TEACHER TRAINEES' JOURNEY TO DEVELOP LEARNER AUTONOMY

This study concerns the degree of autonomy in English Language Learning (ELL) amongst the ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher trainees in Sarawak. This is part of a larger study which aims to investigate the relationship between ESL teacher trainees' self-rating in ELL and their degree of autonomy based on their perceived ELL. The Pedagogy-Andragogy-Heutagogy Continuum Framework is used to guide the study. Data were collected from questionnaire distributed to 259 ESL trainee teachers from four IPG (Teacher Training Institute) campuses in Sarawak. The data were analysed through descriptive analysis and correlation tests using SPSS version 22. The results revealed that the degree of autonomy of the ESL teacher trainees in ELL is high with significant but weak relationship between their self-rating with ELL and their degree of autonomy. This study adds to the limited data on the learner autonomy of ESL teacher trainees which should be addressed in the Malaysian Education Blueprint. We recommend that future education policy gives more attention in developing teacher trainees' learner autonomy in order to ensure the alignment between second language teacher training and the development of 21st century learner skills as stated in the Malaysian Education Blueprint.