LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 18:2 February 2018
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
         Dr. S. Chelliah, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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An Investigation of Kachin Institutes Teachers’ Beliefs about
Learner Autonomy

MA SAU WAN, M.A. ELT
Assumption University

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate Kachin institutes teachers’ beliefs about learner autonomy. The subjects were 92 Kachin institutes teachers from five different institutes such as Institute of Liberal Arts and Science (ILAS), Maija Yang College, Maija Yang Institute of Education (MIEd), Kachinland School of Arts and Sciences, Humanity Institute (KASS) and Naushawng Development Institute (NDI). The study took a form of an explanatory mixed methods design using a questionnaire to collect quantitative data, and semi-structured interview to gather qualitative data. The 40 5-points Likert scale statements questionnaire consists of 7 domains: “importance of learner autonomy”, “teachers’ responsibilities”, “students’ willingness”, “students’ self-confidence”, “students’ ability”, “constraints to autonomy development”, and “possibilities to fostering autonomy”. The overall findings revealed that Kachin teachers are highly positive about learner autonomy with a mean of 3.66 (SD= 0.21). Investigation of each learner autonomy domain showed that every domain is a at high level, except “students’ willingness”, “students’ self-confidence” and “students’ ability” which are at a moderate level. Discussions are presented, and recommendations are provided for further research.

Keywords: constraints, learner autonomy, Kachin institutes teachers, teachers’ beliefs, ELT

1. Introduction

Learner autonomy in language education has gained great interest from researchers across the world. It was first originated from Europe (Dam, 1995; Holec, 1981; Little, 1991). Then it has been further developed by Asian researchers such as Hong Kong (Benson, 2001; Littlewood, 2007) and Japan (Aoki, 2001; Aoki & Smith, 1999).

Research on learner autonomy in language education recognizes the benefits and the possibility of fostering learner autonomy (Benson, 2007). In addition, several researchers reveal the positive results about learner autonomy in the teaching of English reading comprehension and academic writing (Ahmad, Yaakub, Rahim and Rohani, 2004; Ismail, Singh and Abu, 2013). Moreover, Dam and Legenhausen (1996) present that when compared with traditional learning approaches, an autonomous learning approach yields a very successful result especially in the vocabulary learning.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

MA SAU WAN
MA-ELT (English Language Teaching)
Graduate School of English
Assumption University
Bangkok
Thailand
tsawmseng12@gmail.com

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