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ies.ccsenet.org 
International Education Studies 
Vol. 13, No. 6; 2020 
159 
learner autonomy in college English teaching under the information and technology contexts.
To sum up, as Little (1995) proposed that teacher education students should experience autonomy within teacher 
education programs. Likewise, Jiménez-Raya & Vieria (2015) also assert that teacher education should enhance 
autonmy development. In fact, Teachers’ professional knowledge, skills and commitment to the idea of autonomy 
will be a crucial factor in the effectiveness in any approach and practice to fostering learner autonomy. 
Nevertheless, in a climate of apparently ever-increasing desire for the promotion of language learner autonomy – 
at least as expressed within professional discourse – it is indeed remarkable, that there have previously been so few 
accounts of practice and research in the area of pre-service or in-service teacher education for learner autonomy. 
5. Conclusion 
From the above discussion, we can sum up the following points. Firstly, language teachers should change their 
roles to ones that support, facilitate and promote the development and fostering of learner autonomy. Just as many 
researchers and scholars (e.g. Aoki, 2000, 2002; Dickinson, 1992; Pang, 2003; Xu, 2007) point out that language 
teacher is a very important influencing factor in fostering learner autonomy. For language teachers, it is not only 
their ethical and career responsibility, obligation and commitment to foster and develop learners’ language 
communicative competence, but also more importantly, to facilitate and promote language learners’ autonomy in 
learning. As a result, language teachers should be clear about their roles, functions and influences in the 
development of learner autonomy, and change their traditional roles to fostering learner autonomy and catering to 
individual needs.
Secondly, language teacher education programs should help student teachers not only learn the knowledge of 
learner autonomy, but also raise their awareness of teacher autonomy. As illustrated above, one significant issue 
that needs to be addressed in the future research is initial teacher training. It is noted by many researchers and 
teachers that the way language teachers were taught, to a certain extent, would determine their own pedagogical 
approach in practice. Just as Smith (2004) argued that language teachers cannot be expected to foster and develop 
learner autonomy if they themselves do not know what it is to be an autonomous learner. On account of this, a 
series of teacher educaiton and training programs, courses and educational practicum should be designed to well 
facilitate the development and fostering of the student teacher autonomy. If student teachers have the knowledge, 
conception and clear understanding about learner autonomy and teacher autonomy, they can apply what have 
learned and experienced into their language teaching practice.
Finally, in the future, even though challenging, more empirical research needs to be carried out to explore the 
relationship, development model and mechanism between language learner autonomy and teacher autonomy.