Development of the UH-1 Autonomy Testbed: A robust testbed for autonomy research

This qualitative study examined Former Soviet Union (FSU) mothers' explicit and implicit attitudes and parenting practices around adolescents' autonomy development. Interviews were conducted with 10 mothers who had immigrated from the FSU to the US between 10 and 25 years ago, and who had daughters between the ages of 13 and 17 years. Mothers predominantly defined autonomy in terms of adolescents' ability to carry out instrumental tasks, make correct decisions, and financially provide for themselves, but rarely mentioned psychological or emotional independence. Mothers reflected on the various aspects of autonomy emphasized in their country of origin and America, and balancing the two sets of cultural values in their parenting. Although mothers discussed attempts to adopt a less authoritarian approach to parenting than they themselves experienced as children, some mothers' controlling attitudes were revealed through a close analysis of their language. The findings provide important insights into the parenting experiences of FSU immigrant mothers, and the way in which autonomy-related processes may vary cross-culturally. Implications for parenting and clinical practice are also discussed.

Autonomy is a process that enables us to understand and act on the environment and on ourselves. During adolescence, transformations result in the development of autonomy. Adolescents with Down syndrome (ADS) have perceptual-cognitive limitations and few opportunities to acquire autonomy. The development of autonomy in an occupational therapy group, with dyads of ADS and their main caregivers was analyzed. The evaluation of the materials produced in the therapeutic process pointed to four categories of analysis: self-perception, perception of the other, shared experience and change of attitude. The results show symbiotic relationships between the dyad, which hamper the individuation process and limit the opportunities to carry out activities independently. The therapeutic process based on Paulo Freire's pedagogy raised the level from an ingenuous to a critical awareness, resulting in changes in the attitudes of caregivers in relation to the identification of potential and acceptance of their own limitations and the ADS under care. This symbiosis complicates the individuation process and the access to experiences necessary for the development of autonomy. The therapeutic process can modify the attitudes of caregivers and foster continuity in development and autonomy.

Parent-child conflict resolution is an interactive process by nature. Adopting a family systems perspective, the present study examines patterns of schoolwork conflict resolution among Chinese adolescents and parents, placing an emphasis on parent-child interactions. Qualitative methods using a grounded theory approach are adopted, with twelve parent-child dyads participating in joint interviews and follow-up individual interviews. Three patterns of adolescent-parent resolution of schoolwork conflicts are identified: (a) adolescents complying with parental coercion reluctantly: parents use parent-centered resolution strategies, while adolescents are self-assertive in the beginning but yield to their parents in the end; (b) effective communication: adolescents adopt self-assertive strategies when parents use child-centered strategies, with the outcome being that adolescents have the final say in agreements reached; (c) disagreement in a stalemate: parents’ use of parent-centered strategies and adolescents’ adoption of avoidant and self-assertive strategies lead to a suspension of disagreement. Discussion of the findings sheds light on hierarchical and enmeshed parent-child relationships in China as well as Chinese adolescents’ development of autonomy as exhibited in the patterns of parent-child schoolwork conflict resolution. Suggestions are made for further study of adolescent-parent schoolwork conflicts in Chinese families, and practical implications related to healthy family relationships are discussed.

The objective is to analyze the influence of learning practices and inde­pendent assignments, on the development of the autonomy of the students of the English basic cycle of the Modern Languages program. Descriptive and correlational investigation was used, which by means of quantitati­ve and qualitative interpretation of data relates the variables in the study, to determine its influence on the development of autonomy in students. Though some of them (25%) are autonomous, the rest do not reach this characteristic, due to little control exercised on their learning processes and because the tasks that are assigned to them do not help in the develo­pment of autonomy. The conclusion is that the strengths found in relation to the motivation of the students, their satisfaction with the program and their interest in ICT, are factors that if promoted, would contribute to the development of autonomy, work that has already begun and is commented on at the end of this article.
 Recieved 07-01-2010/ Accepted: 02-10-2010
 How to reference this article:
 Cabrales Vargas, M., Cáceres Cabrales, J. A. & Feria Marrugo, I. M. (2010). La autonomía en el aprendizaje del inglés y su relación con los trabajos independientes asignados a los estudiantes. Íkala, 15(3), 119 – 150.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the implementation and evaluation of a Collaborative Learning in Practice (CLiP) placement pilot for physiotherapy students. This took place on an acute ward setting at a secondary care district hospital in the Southwest of England. Participants included two second year physiotherapy students and two practice educators. The physiotherapy CLiP placement ran alongside an established nursing CLiP placement for six weeks. Feedback was gained from the physiotherapy students using a post-placement questionnaire which included a mix of open and closed questions. Informal feedback was gained from the practice educators via email and meetings. The placement feedback gained highlights the benefits of using a CLiP model for student physiotherapy practice placements. The CLiP model promoted the students’ development of autonomy, caseload management, person centred care and communication, which are essential skills for qualification. Challenges included preparing and adjusting to the CLiP model. More research is needed to explore the effectiveness of CLiP for physiotherapy students, however this pilot identified that it is important that the most appropriate ward setting is identified and that adequate training and organisation has been put in place before the placement commences. This work highlights that a CLiP placement model can be beneficial for physiotherapy student placements and could be considered to help increase placement capacity. It also provides some guidance to enable others to implement the CLiP model.

