Self-regulation and autonomy have emerged as key predictors of health and well-being in several areas of psychology. This timely volume brings together eminent scholars at the forefront of this research, which is taking place in disciplines including developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, social psychology and educational psychology. The contributors present ideas and research findings on the development of self-regulation and autonomy, including their biological bases, antecedents and consequences. Editors Bryan W. Sokol, Frederick M. E. Grouzet and Ulrich Müller have shaped the volume's multidisciplinary perspective on self-regulation and autonomy to reflect the legacy of Jean Piaget, the trailblazing developmental psychologist whose work drew on a diverse body of research.

Drawing on the literature and research findings from relevant research fields, including educational technology, educational psychology, adult and workplace learning, and language education, this book gives an overview of the relationship of learner and teacher autonomy and technology in language teaching. It discusses how technology both benefits and constrains autonomy, and how a positive interaction between the two could be fostered. It underscores a critical perspective in understanding their relationships and a holistic approach to boosting a positive reciprocal relationship between the two.

Formed in 1825, the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society is the second-oldest law society in common-law Canada, after the Law Society of Ontario. Yet despite its founders' ambitions, it did not become the regulator of the legal profession in Nova Scotia for nearly seventy-five years. In this institutional history of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society from its inception to the Legal Profession Act of 2005, Barry Cahill provides a chronological exploration of the profession's regulation in Nova Scotia and the critical role of the society. Based on extensive research conducted on internal documents, legislative records, and legal and general-interest periodicals and newspapers, Professional Autonomy and the Public Interest demonstrates that the inauguration of the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society was the first giant step on the long road to self-regulation. Highlighting the inherent tensions between protection of professional self-interest and protection of the larger public interest, Cahill explains that while this radical innovation was opposed by both lawyers and judges, it was ultimately imposed by the Liberal government in 1899. In light of emerging models of regulation in the twenty-first century, Professional Autonomy and the Public Interest is a timely look back at the origins of professional regulatory bodies and the evolution of law affecting the legal profession in Atlantic Canada.

The push towards greater autonomy is one of the three main trends in every modern educational policy, alongside quality assurance and quality evaluation techniques and the need to devote attention to special — and often disadvantaged — target groups. It is, however, difficult to derive a unified concept of `autonomy’ from the comparative indicators which are published on a regular basis and it has emerged that there are significant differences depending on the specific area and the administrative organisation of education in the country in question. During the discussions of the annual Congress of the European Association for Education Law and Policy (ELA) in Salzburg (1998) it was apparent that autonomy has to be considered in its various applications. Autonomy for school boards is realised through management, administrative mechanisms, management of staff and pedagogical options. Autonomy of administration requires competence, the willingness to establish an autonomous administration and awareness of each party’s responsibility in the educational process. The contents of this Yearbook are an answer to the question of how legislatures are responding to the trend towards greater responsibility, decentralisation and autonomy. It is an overview of the efforts made by the Member States of the European Union to apply the principle of subsidiarity.

This book focuses on regulatory reforms and the autonomization and agencification of public sector organizations across Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The central argument of the book is that regulation and agencification occur and perform in tandem. Comparative analysis on the processes, effects and implications of regulatory reform and the establishment of semi-independent agencies are undertaken, and the practice of trade-offs between political control and agency autonomy is explored. The contributors also discuss the challenges of fragmentation, coordination, 'joined-up' government and other government initiatives in the aftermath of the New Public Management movement and its focus on agencification. Finally, the complexity of deregulation/re-regulation, new emergent forms of regulation, control and auditing as well as reassertion of the centre are examined. Until now, there has been little attempt to link the study on regulation and regulatory reforms with that of autonomous central agencies. In this book the two fields are brought together. Autonomy and Regulation will find its audience amongst scholars and researchers working in the areas of political science, public administration and public management, organization theory, institutional analyses and comparative administration. It will also appeal to scholars and those directly involved in public sector and regulatory reforms including politicians and managers.

