granted and I took into account my knowledge and experience in the field. Thus, I was able
to realise that teaching how to be self-directed needs to stand on a very sound rationale that
is coherent with the autonomous approach you are conveying.

But seeing things in a critical way is only part of the answer to make sense. It was
also necessary to build up, to construct from the knowledge already acquired in order to
organise and understand the different elements already gathered. Doing this was like
providing a self-explanation for others' explanations. It was turning their knowledge into my
knowledge. It was turning “borrowed” concepts into “my own” concepts. That was the
underlying force that made me develop a theoretical model for explaining self-directed
learning and the aspects that make it different from other-directed learning.

A third way of making sense was to complete the definition of the concept of
autonomy and self-direction (once the difference was established) from different
perspectives. This helped me to understand current points of view and arguments that added
to my own understanding and experience. This was the purpose of Autonomy 3, in which I
have analysed the concept of autonomy and self-direction (built up in the two previous
sections on autonomy) in three different dimensions (universal, individual and cultural).
Within the discussion of the cultural dimension, I referred to the current argument of
autonomy as a Western value that tends to see the initiator and developer culture in
opposition. This opposition has been regarded as the reason for the inappropriateness and
failures of some projects that aimed to foster autonomy in a non-westem environment. It
was argued, however, that the negative results of these projects may be the results of a clash
not due to the concept of autonomy (which seems to be a constant in most cultures) as a
rejected value, but to the way the innovation was implemented. In other words, it was an
ethnographic clash rather than an anthropological one.

This conclusion seems to direct our attention to the ethnographic level with the
purpose to find the way an ethnographic clash can be prevented. According to Riley, whose
words were quoted above, this depends on the appropriateness of the learner training scheme
and the given cultural factors (1996b,22-23). In other words, he suggests to find
convergence between the learning culture, which is a component of the initator and
developer culture that come into contact. According to him, and on line with the definition
of culture quoted above, a learning culture is

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