Educational Characteristics of Learner Autonomy

Abstract

According to many scholars, learner autonomy is a direction in higher professional education, which contributes to the formation of students’ independence as the primary personality trait that helps build their educational process without outside interference. The research goal was to identify the characteristics of the concepts of “independence,” “learner autonomy,” and “autonomous educational activity,” and their relationship to each other. We obtained the following results: independence is a personality trait, which is formed in the process of carrying out activities with a gradual transition from external management to selfmanagement. Learner autonomy is the highest level of a person’s independence, manifested in the readiness to create their educational product. From our point of view, autonomous educational activity is a technology of formation of readiness for further continuous professional education based on the obtained skills of independent goal setting and ways of achieving it. The study allowed us to more accurately define these concepts, which contributes to the scholarly literature and the possibility of further research on learner autonomy.