Rethinking Student Autonomy in Contemporary Higher Education: Reflective Learning, Formative Feedback, and the Development of Self-Regulated Academic Practices

Autonomy is commonly presented as a defining outcome of higher education, yet its educational meaning is often reduced to individual independence, flexible access, or responsibility for completing assigned tasks. This conceptual article examines student autonomy as a situated capacity for academic judgment and integrates scholarship on self-regulated learning, reflective practice, formative assessment, feedback literacy, and educational motivation. Through comparative interpretation of established theoretical models, the analysis distinguishes independence from agency, identifies the cognitive and social processes involved in forethought and monitoring, and examines how students learn to evaluate standards and revise their work. Special attention is given to the timing and interpretation of feedback, the use of exemplars and peer dialogue, the opportunities and limitations of digital learning environments, and the institutional conditions that influence meaningful choice. The discussion argues that formative practices become autonomy-supportive when they provide learners with recurring opportunities to make quality judgments, explain their decisions, seek appropriate assistance, and apply feedback to subsequent tasks. Autonomy is consequently interpreted neither as unregulated choice nor as the withdrawal of pedagogical support, but as the progressively more accountable participation of learners in disciplinary practices. The article also considers equity, academic belonging, workload, and the methodological difficulties of evaluating regulation across contexts. Its contribution is a framework for analyzing the relationships between learner capabilities and curriculum structures, rather than a claim of new empirical outcomes.