Pedagogic Dialogue Towards Autonomy: A Case Study Of Exploratory Practice

Initiated by a puzzle about how to promote learner autonomy, the thesis investigates a case of an English Club that was established both for learning and for the research. The participants included a teacher and some students from Hangzhou West Lake No.1 Experimental School.By drawing on the theory of exploratory practice developed by Allwright(2002), this thesis applauds the view of prioritizing "quality of life" in the English Club and classroom life then encourages the development of learner autonomy.The thesis analyzed several episodes of conversations, with the purpose of investigating the new concept of pedagogic discourse—dialogue. I used research methods of interview, narrative and case study to analyze the data I collected. The data were collected from coversations with students in the meetings of the English club, interviews with individual students, students' self-introductions, students' reflection notes and teachers' reflection notes, etc.This investigation tried to examine these following questions: (1) How does the English Club make impact on pedagogic discourse transformation? (2) How does the English Club influence the teacher's and learners' identity? (3) What are the effects of promoting learner autonomy in EFL classroom through exploratory practice? Through the analysis of the data, I found that the English club had an important role in the transformation of pedagogical discourse. Using Freire's theory of critical pedagogy, we showed a new form of the discourse emerged between teachers and students. The "banking" concept of education was transformed into "dialogue" concept—a kind of liberation. It was also shown that students' and teachers' identity were changed gradually, and learners' autonomy was promoted. I discussed the relationship of pedagogic discourse, identity and the English Club to show how the English Club operated.In the conclusion of the thesis I argued that by engaging in exploratory practice (Allwright, 2002), both the learners and the teacher became more autonomous and the quality of their pedagogic life in the classroom was improved.