A certain degree of freedom: the challenge of learner autonomy in playful foreign language learning

Playful learning has been shown to create engaging learning activities for students, giving them agency, or the illusion of agency, in their learning experience. But how is this aim of giving students more autonomy understood and valued by the students themselves? In this study, I analyse interview data with students after one school year of using a gamified application for foreign language learning, and answer the question: How have the design aims for autonomy been interpreted by the students in the interview data? A reflexive thematic analysis of the interview data reveals a surprising contrast between the designers’ wish to give students the opportunity to develop their autonomy, and the students suggesting the playful learning experience should be closer to traditional schoolwork. The findings of this paper show the challenge of combining a playful frame with the potential for the emergence of learner autonomy in the school context. This challenge has interesting implications for the design of playful learning situations and for further research on the intersection of the playful learning and learner autonomy research fields.