SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

for self-directed second language learning. I will deal with this issue theoretical issue in
Chapter 4 and its practical implications in Chapter 7.

2.3 AUTONOMY 1

When I first became involved in the SAC project I did not realise the connection
between self-directed learning and learner autonomy. It was after several courses and
readings when I understood that the opening of a SAC with students working by themselves
implied a rationale based on the concept of autonomy. Actually, I had never come across the
term used in such circumstances. It is not that autonomy was a new term for me. Actually,
the word in the Mexican educational context is quite common (almost all the state
universities have the word autonomous in their names) but it is used as an adjective for the
institution and it means that the universities do not depend on the Ministry of Education to
make their own decisions. It implies self-government. We also talk about Iibertad de catedra
(freedom of teaching), but in this case it refers to the teacher's freedom to make her own
decisions on the content and the methodology of teaching. But it was never applied to the
student. In other words, being a university administrator and teacher, I knew about teacher
autonomy and institutional autonomy but I did not know about learner autonomy.

So the question about learner autonomy, then, was to define a term completely new
for me. The following paragraphs show the reader the way I understood autonomy with
reference to the theoretical work I had read at that time and without any practical experience
on autonomous learning.

Educators and philosophers have tried to solve the problem of the definition of this
term and Holec has been one of the most interested. I will start with his definition, since
most researchers and practitioners in the field have based their work on his concept of
autonomy. It is obvious that, because of my training, my concept of autonomy was also
based on his definition.

With the purpose of clarifying the definition of autonomy, in 1988, Holec states that
there are three different ways to classify the ways people have conceptualised the term:

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