The book investigates interest groups and various learning circles, Reading Circles (RCs) learning opportunity in particular, as a mode of in-class and beyond class autonomous learning in the context of English Language Teaching (ELT) at tertiary level in Oman, and in similar contexts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This investigation presents learners’ positive perceptions of learner autonomy and their readiness to adopt related practices. Building on findings from these RCs, the book introduces collaborative learner autonomy (CLA) as a novel concept of learner autonomy for use in educational contexts in the MENA region. As a concept of gradual development of learner autonomy, the CLA represents a new dynamic learner autonomy development process consisting of individual, competitive, collaborative, and autonomous stages. The CLA advocated in the book emphasizes the constructive role of teachers and educational institutions can play with other stakeholders in developing autonomy in their learners. The book also suggests that it is a shared responsibility that students, teachers, educational establishments, families, society and the educational systems should assume in a spirit of partnership.

This volume describes and analyzes alternative and emerging models of non-territorial autonomy (NTA), particularly in relation to decentralization. The authors push the NTA debate in new directions by offering a re-conceptualization based on ethno-cultural bottom-up decentralized action that redefines autonomy into its true sense of autonomous action. Through description, critical analysis, and evaluation of several case studies, this book assesses the potential for new paradigms within decentralized systems. The authors explore two approaches to political decentralization which add to the theoretical debate on NTA – network governance, which focuses on new dynamics in policy processes, and normative pluralism, which focuses on accommodating the distinctness of the groups through the subsidiarity principle with regard to their own affairs. The book explores the potential ramifications of ethno-cultural NTA institutions acting within the wider framework of state institutions and assesses the functions of these institutions as another dimension of decentralization and thus another ‘layer’ of democracy. With contemporary examples from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South Africa, as well as theoretical aspects of the conceptualization of autonomy, this book offers a truly global perspective. It will be of great interest to policy-makers in countries experiencing adverse developments due to the pressure on public management, as well as advanced students and scholars questioning the ability of the Westphalian system to address cultural diversity.

This book brings together contributions on learner autonomy from a myriad of contexts to advance our understanding of what autonomous language learning looks like with digital tools, and how this understanding is shaped by and can shape different socio-institutional, curricular, and instructional support. To this end, the individual contributions in the book highlight practice-oriented, empirically-based research on technology-mediated learner autonomy and its pedagogical implications. They address how technology can support learner autonomy as process by leveraging the affordances available in social media, virtual exchange, self-access, or learning in the wild (Hutchins, 1995). The rapid evolution and adoption of technology in all aspects of our lives has pushed issues related to learner and teacher autonomy centre stage in the language education landscape. This book tackles emergent challenges from different perspectives and diverse learning ecologies with a focus on social and educational (in)equality. Specifically, to this effect, the chapters consider digital affordances of virtual exchange, gaming, and apps in technology-mediated language learning and teaching ranging from instructed and semi-instructed to self-instructed contexts. The volume foregrounds the concepts of critical digital literacy and social justice in relation to language learner and teacher autonomy and illustrates how this approach may contribute to institutional objectives for equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education around the world and will be useful for researchers and teachers alike.

This volume presents the reader with a stimulating tapestry of essays exploring the nature of personal autonomy, self-determination, and agency, and their role in human optimal functioning at multiple levels of analysis from personal to societal and cross-cultural. The starting point for these explorations is self-determination theory, an integrated theory of human motivation and healthy development which has been under development for more than three decades (Deci & Ryan, 2000). As the contributions will make clear, psychological autonomy is a concept that forms the bridge between the dependence of human behavior on biological and socio-cultural determinants on the one side, and people’s ability to be free, reflective, and transforming agents who can challenge these dependencies, on the other. The authors within this volume share a vision that human autonomy is a fundamental pre-condition for both individuals and groups to thrive, and that without understanding the nature and mechanisms of autonomous agency vital social and human problems cannot be satisfactory addressed. This multidisciplinary team of researchers will collectively explore the nature of personal autonomy, considering its developmental origins, its expression within relationships, its importance within groups and organizational functioning, and its role in promoting to the democratic and economic development of societies. The book is aimed toward developmental, social, personality, and cross-cultural psychologists, towards researchers and practitioners’ in the areas of education, health and medicine, social work and, economics, and also towards all interested in creating a more sustainable and just world society through promoting individual freedom and agency. This volume will provide a theoretical and conceptual account of the nature and psychological mechanisms of personal motivational autonomy and human agency; rich multidisciplinary empirical evidence supporting the claims and propositions about the nature of human autonomy and capacities for self-regulation; explanations of how and why different psychological and socio-cultural conditions may play a role in promoting or undermining people’s autonomous motivation and well-being, discussions of how the promotion of human autonomy can positively influence environmental protection, democracy promotion and economic prosperity.