A Case Study of Developing Autonomy in a Portfolio-Oriented English Class at a Japanese Senior High School

There are various ways of learning. I would like to listen more to the voices of the learners as individual persons, not only as students of English. I have decided to introduce portfolios into my classes because they can make language learning more visible. One of the perceived advantages of portfolios for students is that they can become autonomous learners. Autonomy, which can be a general educational goal, has become a key concept in language education. This paper will explore how portfolios influence the students’ autonomy in my teaching context, discussing the findings from a case study. The study, therefore, employs qualitative ethnographic methods. Since I, as a teacher-researcher, introduced portfolios into my English class in April, this is a presentation of progress results from a one-year classroom research.