This paper reports on a large-scale study on learner autonomy in language learning carried out with students and English teachers at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong. It focuses on the teachers' views of their roles and responsibilities, their assessment of their students' decision-making abilities and the autonomous language learning activities that they have encouraged their students to take up. Generally, teachers perceive themselves to be more responsible for the methodological aspects of language learning, and for motivating their students to be responsible for assessing and evaluating their learning. However, they consider themselves less responsible for their engagement in outside class activities and their progress out of class. The paper will conclude with the pedagogical implications of such findings on the development of learner autonomy at tertiary level in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1356251032000052311 ]

This study investigated the perceptions of good teaching of adult students. Fifty-three students enrolled in part-time courses in Hong Kong were interviewed about a range of issues concerned with teaching, tutoring and learning. The initial analysis showed that there was no universal view of what constituted good teaching, as approaches preferred by some students resembled those disliked by others. These apparent contradictions were resolved by the recognition that perceptions of teaching quality were framed by conceptions of learning, which were shown to be consistent with a continuum from a reproductive pole to a self-determining one. Each of the four quadrants of the framework represents a conception of learning receiving teaching consistent or inconsistent with it. The quadrant representing self- determining learners receiving consistent facilitative teaching is seen as the goal for adult education to strive for. Didactic teaching was consistent with reproductive conceptions of learning. Teachers faced with predominantly reproductive classes are urged to help in developing greater levels of self-determination by progressively exposing students to forms of teaching requiring active involvement in the learning process, in a supporting environment.
[Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037032000131556 ]