Student agency is often mentioned as a key feature of feedback practices. Commonly, the concept of agency is used to refer to students' active role in the process of seeking, receiving, generating and acting upon feedback information. However, the notion of what student agency means is often taken for granted and rarely elaborated. The feedback…

With mobile phones now in the hands of virtually all of our learners, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to imagine environments that do not include learning through mobile devices in even some small capacity. The interest in mobile learning is reflected in the enormous number of publications which have appeared over the past 10 to 15…

There has been an increase in research and practice exploring how students can gain agency to shape their higher education experiences. Numerous terms evoking certain metaphors have entered the discussions around engaging students, from students as consumers or producers, to students as creators, partners, or change agents. There is scope within…

Language teacher education programmes can promote autonomy-oriented change when they are based on a transformative rationale regarding learner and teacher development. This involves adopting an experience-based approach whereby dominant ideas and practices are problematized and opportunities are provided for teachers to learn about, experience,…

Dread is an unfortunate, yet all too common occurrence in the classroom. It often arises when a student has little motivation toward a class or its content. As an instructor of a traditionally "dreaded" class (Design History I), my goal was to seek ways to increase student motivation for the topic of design history and historic…

Within the integration of technology into language education, special attention needs to be paid to languages for specific purposes (LSP), drawing on developments in computer-assisted language learning and applied linguistics, on the one hand, and on the pervasive use of technology in academic and professional communication, on the other. From a…

Information and communication technologies--ICTs--have become a defining feature in the vocabulary of 21st century education and training. The major question now is not when and how they will be introduced into the education system, but what impact the manipulation inherent in their use will have on the resulting production of knowledge. The added…

This paper addresses the theme of the special issue by looking at the development of student autonomy in learning in the French programme at the University of the West Indies St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. The paper explains why a focus on autonomy is apt to meet both the programme's linguistic goals and its larger societal goal of preparing…