7.1.2.2.5 About person, a category of metacognitive knowledge
The last IS was focused on person, as a category of metacognitive knowledge.
The purpose of it was to analyse the way we perceive ourselves as cognitive beings.
Using Barrow’s scheme for developing self-confidence, I introduced the four aspects of
self. According to Barrow (1986), these aspects are: physical self, social adequacy,
intellectual competence and emotional functioning. These four aspects are present in the
two different types of selves that Barrow identifies as the perceived and the ideal self. In
his book, he suggests a task for students to analyse their selves. Taking this task as a
basis and relating it to the concepts of interindividual and intraindividual differences and
universals of cognition, the participants carried out an activity in order to enhance their
self-confidence (see section 6.1.1.3, p. 153, for results of the task).
To sum up, I gave the students an overall account of the most important elements
that make up in a self-directed scheme according to the model that I presented in Chapter
4. The obvious question here would be to ask why I taught the learners about this
knowledge. There are several reasons that I shall now outline.
First of all, I believe that self-directed learners need to know some basic elements
of psycholinguistic knowledge. Taking into account that self-directed learners have to be
aware of their learning processes and make decisions about them, it is extremely
important that they are provided with some tools to understand and manage their own
processes. In previous research (Clemente, 1996b) I carried out with the same type of
learners, I found that self-directed learners are able to take advantage of psycholinguistic
knowledge in order to improve their learning strategies. With this experience in mind, I
decided to introduced the participants to the concepts I already described above.
This fact, providing the learner with psycholinguistic knowledge, is related to
other two important aspects of the rationale underlying the input sessions of the
Oaxaca/97 project. The first one is the role of the counsellor and the second one the
interaction between counsellor and learner.
I strongly believe that the SAC counsellor has, among her most important roles,
the function of a teacher. As I stated in the second chapter of this thesis, the literature on
self-access and autonomy describe the role of the counsellor as very versatile and
complex, but they especially stress the fact that the counsellor is not a teacher, and
nonetheless a language teacher. However, for all its versatility and complexity I think
that the main reason that a learner has to seek the communication of a counsellor is that
the latter has something to teach to the former. That is why I held the input sessions, in
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