The Teacher's Role in Building the Student‘S Range of Autonomy

Abstract

To what extent do Romanian schools train students’ autonomy? This is the question that this paper seeks a possible answer by investigating students and teachers’ opinions. Learner autonomy is a controversial topic in our school space. Autonomy turns out to be a vague area, uncertain, even dangerous. In other words, the role of this institution is to train robots in some individuals, “programmed” to perform and not to develop themselves. At the other extreme is the opinion that the school provides students with too much autonomy, and this can only be harmful because they do not recognize any authority. As regard to students, many of them have proved that they even do not know the meaning of the concept of “autonomy”. What is the role of the teacher in the development of students’ autonomy? Here is another question that has been the focus of attention. To what extent teachers are aware of this role and to what extent students are working to build autonomy? We used a questionnaire method. Two questionnaires were applied, one for the students and one for the teachers involved in this research. The questionnaire for students discriminates between two dimensions: the autonomous student and the obedient student. The questionnaire for teachers discriminates between three dimensions: the teacher-oppressor, the teacher-nanny and the teacher-partner. We analyze statistically the results obtained.