EFL University Teachers’ Beliefs About Learner Autonomy and the Effect of Online Learning Experience
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Learner autonomy (LA) has always been viewed as an essential component of successful language learning. It is one of the factors that contributes to creating a learning community in which learners are capable of developing their knowledge and skills. Since it plays an essential role in language learning process, it can be reflected in both students’ and teachers’ beliefs as well as practices. Despite its importance, EFL teachers’ perceptions are insufficiently explored in the Saudi context. To address this gap, this study deals with teachers’ own reflection on how they perceive learner autonomy in Saudi universities and what they do to make their students autonomous learners. It also explores their views about the effect of the online teaching experience during COVID-19 pandemic on LA. To do this, a questionnaire designed by Borg and Al-Busaidi (2012) was used in addition to semi-structured interviews to explore in more detail the teachers’ perceptions of LA. The analysis of quantitative and qualitative data showed that teachers hold a variety of perceptions of LA and have highly positive attitudes towards enhancing it. They also believe that it is theoretically desirable to promote LA among EFL students; yet, it is partially attainable in the practical ground. Additionally, the experience of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift from face-to-face setting have created more opportunities for more practices of LA. Teachers’ role cannot be disregarded since they create adequate opportunities for LA development. Although a number of obstacles that would hinder LA can be identified, some solutions can be of great appeal in encouraging LA in EFL contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".