Entertaining but Fading: Realities and Challenges of Fostering Learner Autonomy among Indonesian EFL Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

Within the stream of publications in the area of learner autonomy (LA), many have inquired about teachers and students’ perspectives and classroom practices, overlooking EFL pre-service teachers as possible future educational resources. This study scrutinizes the dynamics of how the notion of LA is mirrored in Indonesian EFL pre-service teachers’ teaching practices and the constraints to their LA enactment. Nested in an exploratory case study, six Indonesian EFL pre-service teachers voluntarily gave their consent to partake in this study. The data were gleaned from four evidence-rich data gathering instruments: written reflective narratives, classroom observations, teaching diaries, and semi-structured interviews. Enacting an abductive analysis approach, the findings reveal that, despite pre-service teachers’ seeming efforts to deliver engaging instruction, they disclosed a lack of ability to create more autonomy-supportive instruction in their classrooms owing to student, pre-service teacher, and institutional-based constraints. The nuanced examination of these constraints unveiled a complex negotiation that shaped the extent to which pre-service teachers were able and willing to establish autonomy-supportive instruction. These reported findings offer three vital suggestions for the development of EFL pre-service teacher education.