THE AUTONOMOUS STUDY TIME AS A STUDENT INVOLVEMENT STRATEGY IN THE LEARNING PROCESS

The constant changes happening in our society through times, especially the demand of acquirement and development of autonomy skills, of accountability and analysing the meaning of reality in a sense of being able to change that reality establish new challenges to a teacher’s service and the school’s context.

Accordingly to the above, it’s been gauged, under a national context perspective, the increasing of pedagogical strategies which highlight the active implication of the students in the learning process. In this frame, the routine of Autonomous Study Time (AST), broadly used by teachers with this purpose, is a work procedure where students work individually, in pairs or with their teacher, being able to autonomously practice their skills through exercises suggested in working sheets, reading exercises or any other activity that allows the apprenticeships’ consolidation.

In this essay, dedicated to the subject “The autonomous study time as a student involvement strategy in the learning process”, it was intended to understand in which way the AST enables the implication of the student in the learning process. Accordingly, were configured as specific aims of this study:
i) Characterize the planning methods of the student’s individual work;
ii) Describe the criteria used by the students to self evaluate their works developed during the AST;
iii) Describe in which way the students considered the teacher’s self evaluation to plan their individual work.

Involved in this study were 27 students belonging to the 4th grade of elementary school, and has been applied a qualitative nature methodology with the use of several data gathering (inquiry by survey, semi structured interview, documental analysis and both direct and indirect observation). The data analysis was performed using the qualitative data analysis software NVIVO11. Data treatment followed the recommended framework for content analysis in a qualitative investigation in education (Bardin, 2013). The conclusions from the essay show that there was an increase of skills regarding autonomy, accountability and management of the learning process, shown by the students, mainly on the account of the expansion of their reflexive ability regarding themselves and their work.