EXAMINING TEACHERS' INNOVATION IN EFL CLASSROOMS IN PROMOTING STUDENTS' AUTONOMOUS LEARNING

摘要

The 21st century is in high demand of information, media and technology skills. In classroom context, teachers are the front liners who have to possess technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) which can support the success of the 21st century education. In line with this, in the language education context, the development of approaches in language teaching has shifted teacher-centered into student-centered instruction. However, teachers as facilitators play an important role in promoting learner autonomy. At the same time, the emergence of technology has also altered teachers' choices of instructional strategies and media to facilitate students' learning. The present study is an attempt to explore how teachers' use of technology and project work in EFL classrooms help boosting autonomous learners. One English teacher of a public senior high school and a class of 36 students took part in this study. Classroom observation was carried out to gain description of how the teacher and students made use of technology and carried out project work for ELT purposes. Questionnaire and interview were also administered to obtain information about how integration of technology into students' project work contributed to the promotion of student autonomous learning. To evaluate how teaching and learning processes have been directed to promote autonomous learning, the Autonomous Learner Model (ALM) by Betts and Kercher (1999) was employed as the framework to analyze the data. Finally, pedagogical implications are also presented.