SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

7. BELIEFS ABOUT A LEARNING CULTURE: FROM A

RESEARCHER/COUNSELLOR’S POINT OF VIEW

This chapter is the counterpart of the previous one, where I dealt with the
learners’ metacognitive knowledge. It is my turn now to look at myself and analyse the
beliefs that underlie my research. As I see it, although I have not fully discussed the
concept of counsellor and his/her role in a self-directed scheme, I have established the
rationale for defining the profile of the SAC counsellor in Chapter 4. Basically, in this
section I will focus in three areas of my metacognitive knowledge. First, I will comment
on my own way of looking at the Oaxaca/97 project (7.1). Second, I will deal with my
own conceptualisation of the learning processes of the participants of the project (7.2).
Third, I will analyse my beliefs related to the learners and the counsellor (7.3). As the
reader can notice, these three areas closely correspond to the three metacognitive
categories, strategy, task and person, discussed in the previous chapter. I have reversed
the order of the three categories. I decided that it would make more sense if I gave the
reader my own perception of the whole project (as strategy metacognitive knowledge)
before I put forward my beliefs about the participants’ learning processes (task
metacognitive knowledge) and the way I, as their counsellor, thought of them as learners
and of myself as a counsellor (person metacognitive knowledge).

In the following sections, I will deal with the same sources of information I
worked with in Chapter 6. These were basically the input, group discussion and
individual∕group sessions I carried out for the Oaxaca/1997 project. I will not only take
into consideration my participation in the project (which is going to be the main focus)

189 A

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