From Teacher Authority to Shared Learning: Peer Learning, Collaboration, and Learner-Led Contributions in Online Adult ELT

Introduction

Teaching English has increasingly moved beyond the idea that learning occurs primarily through the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student. This shift becomes particularly significant in online environments, where learners cannot simply depend on the physical presence of an instructor to guide every stage of the learning process. In my own experience as an English language teacher working with young adults and working professionals, fully online learning has forced me to reconsider what it means to teach, monitor, support, and evaluate learning. Rather than attempting to control every interaction, I have gradually come to see learning as something that can be constructed collectively.

The British Council's TeachingEnglish: How to Adapt Resources course provided an opportunity to examine this idea through peer learning, collaborative tasks, and learner-led contributions. The course emphasizes that learners can become valuable resources for one another and that collaboration involves considerably more than simply putting students into pairs or groups. It requires intentional design, clear outcomes, appropriate support, and opportunities for learners to contribute meaningfully to the learning process (British Council, n.d.).

These ideas resonated strongly with my own teaching philosophy. As I reflected on the course, I wrote that "Students have reciprocal roles since the teacher is not exercising authority over students. Language knowledge is co-constructed within a positive atmosphere. Students learn by teaching one another because they are self-directed" (Acuña Solano, 2026). This statement captures an important transformation in my understanding of the teacher's role: the teacher does not disappear, but authority becomes less centralized. In a collaborative learning environment, the teacher becomes a designer, facilitator, observer, and provider of strategic intervention.

Peer Learning as the Co-Construction of Knowledge

Peer learning is particularly valuable because it changes the relationship between learners. Instead of viewing classmates primarily as people who happen to be completing the same course, students begin to perceive one another as learning resources. This reciprocal relationship can create opportunities for explanation, negotiation of meaning, feedback, and experimentation with language.

In my own reflection on the British Council course, I described peer learning as a process in which "students have reciprocal roles" and "language knowledge is co-constructed within a positive atmosphere" (Acuña Solano, 2026). The notion of co-construction is especially relevant to language learning because language cannot be acquired exclusively through the passive reception of explanations. Learners need opportunities to use language, receive responses, clarify meaning, reformulate ideas, and notice how other people communicate.

This perspective has strong connections with Vygotsky's (1978) concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Learning can occur through interaction with others who provide forms of assistance that allow an individual to perform beyond what they could accomplish independently. I expressed this idea in my course reflection by observing that learners working together "learn from one another, helping each other move from their zone of current development" (Acuña Solano, 2026).

For adult learners, this process can be particularly meaningful. Young adults and working professionals bring experiences, professional knowledge, opinions, and perspectives to the classroom. Their linguistic resources may differ, but their life experiences can become valuable contributions to the learning process. Consequently, peer learning does not have to mean that the teacher is transferring instructional responsibility to students. Rather, it means recognizing that expertise is distributed throughout the learning community.

The Teacher's Role: From Authority to Facilitator

One of the most important implications of peer learning is the changing role of the teacher. If language learners are expected to collaborate, make decisions, and contribute to learning, the instructor must relinquish some degree of direct control. However, this does not mean becoming passive or absent. This distinction has become important in my own two online teaching contexts. I do not teach children in primary or middle school; my learners are young adults and working adults who study English fully online. Consequently, strategies designed for younger learners sometimes need to be reconsidered before being transferred to my context. Adult learners generally bring a greater degree of autonomy and personal experience, but they also have professional responsibilities, limited time, and different levels of confidence with technology and language.

The British Council course emphasizes that collaborative work requires careful management. Confident learners may dominate conversations, learners may use their home language, errors may be reinforced by peers, and the teacher may find it difficult to monitor every group (British Council, n.d.). These challenges are not eliminated simply because the learners are adults or because the classroom is online. In fact, the online environment introduces additional considerations. Breakout rooms can create a productive space for communication, but they can also make monitoring more difficult. A teacher cannot simultaneously listen to every group. Therefore, task design becomes essential. Clear instructions, time limits, models, assigned roles, and functional language can provide a structure within which learners can operate more independently.

