Peer teaching has been used as a mechanism for promoting learner autonomy in a range of language learning contexts. This article explores how absolute beginners in a Chinese class can engage in reciprocal peer teaching (RPT) from the start of their language learning experience and how this contributes to the development of their autonomy as…

The current situation in education in the United States of America (USA), with an emphasis on high-stakes testing and privatization, calls for a counter-discourse revealing what is sacrificed by these educational policies and what forms of education are needed to prepare future teachers to engage their students in effecting social justice. We draw…

In this paper, I report core findings of a small-scale qualitative study that I conducted with a group of young people with vision impairment who attended an inclusive secondary school in the Australian state of Queensland. My objective was to capture their voiced experiences of their schooling through face-to-face interviews and to develop a…

This article seeks to reignite debate about the purpose of a university music education. Taking inspiration from Randall Thompson's 1935 investigation of the role of music preparation in U.S. colleges and universities, an analogous call is made for a less vocational approach to the study of music. The author claims that the music education…

This study explored the effects of need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) on English as a foreign language (EFL) online learner satisfaction and validated the Chinese versions of the need satisfaction scale (NSS) and online learner satisfaction scale (OLSS). We collected data from a questionnaire administered to 199 EFL students…

Graduate attributes are a framework of skills, attitudes, values and knowledge that graduates should develop by the end of their degree programmes. Adopting a largely qualitative approach and using semi-structured interviews, this paper outlines students' experiences at a national undergraduate research conference over three years and evidences…

Although children's literature has long alluded to cultural connections between Africans and African Americans, very few texts establish clear lines of influence between particular African ethnic groups and African American characters and communities. Joyce Hansen's "The Captive" (1994) and Sharon Draper's "Copper Sun" (2006)…

This study reports findings from an exploratory research project that contributed to an OMEP World Project on the importance of equality in being able to achieve a sustainable world and a healthy society. The teachers and researchers came together because of their interest in social justice to explore how they could support young children's sense…

Until fairly recently, when U.S. students left home for college, their contact with family decreased abruptly. They typically learned to make an increasing number of important decisions without parental consultation, and developed in predictable ways toward becoming autonomous, self-regulating adults. Moreover, if they chose to study abroad during…

This article examines the sociocultural learning of popular and jazz music in communities of practice as part of secondary vocational music education in a Finnish conservatory. The research is based on performance workshops which were implemented as a joint effort between professional musicians and music students. These workshops are suggested as…

In this article, we address the question of why computing students choose to learn computing topics on their own. A better understanding of why some students choose to learn on their own may help us to motivate other students to develop this important skill. In addition, it may help in curriculum design; if we need to leave some topics out of our…

This study investigated the interrelationships among EFL learners' self-efficacy, autonomy and listening comprehension ability. Ninety female learners of intermediate level participated in the study. They were between 16 and 24 years old. In order to obtain the required data on the three variables (i.e., self-efficacy, autonomy, and listening…

Despite the rapid growth of online learning in higher education, the dropout rates for online courses has reached 50 percent. Lack of student engagement rank as a critical reason for frequent online course dropout. This article discusses autonomy support as a strategy to enhance online students' intrinsic motivation and engagement. Drawing from…

Studies of disciplinary work have converged with studies of classrooms to highlight the social and cultural nature of disciplinary knowledge and practices, and of classroom learning and assessment. For students to become discerning and autonomous/authoring learners, classroom assessment needs to ensure students experience what it means to exercise…

This article describes and analyzes a classroom assignment to promote intrinsic motivation for learning in college students. Here, grades and instructor expectations for content are viewed as students' primary motivations for learning, and correspondingly present obstacles for improved critical thinking skills, student autonomy, and engagement.…