The article analyzes the body of principles of the students’ autonomy development in the context of integration of educational and self-educational activities. Under the influence of social progress and the latest scientific achievements, the selection of new common factors of learning, the accumulation of the experience of those who teach, and the analysis of the learning outcomes of those who learn, certain principles of education are modified and improved. Modern principles determine the requirements for all components of the learning process: the goals and objectives, the formation of the content, the selection of forms and methods, stimulation, planning and analysis of the results that have already been achieved.All the knowledge which students gain within their individual educational activity has to be presented in modern, understandable renderings; the history of science, modern theories and possible expectations, offered by science, especially those which concern the possible ways to reach harmony between nature and people, may all serve as the subjects of studies.The conducted analysis of the paradigm of principles of individualism; humanization and humanitarization; succession; scientific character; consciousness and activeness; systematicity, consistency and rationality; accessibility and sufficient level of complexity; connection between theory and practice determines the requirements of the organization of the students’ individual educational activities system to lecturers, students, didactic system, links and interrelations among different components of education at a higher educational institution.The implementation of the elaborated system of principles of organization of individual educational activity of students at higher educational institutions will provide the theoretical basis and practical implementation of pedagogical system as well of an integral pedagogical model of organization of individual educational activity of students at higher educational institutions.

While research has demonstrated the importance of parental autonomy support and psychological control for children’s adjustment, their implications of such parenting practices for children’s subjective feelings of autonomy remain less well understood. Focusing on American and Chinese adolescents, the current research examined the longitudinal associations between parenting and adolescents’ feelings of autonomy, with attention to adolescents’ endorsement of parent-oriented reasons for doing well in school as a possible underlying mechanism. At three time points over 1.5 years, American ( n = 332) and Hong Kong Chinese ( n = 235) adolescents reported on their parents’ use of autonomy-supportive and psychological controlling parenting practices, their reasons for doing well in school, and their feelings of autonomy. Autoregressive path analyses were conducted to examine longitudinal associations and test for indirect effects. Results revealed that, in both the American and Chinese samples, parental autonomy support predicted increases in adolescents’ feelings of autonomy, whereas psychological control predicted decreases. In the Chinese sample only, autonomy support also predicted a greater endorsement of parent-oriented reasons for doing well in school, which, in turn, was associated with reduced feelings of autonomy over time. Findings highlight both the universal and culture-specific pathways through which parenting practices shape adolescents’ autonomy development. While autonomy support fosters a sense of volition across cultures, its motivational significance may vary depending on cultural norms and the extent to which adolescents internalize parental expectations.

All along their careers, surgeons learn through mentoring, operating on patients side-by-side with expert surgeons. However, access to experts is more and more challenging as they are often located far from learners. Telementoring can increase the reach of mentors by supporting mentoring at a distance, but despite their potential, current systems remain rarely institutionalized. We investigate current surgical mentoring practices, to inform future design of telementoring systems in providing support for learning. In a field study, we observe 11 surgeries and conduct follow-up self-confrontation interviews with mentor-mentee pairs. Through Thematic Analysis, we find that the domain of surgery results in mentee's needs for reassurance regarding safety, being spared from workload and risk, both essential to support the acquisition of skills. Second, that mentors understand the situation primarily through the surgical site view but also through inspecting the mentee's posture and the patient's body. Thirdly, that mentors take physical distance as their presence limits mentees' autonomy development. We discuss the limits of current surgical telementoring systems and rethink their role as companions of onsite mentoring.