This is consistent with the broader concept of scaffolding. Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) argued that effective instructional support allows learners to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be beyond their current capabilities. In an online classroom, scaffolding may take the form of models, sentence starters, examples, visual prompts, functional language, or carefully sequenced instructions. Thus, effective facilitation does not mean abandoning learners. It means creating the conditions under which learners can become progressively more independent.

Collaboration Requires More Than Grouping Students

Another important insight from the British Council course is that collaborative learning should not be confused with simply assigning students to groups. A collaborative task gives learners a shared purpose and a genuine reason to communicate. As the British Council explains, learners must "speak, listen and develop ideas together" in order to achieve a shared goal (British Council, n.d.).

This principle has influenced the way I structure activities in my own online classes. Among my reflections, I have often described a process that begins with choice and continues through modeling, time management, monitoring, and feedback:

"First of all, I show them the various sketchpads or simulations the activity contains, for them to choose the ones they want to complete (differentiation). Secondly, I model the activity. Then, I tell them how much time they have. After that, I send them away to work in pairs or small groups. Next, I visit them in their breakout rooms to monitor the activity. Finally, when the activity is over, feedback is provided to them" (Acuña Solano, 2026).

This sequence reflects an important principle of instructional design: learner autonomy works best when it exists within a carefully constructed framework. Choice without structure can become confusion. Collaboration without a clear outcome can become unfocused conversation. Autonomy therefore does not mean "anything goes." Instead, the teacher establishes the boundaries within which meaningful learner choice can occur.

This is also where differentiation becomes particularly relevant. Allowing students to choose between different sketchpads or simulations gives them some ownership of the learning experience while maintaining a common instructional objective. Such choices can accommodate differences in interests, confidence, background knowledge, or preferred ways of approaching a task.

Learner-Led Contributions and Learner Agency

Perhaps the most interesting concept in the module was that of learner-led contributions. According to the British Council (n.d.), learners can make choices, create lesson content, or take responsibility for part of a lesson. These activities can develop true communication scenarios, creativity, critical thinking, confidence, and independence. For me, this concept connects directly with learner agency. When students generate examples, formulate questions, research information, or create content for their classmates, they cease to be merely consumers of instructional materials. They become contributors to the learning environment.

I have reflected on this dimension by writing and have concluded that learner-led contributions allow me, as an instructor, "to see how students get to use the language in context (grammar and lexis)" (Acuña Solano, 2026). This is a particularly important observation. A student may demonstrate knowledge of a grammatical rule in a controlled exercise but struggle to use that same structure spontaneously during communication. Learner-led activities reveal the difference between knowing about language and being able to use language.

My reference to Luria is quite relevant here. The Russian psychologist Alexander Luria emphasized the importance of observing psychological processes through activity and intervention. In my own reflection, I have often described learner-led contributions as an opportunity to determine whether some kind of "intervention" is needed when students actually use language (Acuña Solano, 2026). This idea changes assessment fundamentally. Instead of seeing assessment as something that occurs only after learning, observation during authentic communication becomes part of the learning process itself.

Learner Contributions as a "Thermometer" of Learning

One of the metaphors I used in my reflection was that learner-led activity becomes a "great 'thermometer'" for measuring how much students can actually use the target language (Acuña Solano, 2026). I find this metaphor particularly useful because it emphasizes that classroom interaction provides information about learning that conventional exercises may not reveal.

When learners participate in collaborative activities, they demonstrate several dimensions of competence simultaneously. They must retrieve vocabulary, construct grammatical structures, interpret what others say, negotiate meaning, respond appropriately, and sometimes repair communication breakdowns. For the teacher, these moments provide rich evidence. This aligns with Black and Wiliam's (1998) influential work on formative assessment. Assessment becomes particularly powerful when evidence of learning is used to inform subsequent instruction. In this sense, monitoring breakout rooms is not merely classroom management. It is also formative assessment.

Through the lens of formative assessment, the teacher listens for patterns. Perhaps students consistently misuse a grammatical structure. Perhaps they understand the vocabulary but cannot retrieve it quickly. Perhaps they communicate successfully despite grammatical inaccuracies. Perhaps they depend excessively on their first language. Each observation provides evidence that can inform the next pedagogical decision. The same process can benefit learners. When students hear their peers successfully use language, they gain models. When they struggle to communicate an idea, they become aware of a gap in their own linguistic resources. When peers understand their message, they receive evidence that communication has succeeded. Learner-led activities therefore function simultaneously as practice, communication, and informal assessment.

