Promoting autonomy and independence (A & I) has for years been an accepted goal of Western education in general and has more recently joined such aims as developing “communicative competence” or using “authentic materials” in the canons of second language teaching and learning. As is the case with other pedagogical bandwagons we have jumped aboard, too little attention has been paid to its underlying theoretical bases and assumptions, and too few calls for empirical evidence of learning outcomes have been made. Benson and Voller offer a thought-provoking collection of papers that, although strongly endorsing the A & I movement in general, bring several of its implicit assumptions and values to conscious scrutiny and explore both apparent paradoxes and issues for debate.