Autonomy development is an important process in adolescence and is central to a successful transition to adulthood. Social contexts play a crucial role in supporting and suppressing autonomy. Considering social media is a salient and important context for mid-adolescents it has the potential to strongly influence autonomy development. This study applied qualitative methods to examine mid-adolescents’ perspectives of how their social media use impacts autonomy. Participants included 36 students aged 15 years from four schools in Melbourne, Australia. All participants completed a rich picture mapping activity and focus group discussions, and a sub-sample of 11 adolescents participated in follow-up, one-on-one interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis generated two overarching themes; supporting autonomy and suppressing autonomy. Sub-themes included; promoting self-governance, facilitating choicefulness, developing a sense of self, external forces motivating use, fostering compulsive and non-intentional use, and affordances of social media threaten personal control. This study revealed that social media contributes to today’s adolescents encountering unique experiences with regard to their autonomy development compared with other generations. Findings highlighted the need to harness the autonomy-supportive aspects of social media use whilst mitigating the autonomy-suppressive ones to help mid-adolescents engage with social media in a way that promotes healthy functioning and wellbeing.

This paper focuses on the development of learner autonomy and foreign language oral production through peer collaboration in a Brazilian teacher education program. Brazilian students seldom have the opportunity to speak English beyond the classroom. In pre-service English teacher development, few students are proficient in the language, and to become teachers, they all need to make the most of opportunities to improve their competence in the language and to familiarize themselves with all the aspects of teaching and learning. This situation and the fact the university had an underused ICT laboratory for teacher development, led to the organization of a social learning space to stimulate autonomous work and collaboration among students beyond the classroom. A few students participated as volunteer collaborators, and their engagement in the activities was analyzed to find out whether they had opportunities to develop autonomy and oral skills. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to describe the course of action designed for this context, drawing from literature on learner autonomy (Benson, 2000, 2011; Dam, 2000; Kohonen, 1992; Little, 1996; 1997; Murray, 2014) and social learning spaces (Allhouse, 2015; Heigham, 2011; Murray, 2014); and second, to discuss the development and preliminary results of this process.

Objetivou-se apresentar reflexões acerca das contribuições do Método de Maria Montessori em um contexto atual, considerando o desenvolvimento da autonomia da criança nos anos iniciais da Educação Básica. Quanto ao método, realizou-se uma pesquisa do tipo revisão bibliográfica levando em conta as contribuições de diversos autores, observando as características da Padagogia de Montessori e suas reflexões metodológicas e didáticas no desenvolvimento da autonomia da criança na educação básica e sua atuação no Brasil, sucedendo com abordagem teórica e metodológica da Pedagogia Tradiconal e da Pedagogia de Waldorf para subsidiar a análise reflexiva do modelo montessoriano. Com os resultados, percebeu-se que a Pedagogia de Montessori se faz presente em 62 unidades educacionais distribuídas em todas as regiões brasileiras, podendo ser compreendida como uma alternativa pedagógica alinhada aos princípios reguladores da BNCC e PCN, e constatou-se a falta de estudos que apontem o desenvolvimento da Pedagogia de Montessori em escolas públicas que prestam serviços à Educação Infantil e Ensino Fundamental. Pode-se concluir que a Pedagogia de Montessori vem contribuindo de forma significativa para a aprendizagem da criança em seu desenvolvimento educacional com autonomia e liberdade, e através das abordagens lúdicas e aplicação do modelo em ciclos por faixa etária estimula a construção do conhecimento e melhor interação no ambiente educacional.

Family relationships during leisure time in adolescence have the potential to promote positive development, particularly in terms of autonomy. However, the scientific literature that links specifically positive family leisure to the development of adolescent autonomy is scarce, and lower when analyzing the role of frustration in leisure time. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) this article examines the potential relationship between positive frustration in family leisure time and the promotion of adolescent autonomy. For that purpose, the manuscript addresses four objectives to be discussed consecutively: (1) to delimit the concept of adolescent autonomy and point out the difficulty of parental support; (2) to explore positive frustration, a concept aligned with Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, as a construct that can promote socio-emotional development in adolescence; (3) to describe the components of family leisure; and (4) to understand how the experience of optimal frustration may be linked to the development of adolescent autonomy during family leisure time. From this central question, several additional inquiries emerge: the interplay of frustration and failure in adolescence, the importance of parents and adolescents spending quality time together, the enjoyment in structured family leisure time, the autonomy-supportive parenting in leisure time activities in relation to daily activities, the need to strengthen adolescent bonds developed in infancy, and the complexity of paternal and maternal autonomy granting.

