• Somayeh Shahsavari

  Author

• Omid Tabatabaei

  Author

• Nastaran Mehrabi

  Author

Learner autonomy has been a recent trend in education which highlights the
students’ engagement in their own learning. Although over the past 30 years, a large
body of research has been carried on learner autonomy, limited attention has been paid
to the sense teachers make, theoretically and practically, of this concept. The present
study is an attempt to shed light on the general existing pattern of the way teachers view
learner autonomy, autonomous activities and the challenges they face in classrooms. To
do so, applying the convenience method of sampling, a structured questionnaire
consisting of five sections was emailed to most of the teachers teaching English as a
foreign language in Isfahan, Iran. In order to have a more precise analysis, an interview
was carried out to see what reasons are behind the participants’ answers. Employing the
referential statistics, the results indicated that many teachers viewed autonomous
activities as a set of skills or abilities that learners need to master in order to learn
independently. It was, however, revealed that the teachers emphasized a range of factors
daunting due to limitation of the language centers they work in. On the other hand,
learner-related factors were most widely cited by these teachers. The findings of this
study might benefit those teachers and institution officials interested in enhancing
learning autonomy among their students and even educating themselves or the other
teachers to make use of it practically in classrooms.

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