacking in autonomy, and also by Crittenden (1978). Some writers on moral education have also started to have some qualms about unreservedly accepting autonomy as a prime goal (Dearden, 1984), and Dunlop (1986) questions whether the education of the emotions is compatible with the promotion of autonomy. He cautions us wisely not to be obsessed with the goal of individual autonomy to the exclusion of others. We are emotional and social animals and the exercise of our autonomy needs to be tempered by our sensibilities to ourselves and to others.

While there are important movements on the philosophical front, most teachers cannot afford to wait for further clarification before they act. Undeniably, independence and autonomy are highly rated goals of teachers and it is encouraging to note that this view is shared by students. In a study of the university experience of a cross section of students at the University of Melbourne, Little (1970) found that, of all the possible aims provided, the one stating that ‘the university should develop in its students habits of independent intellectual inquiry’ was rated most important. As a practical matter, it is necessary for teachers to act on what seem to them to be reasonable assumptions about autonomy in learning and perhaps reflect later on the action they take in the light of the philosophers’ concerns.

Autonomy as an approach to education

While philosophers have been grappling with the autonomous individual, many teachers in all areas of education and training have been pursuing practices which have come to be classified under the rubric of autonomous learning. Are these teachers pursuing the same goal of the autonomous individual as has been described above, or do they have different intentions? Certainly many of them hold a notion of the autonomous individual which they are trying to promote. However, many teachers who accept the goal of the autonomous individual would not be associated with what we are calling autonomous methods, and many of those who are using autonomous methods would not have a clear notion of the type of person they are hoping to develop through their courses.

There is no automatic link between the goal of autonomy and the ways in which it might be pursued. Using the term independence which is often used as a synonym for autonomy, Dressel and Thompson in one of the few surveys of independent study in the United States note:

At the heart of the problem of definition is the fact that independence has not been defined adequately in an academic context. It has come to mean independent of classes, independent of other students, or independent of faculty. Acceptance of any one or even all of these as essential would be missing the most important aspect of the whole process which is that the student becomes capable of self-directed study. (Dressel and Thompson, 1973, p 3)

That is, there has been a failure to discriminate between independent study as a learning experience and as a capability to be developed (Dittman, 1976). As Lewis says

To approve ‘autonomy’ as an ideal for students is one thing: to commend ‘autonomous’ methods of learning is another – however ‘autonomy’ is defined. If, for the purposes of argument, we gloss it as independence, it is not quite obvious that independent methods of learning promote independence – auxiliary causal relationships must be established. (Lewis, 1978, p 152)

We should be careful in following this path too far. Although it may be in doubt that independent methods of learning themselves promote independence, it is certainly unlikely that dependent, teacher-dominated methods would do so. We must therefore look at methods which claim to foster autonomy through autonomous ways of working to see if they in fact do so. As Candy points out:

It is clear that a person may be exposed to so-called autonomous methods of learning, without internalizing the values of autonomy, or necessarily being enabled to think and act autonomously (Campbell, 1964; Torbert, 1978). Conversely, it may be possible to develop autonomy without recourse to autonomous methods. If, for instance, autonomy is defined as the ability and willingness to approach situations with an open mind, to suspend critical judgement and to act in accordance with rules and principles which are the product of the autonomous person’s own endeavours and experience, then, paradoxically, as Dearden argues, it might be precisely a student’s upbringing and previous educational experience, with relatively little freedom, which does develop autonomy (Dearden, 1972, p 452). (Candy, 1987a, pp 167-8)

Whatever our views on the desirability of pursuing the goal of the individual autonomous learner, it cannot be denied that some of the attributes of the autonomous learner are required by anyone if they are to be effective learners in higher education, or indeed anywhere else. It is not likely that students who are dependent on their teachers are going to be as effective in the world of learning or subsequent employment as those who have developed strategies which enable them to find and use their own resources for learning. Similarly, if students are denied opportunities to participate in decision-making about their learning, they are less likely to develop the skills they need in order to plan and organize for life-long learning which depend on their decisions about their learning needs and activities.

This domain of what might be called practical autonomy is the one to which most attention has been given by practitioners in recent years. It involves providing students with opportunities to exercise significant degrees of decision-making with respect to the content and organization of courses. As far as particular approaches to promoting autonomy in learning are concerned, there are problems of terminology. Candy (1987a, b) has identified thirty different terms which have been used in this area including: independent learning, learner-controlled instruction, non-traditional learning, open learning, participatory learning, self-directed learning, self-organized learning, self-planned learning, self-study and self-teaching.

This proliferation of terms would be difficult enough if they were all exact synonyms, but the problem is made worse by the fact that different authors use the same term to mean different things, and sometimes they use different terms to mean the same thing, and the only way to tell the difference is to delve beneath the surface to what is actually meant in any particular situation. (Candy, 1987a, p 160)

Some of these methods focus on teaching, some on learning. Some emphasize the acquisition of particular skills, some the development of ways of organizing learning. Some are highly structured by teachers, in others students create their own structures. All of them include as a goal that students take greater responsibility for their own learning. No absolute standard of autonomy is manifest in any of them; what is important is the direction of change – towards student self-reliance – not the magnitude of it. In some approaches this aspect predominates; in others it is of subsidiary concern. A definition which stresses pract...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• Issues
• Moving Towards Autonomy
• Planning Learning Experiences to Promote Autonomous Learning
• On the Attainment of Subject-matter Autonomy
• Assessment Revisited
• Technology and Lifelong Learning
• Case Studies
• Reducing Teacher Control
• Independent Study: A Matter of Confidence?
• One-to-one Learning
• ‘Parrainage': Students Helping Each Other
• Student Autonomy in Learning Medicine: Some Participants' Experiences
• The Negotiated Learning Contract
• Struggling with Self-assessment
• The Experience of Independent Study at North East London Polytechnic
• On Leadership, Change and Autonomy
• Putting it into Practice: Promoting Independent Learning in a Traditional Institution
• References
• Index