The Productive Role of the First Language

One issue raised in the British Council course that deserves particular consideration in adult online ELT is the use of learners' home language. Traditional communicative approaches have sometimes treated the first language as an obstacle to being minimized. However, multilingual pedagogies increasingly recognize that learners' complete linguistic repertoires can be resources for learning. The British Council course suggests that the home language can sometimes support learners and recommends encouraging English through sentence starters and manageable goals (British Council, n.d.). I find this position more realistic than imposing an absolute prohibition on the first language.

 For adult learners, especially those participating in complex collaborative tasks, strategic use of the first language can sometimes facilitate comprehension, planning, or clarification. The pedagogical objective should not necessarily be eliminating the home language but ensuring that it does not replace the communicative purpose of the target language. In an online environment, this balance can be established through clear expectations. Students can be given specific English-language goals, useful functional expressions, and a communicative outcome that requires them to use English meaningfully.

From Resource Adaptation to Learner as Resource

The title of the module, Using the learner as a resource, ultimately suggests a broader philosophy of teaching. Teachers traditionally spend considerable time preparing resources for learners. However, learners themselves can become resources through their experiences, questions, interpretations, ideas, and linguistic production. This principle has particular relevance to adult education. A working professional does not enter an English class as an empty container waiting to be filled with vocabulary and grammar. That learner already possesses knowledge about a profession, a community, a family, a culture, technology, travel, business, or countless other aspects of life. The challenge is to create pedagogical spaces in which that knowledge can enter the language-learning process.

This idea of knowledge entering the language-learning process also corresponds with Knowles's (1984) principles of andragogy, particularly the idea that adult learners bring previous experiences to educational contexts and benefit when learning is connected to relevant, meaningful problems. Collaborative and learner-led tasks can make this connection possible. The teacher therefore becomes less of the sole source of content and more of an architect of learning experiences. My responsibility is not simply to prepare everything for students but to create the conditions in which they can contribute something meaningful themselves.

Conclusion: From Teaching Language to Designing Conditions for Learning

The British Council course on adapting resources reinforced an idea that has become increasingly important in my teaching: effective online language education is not simply about providing more materials. It is about designing better opportunities for learners to use, negotiate, create, and reflect upon language. Peer learning demonstrates that students can become teachers for one another. Collaborative tasks show that communication becomes more meaningful when learners have a shared purpose. Learner-led contributions demonstrate that students can become creators of content rather than merely recipients of it. Finally, teacher observation transforms these activities into opportunities for formative assessment and pedagogical intervention.

For my own practice with young adults and working professionals, the central lesson is not that I should surrender my role as teacher. Rather, I should reconsider what that role involves. My authority can coexist with learner autonomy; structure can coexist with choice; assessment can coexist with communication; and technology can create spaces in which learners become more visible as participants in their own learning.

Perhaps the most important transformation is therefore a conceptual one. The question is no longer simply, "What am I going to teach my students?" It becomes, "What conditions can I design so that my students can learn from one another, contribute to the learning community, and demonstrate what they are capable of doing?"

As I wrote during the course, learner-led contributions provide a "thermometer" of learning. They reveal not only what students know, but what they can actually do with the language. For an online teacher, that evidence is invaluable. It now allows me to move beyond teaching language as a collection of forms and toward creating environments in which language becomes a tool for interaction, meaning-making, and human connection. In this sense, adapting resources is ultimately more than adapting materials. It is adapting the relationship between teacher, learner, content, and learning itself. 

San José, Costa Rica

Friday, August 14, 2026

Blog Post #581

 

📚 References

Acuña Solano, J. (2026). Personal reflections from TeachingEnglish: How to adapt resources [Unpublished course notes].

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969595980050102

British Council. (n.d.). TeachingEnglish: How to adapt resources. TeachingEnglish. https://open.teachingenglish.org.uk/

Knowles, M. S. (1984). Andragogy in action: Applying modern principles of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x