Becoming Autonomous in an Asian Context: Autonomy as a Sociocultural Process

Abstract

Since the publication of Riley’s (1988) seminal paper on the “ethnography of autonomy”, the discussion on autonomy and culture has tended to focus on the relevance of the ‘Western’ idea of autonomy to learners from ‘non-Western’ cultural backgrounds. Discussion of this question has in turn been dominated by what Smith (2001: 70) has called “an ongoing debate regarding the validity of learner autonomy in Asian settings”. In the course of this debate, a particular image of the Asian learner has emerged — that of an individual whose learning styles and preferences are largely conditioned by values of collectivism, conformity and respect for authority inculcated through early experiences at school and in the family. In the light of this image of the Asian learner, contributors to the debate have questioned the cultural appropriateness of the emphasis on individual development in the Western idea of autonomy in Asian settings, leading to proposals for approaches to autonomy based more upon the idea of ‘autonomous interdependence’.