This paper aims at assessing the role of a Learner-centred approach in language teaching on the development of learner autonomy. It is argued in this paper that a foreign language course designed with a learner-centred focus not only helps learners increase their competence in the use of the language but also allows them to develop some strategies on how to learn. This, in effect, promotes the development of learner autonomy and encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning and to become independent learners, the two important requirements of university education. This is illustrated through the design of a model course, namely English -2, offered to freshman year students at Dogus University. This course takes students through the stages of conducting academic research and presenting the findings of their research in the form of a written project which appropriately fulfills academic standards. The design of the course requires much of the work to be done outside class and by the learners themselves. Hence, this paper develops the idea that students who take this course increase their confidence in working on their own as well as learning to take the responsibility for their own learning, which are the two major demands of academic study in university education.

The article is devoted to the problem of studying pedagogical features of educational autonomy as a prerequisite for the formation of independence of future psychologists. The purpose of the article is to iden- tify the psychological and pedagogical features of the formation of independence of future psychologists in the context of the phenomenon of educational autonomy. The tasks of the article are as follows: to charac- terize the theoretical foundations of the essence of educational autonomy as a psychological and pedagog- ical category; determine the peculiarities of the formation of independence in future psychologists and the role of educational autonomy in this; identify differences between autonomous and non-autonomous train- ing of future psychologists; determine the main advantages of the introduction of educational autonomy as a prerequisite for the formation of independence in future psychologists; provide recommendations for the development of educational autonomy of future psychologists. To achieve the goal, the following methods were used: literary analysis, generalization, comparison, systematization, etc. The article contains the following research results. A critical analysis of approaches to defining the essence of the concept of “learning autonomy” by various researchers was carried out. It was established that the concept of “pupil/student autonomy” was introduced in the early 1980s by Henri Hole- com who defined this category as “the student’s ability to take responsibility for their own learning”. A the- oretical study of the views of different researchers has shown that variations in the definition of learning autonomy reflect a trend of changes in educational beliefs, language of learning theory, technology, job de- mands and learning goals. This ability of the individual needs to be localized and considered in certain so- cial contexts, that is, people in different socio-cultural situations may have different views on educational autonomy, and this leads to a set of different practices for the formation of this ability. As for domestic re- searchers, the issue of the essence of educational autonomy still remains poorly researched and mainly con- cerns the study of foreign languages or self-education in the direction of additional courses or programs. It was found that the formation of students’ independence under the influence of educational au- tonomy is considered as a process of so-called cooperative learning, during which guidance (coordina- tion, mentoring) takes place on the part of teachers, in contrast to traditional pedagogical functions. A number of skills are outlined that will help them take responsibility for their learning: defining and re- alizing their own learning goals; planning one’s educational activities; evaluation of one’s own learn- ing progress; understanding of own learning processes; formation of learning strategies in different contexts and comparison of their effectiveness. The difference between autonomous and non-auton- omous learning of students is established. The following advantages of the introduction of education- al autonomy as a prerequisite for the formation of independence in future psychologists are outlined: expansion of students’ educational opportunities in learning new information; providing students with freedom of choice regarding the methods of organizing their studies; increasing the involvement of students in the process of acquiring professional competences; development of problem-solving skills; increasing self-esteem; greater variety of learning. The following recommendations are offered for the development of the educational autonomy of fu- ture psychologists: ask students what they specifically want to learn; provide students with several educa- tional options to choose from; provide a wide range of resources for learning; offer the “I can do” exercise; suggest keeping a diary; create an online community together with students; offer more multimedia edu- cational content; focus on useful self-study tools; encourage students to take risks; create opportunities for students to be leaders. It has been concluded that the new learning methodology, known as the approach to fostering learn- ing autonomy skills, focuses on students who are viewed by educators as active participants in the learn- ing process – “actors of their own knowledge.” Through this approach, future psychologists develop inde- pendent learning skills, enabling them to act in accordance with the principles of social justice while main- taining rationality and efficiency.

The article examines three concepts closely related to the Nordic sociotechnical tradition: responsible autonomy, learning, and control. The longitudinal case study analyses the implementation of a 6-hour workday and the development of responsible autonomy, employee control, and productive organizational learning in a Norwegian factory from 2001 to 2012. The development process was successful, with productivity increasing by 20% within 1 year. We found that productivity improvements and positive work environment changes were made possible by developing responsible autonomy through an employee-driven innovation process that led to a focus on quality and productivity throughout the organization. We also found that the development of responsible autonomy prevents defensive routines from disrupting the learning and development processes in the organization. We conclude that successful organizational development depends upon building responsibility through organizational learning