TEACHER AUTONOMY FROM A CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: A REPERTORY GRID STUDY FOR BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

Abstract

Living in a competitive world requires teachers to be aware of their potentials and reflect them on their daily practices. Autonomous teachers can think and act on their own rather than sticking to the established patterns. Current studies mostly deal with perceptions about learner autonomy and focus on local environment. However, what teachers understand from autonomy and their classroom practices are very important. Therefore, this study aims to investigate teachers’ autonomy perceptions from cross-cultural perspective. The data was collected by using (1) Repertory Grid Technique with three teachers, (2) semi-structured interviews with15 teachers and (3) classroom observations of 24 lessons for data triangulation to validate each other. Findings suggest that teachers from various cultural backgrounds interpret autonomy with different constructs, yet these differences complete each other in classroom practises. This is also corroborated with semi-structured interviews and classroom observations.