evaluation and that means that, as White says, "there is some obligation on those involved to
demonstrate that improvement has in fact occurred" (1988,115).
In short, SAC counsellors' position is difficult and intricate. In my role of counsellor,
I can say that we do not know our subject matter, our counselling skills are scanty and our
past as students and as experienced teachers usually acts against us and raise negative
attitudes. Thus, we developed a disbelief in principles, a distrust of students, a rejection of
innovation and a competence anxiety that makes our everyday work hard to deal with.
3.4 AUTONOMY 2
In Chapter 2, I dealt with the definition of the concept autonomy from a theoretical
perspective. However, the practical experience on the matter made me consider the term
from other perspectives.
According to some writers, autonomy as an educational approach, has turned into a
cliche, and the term has been used so widely that it became "almost meaningless" (King;
1994, i), sometimes even used "as a synonym for 'directionless'" (ibid). Comments like this
made me think that we, in the SAC Oaxaca, were not the only ones that were experiencing
the "pseudo-autonomy" phenomenon.
In different ways, several writers dealt with the same problem. Some, for instance,
talked about the taken-for-granted relationship between self-access and self-learning, and
warned about this false impression of learner autonomy. According to Sheerin, "Self-access
is by no means synonymous with 'learners autonomy' or 'learner independence' (1991,143).
Benson also stated that self-access did not necessarily mean self-learning: "it does not
necessarily follow, however, that by simply using a self-access centre on their own, students
will be able to direct their own learning" (1995, 4).
Others stressed the role of the presence (or absence) of the teacher in self-direction.
According to Holec, "the extent to which a teacher is physically present is not a good
standard by which to judge the extent to which learning is self-directed" (1980,4).
As I said before, eventually I became aware of the fact that our work in the SAC was
not resulting in any autonomous learning. After two months of working there, most students
showed a great sense of directionless and disappointment. And we could not find the way to
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