Students Who Help Design Their Own Lessons May Learn More, Study Finds

What happens when university students are invited to decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and which questions they want to investigate? A new peer-reviewed study from Queen Mary University of London suggests that the answer can be a classroom transformed, in which international students preparing for postgraduate study in the United Kingdom move from passive recipients of instruction to active investigators of their own educational experience. The research, led by Dr Ana Ines Salvi and published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, examines how two pedagogical traditions, learner autonomy and Exploratory Practice, can be combined to create a more engaging, collaborative and reflective learning environment for students studying academic English.

The study took place during a four-week pre-sessional English course designed for seventeen international students who were preparing to begin a Master’s degree in Manufacturing at a UK university. Pre-sessional courses of this kind are a common feature of British higher education, offering intensive academic language preparation before degree programmes begin. Rather than relying exclusively on teacher-led instruction, the course in this study encouraged students to make decisions about aspects of their learning based on their own needs, to work collaboratively with classmates, to reflect on their progress, and to investigate questions, described in the research as puzzles, that genuinely interested them.

Those puzzles were strikingly varied and rooted in the students’ real lives rather than in a syllabus. Examples included Why are we here?, Why is it hard to find accommodation around the university? and Why is it hard to come up with a good idea for our library project? Students pursued their questions using sources that included academic literature and the internet, discussed their findings with classmates, and presented what they had learned to the group. The approach meant that language learning was not confined to textbook exercises but was embedded in authentic inquiry into issues that mattered to the students themselves, from the practical challenges of settling into a new city to the intellectual demands of producing academic work.

Through analysing the students’ experiences, the research identified five key themes: learning through interaction and collaboration, student agency, working towards understanding, quality of life and joy, and integrating research into teaching and learning. Together, these themes paint a picture of a classroom in which the boundaries between language study, research training and everyday student life become permeable. Students did not simply practise academic English; they used academic English as a tool to understand and improve their own circumstances, which in turn gave their language development a purpose and immediacy that more conventional exercises can struggle to achieve.

Feedback from the students indicated that they valued being able to make decisions about their learning and to work together with their peers. Some students also reported that keeping a daily learning diary helped them reflect on what they had learned and consider what they wanted to do next, a practice that appears to have supported the development of self-regulation, a capacity widely regarded in educational research as central to successful study at postgraduate level. The exploratory activities also gave students opportunities to develop research and interpersonal skills. Students said they learned how to formulate questions, collect and organise information, interview people, and collaborate with classmates from different countries, abilities that map directly onto the demands of a UK Master’s programme.

Importantly, the study does not argue that students should simply be left to learn independently. Students themselves highlighted the value of guidance from the teacher, and some suggested that they would have welcomed more support when making decisions or working in groups. This finding is significant because debates about student-centred learning often polarise between advocates of full learner independence and defenders of traditional instruction. The research instead points towards a negotiated middle ground in which teacher expertise structures the opportunities for autonomy while students exercise meaningful choice within that structure.

The study’s author combined the two approaches deliberately to explore how they could complement one another. Learner autonomy, in this framing, provides a clear structure through which students can plan, carry out and evaluate their own learning. Exploratory Practice, an approach developed within language education that encourages teachers and learners to investigate questions and develop understanding together, adds a dimension of inquiry, inviting students to ask questions about what matters to them and to focus on understanding rather than simply finding solutions. The findings suggest that when the two are woven together, autonomy supplies the scaffolding for self-directed study while Exploratory Practice fills that scaffolding with questions that carry personal and practical significance.

A notable feature of the approach was the way it brought academic learning together with students’ wider experiences of living and studying in a new environment. Questions about accommodation or about the purpose of the course itself were not treated as distractions from the curriculum but as legitimate objects of classroom investigation, explored through the very academic practices, reading, discussion, interviewing and presenting, that the course was designed to develop. The long-term resonance of this method is captured in the reflection of one student, who, a year later, described the experience in a single memorable line: Questions are always the best teacher.

The research suggests that combining learner autonomy and Exploratory Practice may offer teachers a practical way to integrate research, reflection and student-led enquiry into everyday teaching, rather than treating research as something separate from classroom learning. For educators working in English for Academic Purposes and related fields, this is a potentially meaningful shift. Instead of positioning students as apprentices who must first master the conventions of academia before contributing to it, the approach invites them to practise inquiry from the outset, using their own puzzles as the raw material for developing the linguistic, cognitive and collaborative skills that postgraduate study demands.

At the same time, the author is careful to frame the limits of the study. It was conducted with a small group of seventeen students over a short four-week course, and, as practitioner research, the teacher also acted as the researcher. The findings therefore provide insight into this particular classroom experience rather than evidence that the approach will produce identical outcomes in all educational settings. Even with these caveats, the study adds to a growing body of work exploring how students can become active participants in their own education, not simply recipients of teaching, but people who help shape their learning experience and investigate questions that matter to them, a shift that could, if replicated more widely, change what classrooms feel like for the students inside them.

Subject of Research: Combining learner autonomy with Exploratory Practice to enhance classroom engagement for international students learning academic English

Article Title: Giving students a voice in how they learn could transform the classroom experience

Article References: Giving students a voice in how they learn could transform the classroom experience. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: learner autonomy, Exploratory Practice, English for Academic Purposes, student-led enquiry, pre-sessional courses, international students, classroom collaboration, student agency, practitioner research, reflective learning, higher education pedagogy, Journal of English for Academic Purposes