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An investigation on prospective German language teachers’ autonomous learning level

Year: 2018
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Developments in the last decades necessitated the acquirement of diverse skills that enables to keep up with thechanging conditions of todays‟ world. In this context teachers as learners are in need of a continuous renewal.The acquirement of autonomous learning skills promoted at the teacher education might be contributory for thedevelopment of a lifelong learning ability. The aim of this study is to analyze the factors affecting theautonomous learning behaviors of prospective German language teachers to determine their actual state. Thusthe purpose of the study is to identify students‟ autonomous learning behaviors in view of different variables andto discuss the results with respect of learner autonomy and foreign language teacher education. For datacollection Autonomous Learning Scale was developed and used. Nonparametric Kruskal - Wallis and Mann -Whitney U tests were used to identify whether there is a significant difference between students autonomouslearning behaviors according to class, age, gender and educational background. The results of the study showedthat there is no statistical significant difference among class level and educational background in terms ofautonomous learning, but there were statistical significant differences with regards of age and gender. Further thesubscales „planning‟ and „performing‟ had on average a higher score as the subscale „evaluating‟. The findingsof the study indicated that teachers as learners have to be promoted with regard to their actual state. Furtherstudies regarding learner autonomy in teacher education are recommended for the promotion of teachercompetences.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2992257726
FWCI: 2.466
Cites: 8
Cited by: 6
Related to: 10