In-service teacher development for facilitating learner autonomy in curriculum-based SALL

Abstract

This paper aims to identify challenges in-service language teachers are facing when they are called upon to teach on a course with a selfaccess language learning (SALL) component, and the support and training that they perceive necessary to help learners to maximize their SALL experience. There is a large body of literature discussing ways to build, reinforce and measure learner autonomy (LA), and attempts have been made to integrate SALL into the curriculum with various levels of success. The success and failure of those curriculum-based SALL programmes were often attributed to learner motivation, learner training, learner strategies, peer influence and availability and quality of resources in self-access centres. It appears that teachers’ roles in curriculum-based SALL have not received as much attention as it deserves. Despite the presence of some useful models for teacher development and training initiatives to help teachers take on new facilitating roles afforded by an “autonomous” classroom in curriculum-based SALL, on-going in-service teacher training seems to be lacking in most schools and universities. Very often teachers with very little or even no experience or knowledge about SALL are asked to promote LA in their classes while training for those in-service teachers regarding SALL is insufficient. This paper reports the findings from interviews with EAP instructors teaching on a course with SALL being a major component in a university in Hong Kong. A three-tier in-service teacher development programme called OWL which consists of “Orientation for new teachers”, Workshops on LA” and “LA Virtual Resource Centre” is recommended.