Using Textbooks in Developing Learner Autonomy: Contradictio in Adjecto?

Abstract

methods and materials. Against this background, an increasing number of teachers committed to learner autonomy attempt to support their students in taking over responsibility for their own learning. This, apart from discovering and developing cognitive learning strategies, includes a gradually increasing awareness of all steps involved in the learning process at a meta-cognitive level. Especially when it comes to textbooks, however, freedom of choice is often all too well given up by teachers although textbooks are per se understood as something which enforces the classic division of roles in the classroom and thus hinder the development of autonomy. Nevertheless, textbooks still enjoy an almost sacrosanct status in many classrooms for a number of reasons. From the teachers’ perspective, textbooks are often believed to mirror the curriculum and thus contain everything that students need to learn. For students, the raison d’être of textbooks is often that they present what they believe their teachers and/or the institution expect them to learn. In this article I shall elaborate on some of the myths surrounding textbooks and discuss possibilities of using the textbook in the autonomy classroom by drawing on examples from one of my own Business English courses.