Learner autonomy in secondary school virtual classrooms: Turkish EFL teachers' perceptions and practices

Learner autonomy in EFL teaching and learning context has long been taken as an efficient channel, which has gained more significance in the globalized world of the 21st century. Today's life has demonstrated that online education, which is believed to be more effective when autonomous, will dominate the education process. Besides, the significance of learner autonomy skills for online educational settings has recently attracted the attention of scholars. In this vein, this study investigates EFL teachers' perceptions and practices concerning learner autonomy in secondary school virtual classrooms in Hatay, Turkey. The data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative data collection tools. For the quantitative data, a questionnaire was administered to 194 teachers working at state and private secondary schools to explore learner autonomy perceptions and language teaching practices promoting learner autonomy. To support the quantitative data, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 EFL teachers volunteering to participate. Findings revealed that the EFL teachers have a high awareness of the meaning and significance of learner autonomy and an autonomous learner in online language education. There seems to be a connection between learner autonomy and online learning environments. It is deduced from the findings that teachers have compelling views concerning practices to foster learner autonomy. However, they are having difficulty promoting it due to the fact that they are assumed to be practising traditional approaches which cannot be appropriate in online EFL teaching and learning environment. Moreover, learner autonomy promotion is challenging in an online learning setting for several reasons, such as time, curriculum, and class-size limitations in addition to teacher-related and learner-related constraints. The findings of this study may contribute to the ELT field in terms of identifying challenges in learner autonomy encouragement. They also provide insights into creating autonomous learning in virtual language classrooms presenting influential views and practices of EFL teachers. Keywords: Learner autonomy, autonomous learner, virtual classroom, online education.