We kicked off the day with a bit of a summary of the whole worm thing.  We later learned that this clarified things a lot for the participants who had not been following the progress of the worms.  Carol hatched the idea at the IATEFL conference the previous year by opening a can of worms both metaphorically and literally.  The premise behind this can of worms is that learner autonomy is a tricky concept and in closely connected with many other areas of language learning research and therefore needs close examining.    My Encarta computer dictionary defines a can of worms as:



 “can of worms (n): a complicated situation that results from unforeseen problems, especially an issue that seems likely to create conflicts (informal)”



We decided to identify particularly slippery worms and send them off into the academic community to find themselves with the help of researchers and practitioners (experts?) with particular expertise.  The following worms have been circulating for the past year: Motivation, Learner Training, Counselling/Advising, Assessment and Teacher Autonomy. 5 “keepers” were engaged to help the worms on their journey and we had gathered these keepers at the pre-conference event. We are so grateful to our keepers for being such good sports, for coming to the PCE and really helping us to get to grips with several thorny issues and give us plenty to think about.