Exploring autonomy: Respect, responsibility, trust

Abstract

The importance of raising democratic awareness amongst young people has been at the centre of theoretical discussion throughout the 20th century. However, in order to raise this democratic awareness it is not sufficient to talk about democracy, it needs to be practised. The role of schools in this debate is, therefore, of the greatest importance. There are several options open to teachers and schools who want to develop democratic awareness amongst their learners. Introducing autonomy into the classroom is one approach towards this goal. Autonomy has been defined as the urge people have to be causal agents of their own life and actions; that is, autonomous learners need to be given more power and ownership over their own learning. Most definitions of learner autonomy have in common that learners set their own goals, take part in evaluating their own progress and by doing so take responsibility for their own learning. The values of respect and responsibility are interwoven with the concept of pedagogical autonomy and in the school context the value of trust also plays a vital role. In the autonomous classroom it is important to accept the learners’ feelings toward their various assignments. Teachers need to reduce the pressure of testing, allowing students to take part in the evaluation process. Hence, for autonomy to succeed there has to be mutual trust between teachers and learners. Another criterion is that schools need to enjoy a certain freedom. The curriculum guide for upper secondary schools from 2011 gives schools quite a free rein to organise their own curriculum and considerable power and freedom is handed over to the schools; to both leaders and teachers. It can be argued that in many ways upper secondary schools have an unusually high degree of autonomy. In this paper the focus is on autonomy in the classroom. It is well documented that teacher autonomy is a prerequisite for learner autonomy and teacher autonomy necessitates teachers enjoying the competence, freedom and responsibility to choose their teaching practises and organise classroom work. The following research question was put forward: How is the concept of autonomy and its core values; respect, responsibility and trust reflected in teachers’ practice and in the activities of teachers and students in the classroom? The study reported here is part of more extensive research aimed at obtaining a holistic view of the upper secondary school. The data on which this paper is based are 130 observations from classrooms, both academic and vocational classes, from nine schools, rural, as well as those in more densely populated areas. The basic data are researchers’ interpretations of the observations where minute by minute descriptions are used to triangulate the data. After repeated readings of the data, five categories emerged, depending on how little or how much learner autonomy was observed. Those five categories were: teacher centred teaching, controlling by testing, effort and respect, toward autonomy, autonomy in praxis. Ten examples from all five categories are illustrated (verbatim) and discussed in relation to the core values underlying autonomy. The main findings indicate that teacher centred instruction remains the most conspicuous teaching approach and the student voice is absent most of the time. However, there were examples of various degrees of student autonomy and the observations suggest that many teachers are increasingly moving in that direction. When trying to speculate why teaching approaches are still so conservative and unvaried, several issues spring to mind which need to be investigated. One is the content and pedagogical approaches in initial teacher education and another relates to how in-service education (TPD) is organised. The scant research we have on teacher collaboration also indicates that collaboration needs closer scrutiny. In addition, the findings suggest that schools and teachers would benefit from more school based inservice education in schools and between schools.