Learner-centered Teaching and Learner Autonomy

The paper focuses on some issues of contention concerning the widely commented shift from a teacher-centered to a learner centered approach in ELT. It is based on the premise of building learner autonomy [Holec 1981] that is expected to result in enhancing learners' motivation. However, practical observations show that the attempts to introduce the learner autonomy principle in Bulgarian education is only partly successful. This raises the question: "Why is it so?" The author suggests that a possible explanation may lie in the specifics of the Bulgarian national culture that does not comply with the methodological concept of learner autonomy. This leads to a more general question: "Are all cultures equally suited to allow the implementation of teaching and learning methods based on autonomy?" The issue is critically discussed by analyzing the Bulgarian national culture along the cultural dimensions in Hofstede's Theory of organizations and cultures. [Hofstede 2010] where culture is considered to be a kind of software of the mind that determines every individual's social behavior. The author analyzes the concept of autonomy along the lines of the Bulgarian cultural specifics that influence the relations between the teacher and the student as an archetypal social pair. In conclusion it is suggested that particular national cultures can either facilitate or seriously handicap the implementation of learner autonomy in the respective education system. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.