This experience made us conclude that, while the concept of self-
learning is universal, its realisation must originate as a product of the
context to which it belongs (Clemente and Kissinger, 1994,24)
At that time, however, I was not even half aware of the weight of that truth.
Personal and economic reasons made it impossible for all the teachers to travel and
attend the courses. Therefore, the teachers who attended a course had the responsibility to
reproduce it for their colleagues in Oaxaca. In this way, all the teachers taking part in the
project had access to the information of the original courses. In general, this reproduction
did not only consist of an account of the content of the course for it usually involved
comments about the course and discussion on the feasibility of the content in the context of
Oaxaca. This type of preparation was called multiple training. Another important element in
the formation of SAC staff was the experience of working in the SAC, that is to say, the on-
going learning that took place when the SAC was opened and the teachers were running it
and working directly with SAC materials and students. This was the informal training,
which may have been the most important factor for gaining confidence in doing the job.
2.4.3.4 Procedures
The main concern when setting up the SAC in Oaxaca was for students to be able to
make their own decisions. However, not everything in SAC was free decision-making. There
were some rules to observe and procedures to follow. At the beginning we were not sure if
having rules and procedures went well with the atmosphere of autonomy we wanted to
create. We did not like the idea of having certain constraints to limit learner autonomy, but
little by little we accepted the idea that some rules (such as not taking away materials or
equipment with them) would help us to give a better service to everybody. In the same way,
we decide to establish a scheme of support elements the learner could take advantage of (see
Fig. 2.5). Although most of the elements in the scheme were suggestions rather than
compulsory steps, there were a few that needed to be followed. Those were the user's course
and the first counselling session.
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