Promotion of Learner Autonomy: Beliefs and Practices from the ESL Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Belief influences practices. Ideally, the success of having autonomous language learning and autonomous learners is very much influenced by the teachers’ beliefs about learner autonomy, which in most cases, will be manifested in their teaching practices. This paper reviews few studies concerning the beliefs and practices in promoting learner autonomy from the perspectives of English teachers in Asian context that followed the methodological pattern and the questionnaire developed by Borg and Busaidi (2012b). This paper discusses the findings of the reviewed studies in terms of the contexts and participants of the studies, the data collection used and the findings. The findings from nine Asian countries namely China, Japan, Cambodia, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have revealed that there are common similarities and various distinguished differences identified. With the overall findings that showed a mismatch between beliefs and practices of the ESL teachers participated in the studies reviewed, recommendations for future research is provided. To conclude, these studies have provided some insights and reference for future research on promotion of learner autonomy which enacted to teachers’ beliefs.