Learner Autonomy as Agency in Sociocultural Settings

Abstract

Second language learning literature (and discourse in other fields) often constructs learners as individuals who act, think, and learn in accordance with innate, specifiable characteristics, independently of the social, historical, cultural and political-economic situations in which they live. From this perspective, these ‘autonomous’ learners have variable motivations, learning styles, cognitive traits, strategies and personality orientations that are seen as causal of their success or failure in language learning. We have seen particular interest in specifying the characteristics of successful language learners (e.g. Naiman et al., 1978). More recently, however, as Canagarajah (2003) points out, there has been a ‘social turn’ in our literature that places emphasis on the ways in which sociocultural factors and larger societal processes are involved in the construction of individuals and their learning (Hall, 1993, 1995; Rampton, 1995; Auerbach, 1997; Pavlenko and Lantolf, 2000; Pennycook, 2001). Another thread in this discussion has related to learners’ agency, their embodied experiences, and their individual histories situated in sociocultural contexts (e.g. Benson, Chik and Lim, this volume).