The self-directed learner: intentionality in translator training and education
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0907676x.2013.827225
ISSN1747-6623
Autores Tópico(s)Innovative Education and Learning Practices
ResumoAbstractThis study seeks to bring educational theory on self-directedness to bear on translator training, and to document ways intentional learning for autonomy are being fostered, or could be. Our project connects to ongoing scholarly efforts toward establishing learner autonomy and empowerment as a priority goal in translator training and education. However, here we also wish to take stock of, and reflect more on, what autonomy means in principle, its connection to student development (intra- and inter-) personally and pre-professionally, self-directed learning's (SDL) relationship to current learning methods, supports and role definitions we can use in our instruction, and the learning behaviors, motivations and outcomes we can expect. In the process, we will examine the extent to which related self-directedness practices now emerging can be integrated into awareness and thus help translation learners advance toward intentionality.Keywords: self-directed learning (SDL)self-regulated learningautonomous learnerslifelong learninglearning to learn‘translator andragogy’ Notes on contributorKelly Washbourne teaches translation pedagogy and Spanish translation practice at Kent State University in Ohio, USA. His works include An Anthology of Spanish American Modernismo (edited, MLA Texts and Translations, 2007) and Autoepitaph: Selected Poems of Reinaldo Arenas (forthcoming). He won a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities award (2010) for his translation of Nobel Laureate Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Leyendas de Guatemala (Legends of Guatemala; Latin American Literary Review Press, 2012), and is co-editor of the series Translation Practices Explained (St. Jerome, UK).Notes1. See, for example, Horváth (Citation2007), who also introduces self-access into Interpreting Studies, and Espunya (2005), who discusses the approach for translator training.2. Also learner-managed learning (see Long, Citation1990).3. Zimmerman (Citation2008) defines self-regulated learning as students' active participation in their own learning.4. Klimkowski and Klimkowska (Citation2012) seem to be the first to take an explicitly andragogical perspective in translator training and education.5. Kiraly adapts the Freiran concept of empowerment for his professional empowerment, defining it in part as ‘self-reliance, authentic experience, and expertise’ (2003, p. 18). A point often lost in discussions of collaborative learning is the fact that individual and collaborative learning are not true binaries: one does not simply surrender one's personal habits or identity once in a group, but rather one must have self-discipline in a way that combines forcefully with peer-to-peer accountability.6. A point of diminishing returns can be reached when the ‘tyranny of choice’ – absolute self-determination – overwhelms self-directed learning (Brockett, Citation2006).7. Cronin (Citation2005, p. 253), despite his sympathy for a translation ‘deschooling’, seems to equate learner autonomy with the individual in isolation, and with a competitive marketplace psychology: ‘Reaganomics in the 1980s was crucial in the emergence of the student as the autonomous consumer of educational product, a notion that […] sits easily with the autonomous learner at the work station’.8. E-learning (‘learning that is accomplished over the Internet, a computer network, via CD-ROM, interactive TV, or satellite broadcast’) is a format of distance learning. It requires a model of the learning process and an infrastructure designed to implement the model. E-learning systems include the following features (Bou i Bauzà, Trinidad Cascudo, & Huguet Borén, Citation2004; Benefits of E-learning).Learning is self-paced and with no predetermined duration for each session (unlike traditional classroom instruction sessions).Learning is self-directed, allowing students to choose content and tools appropriate to their differing interests, needs, and skill levels.Learning systems require the organization and modularization of knowledge. The individual learner can then sequence knowledge units according to his needs (as opposed to pre-set sequences in instructor-led training).The materials have been designed with the individual learner in mind.Systems accommodate multiple learning styles using a variety of delivery methods geared to different learners, which makes e-learning more effective for certain learners.E-learning fosters greater student interaction and collaboration (through, e.g. discussion forums and chats).E-learning fosters greater student-instructor contact.E-learning enhances computer and Internet skills.Materials undergo usability studies.“Self-access” is an approach to learning that aims to contribute to the development of learner autonomy. It is often implemented as a system with a structure, with a tutor that, after performing a diagnostic test on the student's competence and needs, designs itineraries to satisfy those needs. Self-access materials generally contain keys for self-correction. Activities can work as separate objects that can be incorporated into different itineraries. It need not be digital […]. Self-access is usually a complement for the traditional classroom instructional mode’. (Espunya, Citation2005)9. L10nbridge Technologies, headquartered in Waltham, MA, USA, is a leading provider of ‘translation, online marketing, global content management and application testing solutions that ensure global brand consistency, local relevancy and technical usability’ (http://www.lionbridge.com/our-company/).10. See also Corpas Pastor (Citation2002) and Rodríguez-Inés (Citation2008).11. Software such as Translog allows for the inputter's key-logging and eye-tracking data, or ‘gaze data’, to be analyzed as part of process research or to support translation practica. As the codified output shows pauses, mouse clicks, etc., this process data can reveal pre-task, task, and post-task habits and patterns of choices not necessarily available to the subject's conscious awareness.12. The use of online learning platforms can facilitate a closer correlation of individual and curricular goals, as lessons, items, learning objects, readings, discussion threads, links, and modules can be tied to specific learning objectives, which can be self-assessed. See also Lee-Jahnke (Citation2005) for one possible self-evaluation protocol format.13. Self-regulation has been defined as ‘those processes, internal and/or transactional, that enable an individual to guide his/her goal-directed activities over time and across changing circumstances (contexts). Regulation implies the modulation of thought, affect, behavior, or attention via deliberate or automated use of special mechanisms and supportive metaskills’ (Karoly, Citation1993, p. 25).14. Edwards and Usher note that the globalization of pedagogy has begun to change the learner's identity, whereby ‘the modern bounded subject is displaced by the postmodern multi-centred subject, where the identity of “student” is displaced by that of “lifelong learner”.[…] The lifelong learner is considered as requiring transferable, mobile practices more centrally than conventional disciplinary expertise’ (2007, p. 63).15. Lifewide (or life-wide) learning refers to the learner's whole complex of learning environments outside the classroom, which may include civic education in the community, global learning programs, peer-to-peer learning, family, sports organizations, etc. Lifewide learning considers learning well beyond the intellectual dimension, and outside bounded institutional spaces, into informal or non-formal environments, and thus, perhaps revolutionarily, genuinely seeks whole-person learning and individual responsibility for one's education.
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