OK, so we quickly learned that Flávia is no fan of the worms, but luckily for us she is committed to the notion of “teacher autonomy” and was willing to participate in our quest and enlist colleagues in Portugal and Spain to join in. Flávia believes that in the phrase “pedagogy for autonomy” autonomy should refer both to the learner and the teacher. Teachers have “systematically been kept backstage” and their interests have often been overlooked. She is a firm believer in promoting pedagogy for autonomy in teachers even though this is not an easy option and might mean that the teachers have to venture into the unknown and to tolerate uncertainty.



The title of the talk was  “Teacher autonomy – why should we care?” Of course, we do care and Flávia highlighted some reasons why we should in her talk. One reason was that “unless teachers are free to make pedagogical choices that favour learner autonomy, there is no way that pedagogy for autonomy can flourish in schools”.



Flávia drew on some input from her MA students and they came up with some metaphors for teacher autonomy. Themes which emerged from many of the metaphors were that “there are constraints on teacher freedom” and that the “teacher is responsible for learner growth”. Flávia pointed out that “if we are interested in promoting pedagogy for autonomy, it is crucial that we ask ourselves what “vision of education and society we advocate”.



Professional autonomy is the need for teachers to engage in reflective practice in order to work towards autonomy as a “collective interest”.  Approaches to autonomy are context-sensitive and deeply rooted in teachers’ professional history, which means that they are always local and autobiographical. This is why, Flávia claims, we should perhaps be talking about pedagogies for autonomy and not pedagogy for autonomy.



So why should we care Flávia?  “…if we don’t care, then our work will be of little social relevance, no matter how much credit it gets in the academic community.”



Thanks for that.



Jo