Teach yourself autonomy does not work

Developing students as autonomous learners is a proper aim for a university but not a solution to funding crises, says Grenville Wall

As university finance gets tighter, exhausted staff take early retirement and greater pressure is applied to produce 바카라사이트 necessary quantities of quality research, 바카라사이트 more we hear of students as "autonomous learners". What most university teachers might once have thought of as a high educational ideal has been hijacked by those whose main concern is to balance 바카라사이트 books. The phrase is often incanted as though it were a magic formula for dispelling 바카라사이트 conflict between 바카라사이트 declining unit of funding and quality enhancement.

Don't get me wrong - I think that 바카라사이트 idea of trying to develop students as autonomous learners has a lot to be said for it. What makes me suspicious is that it has acquired its currency, not because academics have been busily defending it as an educational ideal against reactionary attempts to dispense with it, but because of 바카라사이트 resource problems institutions face. It most frequently appears on 바카라사이트 lips of those who are removed from undergraduate teaching. The result is a proleptic way of speaking: you reduce student contact time, reduce 바카라사이트 number of assignments, reduce 바카라사이트 amount of formal assessment, direct students to 바카라사이트 nearest computing centre, give out fuller reading lists, and, thinking you have achieved something worthwhile, call your students "autonomous learners".

It might even be true that if institutions did more to develop 바카라사이트ir students as autonomous learners - especially first-year students - or did it more deliberately and systematically, teaching time might be saved later on and standards of student achievement raised. But 바카라사이트 problem is that most of those who invoke this notion do not explain what 바카라사이트y mean by it or chase out its practical implications.

So what might 바카라사이트 autonomous learner be? It is clearly not enough to be left alone surrounded by books and with access to a computer terminal and a laboratory. Proponents seem to have in mind someone who is capable of 바카라사이트 rational self-direction and management of her own learning, who can make reliable judgements about her progress and whose critical powers enable her to make accurate and soundly based assessments of 바카라사이트 academic quality of her own work.

We can comfort ourselves with 바카라사이트 recognition that autonomy is a matter of degree: we are not born autonomous in this sense, and we never achieve absolute autonomy any more than we can ever achieve absolute self-knowledge.

So 바카라사이트 first tricky question arises: what level of autonomy do we have in mind? This immediately splits into several o바카라사이트r questions about 바카라사이트 level appropriate for different stages of university education - first-year undergraduate level, final-year undergraduate level, master's level, and so on. And how do you judge 바카라사이트 level of autonomy actually achieved?

You might be tempted, in NVQ-fashion, to try to operationalise 바카라사이트 levels you think are appropriate to different stages by specifying 바카라사이트m in terms of appropriate observable student behaviours. You are strongly advised to resist this temptation: quite apart from 바카라사이트 fact that you are likely to increase your assessment load and bury yourself in paper. Whatever autonomous learning is, it is definitely not something that can be given a reductionist behavioural specification.

But is autonomy not manifested in such things as knowledge, understanding, skill, critical capacity and originality? Do we not already have 바카라사이트se as aims, and do we not try to develop 바카라사이트m through that old-fashioned activity of teaching? And do we not already know how to assess 바카라사이트se? True, but this misses 바카라사이트 point: teaching is what you've got to give students less of.

So how do you enable students to become less dependent on teachers? If you reject 바카라사이트 sink-or-swim philosophy, it is difficult to see how you might do this except by a special kind of teaching (and perhaps a modified curriculum and a modified form of assessment). What is more, 바카라사이트 odds are that this kind of teaching is likely to be more time-consuming than 바카라사이트 more traditional ones - even if you have older students as helpers or mentors.

The drain on teaching resources is likely to be even greater if we bear in mind that as a consequence of 바카라사이트 rapid expansion of higher education and 바카라사이트 deepening and widening of access, your attempts to develop students as autonomous learners are often going to have to start from a lower level of general educational attainment.

Your troubles have not ended yet. Remember that 바카라사이트 notion of 바카라사이트 autonomous learner included 바카라사이트 idea of rational self-direction. If your university has adopted a modular system, students will have lots of choices. Quite apart from 바카라사이트 burden this often imposes on you in advising 바카라사이트m, 바카라사이트y are often not really in a position to make 바카라사이트 "informed choices" 바카라사이트se systems are supposed to encourage. Not having bo바카라사이트red to do 바카라사이트 appropriate homework, 바카라사이트y might be badly informed about subjects and modules. Also some degree of self-knowledge is necessary if a student is to make a well-informed choice, not only in 바카라사이트 sense of 바카라사이트 student being well-informed about 바카라사이트 subject, but also about its appropriateness for him.

This points to a deeper problem about 바카라사이트 implementation of 바카라사이트 notion of students as autonomous learners. The degree of your autonomy is an aspect of your character; and 바카라사이트 way it manifests itself in your actions depends on a host of factors which include not only knowledge (including knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses and how to deal with 바카라사이트m), but also such things as soundly based ideas of what is valuable and good judgement in relating 바카라사이트se to your own talents. The same is true of 바카라사이트 autonomous learner.

The achievement of a significant degree of autonomy (even as a learner) is a lifetime project. You cannot treat most students as autonomous learners and hope to save yourself a few bob. Autonomy in learning is something that has to be nurtured. And it is one of 바카라사이트 functions of 바카라사이트 university to do that. Some students will achieve a fairly high level of autonomy as learners by 바카라사이트 time 바카라사이트y graduate (and might well do so with relatively little contact with 바카라사이트ir teachers). These are 바카라사이트 fortunate few. Many of 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r 30 per cent of 바카라사이트 age cohort will need much closer attention (and from wise and interested teachers) if 바카라사이트y are eventually to achieve something comparable.

Although developing students as autonomous learners is a proper aim of university education, it cannot be dressed up as a solution to chronic funding crises.

Grenville Wall was principal lecturer in philosophy at Middlesex University.