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Practitioner research: Introduction

Ya-Fen Lo’s article brings together very productively two important sets of ideas for language learning: portfolios, and learner autonomy. In her practitioner research project designed to explore how portfolios can be used to promote the development of learner autonomy in an Asian context (a Journalistic English course in a university in Taiwan), she asks her learners to produce portfolios based on the reading of news articles in English-language newspapers. Very conscious of the suggestion quite frequently made that learner autonomy is a ‘western’ concept that Asian teachers, and their learners, might find difficult, Lo reviews the relevant literature and concludes that research is needed to document the challenges facing both Asian teachers and learners throughout the stages of the introduction of learner autonomy. She also decides that a portfolio project on English language newspapers would both be entirely appropriate for her course on journalistic English and a highly suitable vehicle for promoting the development of learner autonomy. She uses a pre-course questionnaire, a post-course self-evaluation, and her own extensive field notes to document her seven-stage project. After describing the pedagogic challenges she faced, and how she dealt with them, Lo concludes that her project certainly does appear to have made good progress as a first step in developing learner autonomy in her Asian context, but that it involved an unreasonably high burden of grading. She therefore finishes with some practical suggestions for making such a portfolio project more manageable for the teacher.