Introducing aspects of learner autonomy at tertiary level

In this paper I report on my first experiences with introducing some aspects of a pedagogy for autonomy in my university classes. The aspect I mainly concentrated on when attempting to enhance in my own classrooms a pedagogy for autonomy was the metacognitive dimension of learner autonomy, i.e. reflection and evaluation. Before dealing in some detail with the responses of my students to a reflection/evaluation task that I introduced in three different kinds of language courses held at Graz University, I discuss some quotations from the literature on learner autonomy that affected me most and indeed made me rethink my own teaching practice. I then point out some valuable insights I gained from reading about learner autonomy in relation to my own teaching practice, but also highlight a few constraints that seem to exist in my particular teaching context. The main part of my paper consists of my experiences with introducing a reflection/evaluation task that I adapted from Dam and that concentrates on the questions of what we do in the classroom, and of how and why we do the things we do. Finally, I briefly comment on ways in which I, in the future, envisage promoting a pedagogy for autonomy in my own teaching context.