A Curated Conversation on the question "Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?" by 16 members of the World Heutagogy Crew answering the UNESCO call on the Future of Education for 2050
5. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Traian Bruma
I grew up with a group of friends, creating our own
university.
I can’t imagine a future where it is acceptable that
learning processes – individual or collective – are
owned and determined by anyone else but the
learners themselves. Inch by inch, people will take
this freedom back from institutions
6. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Fred Garnett
Humans developed the capability of “social
learning” over millennia before settlements enabled
the development of “civilisation”
We then invented education formalising what we
had previously learnt informally.
Heutagogy, or self-determined learning, allows us to
re-orient education back to the shared transmission
of the cultural values we develop communally
7. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Bridget McKenzie
Education in an Earth crisis must develop capacities
for the wellbeing of people, places and planet:
multi-solving of problems; bio-empathy & ecological
literacy; compassion & forgiveness; systemic
intelligence; boundless imagination.
For these capacities, learners must work on
sustained, situated, experiential projects, including
collaborative encounters with diverse kinds of people.
8. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Emma O’Brien
In an uncertain, complex society the future of
education will not be concerned with what we know
but how we can learn.
Heutagogy empowers all citizens to collaboratively
learn to cope with change and complexity with the
collective good in mind through self and societal
awareness
9. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Ilene Dawn Alexander
A social-justice-oriented heutagogy seeks to enact
learning-centered frameworks that;
*build sustainable and humane interpersonal
interactions
*address complex problem-posing and solution-
seeking cooperatively
*understand multiple practices of inclusion and
diversity
*create accessible physical, economic, and cultural
environments
*sustain natural and built environments prioritising
bio-diversity over kleptocratic corporate gain
11. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Vijaya Bhanu Kote
Try observing an infant. Try observing its growth
mode. You will understand that it is through
Heutagogy that the infant learns everything. We can
say that self-determined learning is an authentic
attitude every child possesses.
Trust the child, localize Heutagogy and try training
parents and teachers on how to trust the child and
encourage Heutagogical learning.
It is the future of education.
12. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Stewart Hase
Heutagogy is an educational approach that fosters
learner agency: the confident, lifelong ability to take
control of one’s learning.
It promotes capabilities such as collaboration,
assessing information, understanding local and
global contexts, creative problem-solving,
challenging assumptions, reflection, and personal
responsibility by using evidence-based and innate,
social learning techniques
13. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Lisa-Marie Blaschke
Heutagogy creates learners for a sustainable
tomorrow.
Heutagogy gives control of learning to the student,
supports discovery and exploration in the learning
experience, builds critical thinking and reflection skills,
and promotes democracy of learning and social justice,
entrepreneurialism, and community engagement
Heutagogic learners learn across disciplines. They
think for themselves…
14. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Thom Cochrane
Focusing upon the principles of Heutagogy:
developing creativity, collaboration, open
educational research and practice and building
authentic learning communities, education would:
Build student capabilities to navigate the unknown,
Enable Academics to become change agents
modelling openness to facilitate student-centred
learning rather than delivery and control of learning
content and environments.
15. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Nigel Ecclesfield
With its focus on learning, learner agency and
learner self-determination, heutagogy offers a clear
focus on learning for all those engaged with
education and an opportunity to overcome the
limitations of education based on curricula and
teaching methods determined through the actions of
political and/or economically discriminatory
institutions.
17. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Ronan O’Beirne
…A walk, a wonder through learning, getting lost by
intent or by accident. Sifting and sieving through
serendipity, gathering the riches of experience,
creating a bricolage of possibly useful artefacts that
will shed light on the journey. Synthesising concepts
and opening the mind to consider new vistas of
discovery…
18. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Aras Bozkurt
Heutagogy, from the perspective of learners, is
taking the agency to design our own learning
journey to navigate and traverse across the learning
networks by centering the learners own learning
needs. They shape and design their own learning
processes and, in turn…
create their own learning ecologies
19. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Violeta Caragea
Self-directed learning helped me reinvent myself
and switch careers in my mid thirties (as big as
transitioning from non-formal education to basic
neuroscience research).
I perceive SDL as a way of designing healthy
societies, helping individuals to thrive by making
them more aware of the inner (and outer) workings
of human learning and the transformative power it
provides. Hope our planet will benefit from this too…
20. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Phil Ecclesfield
Heutogogy is the future of education because it is
intrinsic for the development of individual
knowledge and development without artificial
constraints.
The very young want to learn and explore about
learning to learn. We stifle this natural predisposition
in formal education, but heutogogy engages with
learners own predispositions to learn
21. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Fernando Mendes
Heutagogy better serves a new world of learners
avid to learn but disliking being taught…
Hacking education has transformed each one of us
into knowledge agents.
We believe that the key to building new learning
strategies must come from each individual agent
acting in distributed and self-determined learning
mode…
22. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Matt Crosslin
Is heutagogy the future of education?
No one can really know.
But if education is going to take social justice and
equity seriously, learners in heutagogical
environments would be able to create their own
unique sociocultural pathway of different and
familiar voices, experiences, intersections,
connections, and interactions…
24. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Conclusions
Context; In our complex societies, on bio-diverse
Earth, wellbeing and sustainable social learning can be
achieved communally; We may even create our own
university from our empathetic diversity
Collaboration: confident and creative discovery,
enabled without discrimination, can be localised,
promoting capabilities, modelling openness
Exploration: our serendipitous predisposition to
wonder through multiple socio-cultural pathways is
transformative we create our own learning ecologies
26. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
Policy Ideas
Context; education needs to be fit for context of our
complex lives, not fit for purpose of tests. Localize
budgeting. Include parents and teachers in school
designed as participatory community hubs
Collaboration: authentic student-centred learning
experiences need to be based on the co-creation of
learning communities within dynamic environments
Exploration multiple pathways through personal
learning ecologies should become the essence of
community-responsive, self-determined curricula
28. Contributors
Traian Bruma: (CROS founder, Romania)
Bridget McKenzie: Learning Planet (UK)
Fred Garnett: FRSA (London)
Emma O’Brien: (MIC, Limerick, Ireland)
Ilene Dawn Alexander: (CEI, Uni of Minnesota)
Vijaya Bhanu Kote (Headteacher India)
Stewart Hase: (Dr Heutagogy, Australia)
Nigel Ecclesfield: FRSA (Devon)
Thomas Cochrane: (CHSE, Melbourne, Australia)
Lisa-Marie Blaschke: (Oldenburg Uni, Germany)
Ronan O’Beirne: (Southampton University, UK)
Aras Bozkurt: (Anadolu University, Turkey)
Violeta Caragea: (Neuroscience Bochum)
Phil Ecclesfield: (Outdoor Owls, UK)
Fernando Mendes: (CoWorkLisboa, Portugal)
Matt Crosslin: (University of Texas, USA)
Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
29. Is Heutagogy the Future of Education?
@fredgarnett #heutagogy Planet Earth 15/10/20