SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES



the theory of self-direction, I was concerned about two things. First, I felt that I needed to go
back to Mexico and find out more about the learning culture I was dealing with. There were
too many things that I had not noticed, or very likely, that I had taken for granted. Second, I
needed to operationalise my theoretical model. I needed to put it into practice, that is, to
make a link between theory and practice, either to exemplify my theory with actual data or
to realise that my theory was not congruent with reality, or both. This was the purpose of the
Oaxaca/97 Project that I carried out during summer of 1997. The results of the project are
the main content of the third block of this thesis.

Chapter 5, “Revisiting the SAC”, describes the project and explains the
methodological approach for it. As the reader will see, I opted for an ethnographic approach,
which I had, again, to define and conceive according to my own needs and perceptions.

Chapters 6 and 7, “Beliefs about a learning culture I” and “Beliefs about a learning
culture II”, are complementary and have a parallel structure. Both deal with the
interpretation of the data from the Oaxaca/97 Project. The result of this interpretation was a
series of beliefs related to self-direction. I decided to separate these beliefs according to the
believer: Chapter 6 deals with the learners’ beliefs while Chapter 7 describes my own
beliefs, in my role of CounsellorZresearcher. In these two chapters it is possible to hear the
voices from the different participants that take part in this research: the learners and the
counsellor.

Chapter 8, “Creating a learning culture”, is the final section of this thesis. In it I
consider the possibility of a joint learning culture. Making reference to theoretical and
empirical literature I analyse the elements of human beings-as-leamers and the conditions
for the creation of a learning culture and relate them to my own research in self-direction.
My conclusion is that it is possible to talk about the creation of a learning culture in self-
direction if the processes of mutual understanding and negotiation are an essential element
of the rationale for self-directed schemes within the Mexican learning culture. Ultimately, I
believe this will be one possible answer (but not the only one) to the question I posed when I
started this study.

Before continuing, I should at this point explain certain stylistic decisions that I have
taken. First, the reader will notice the use of the pronoun “I” throughout this work. I am
aware that it is not an entirely common feature of academic genre as for many, the use of

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