An overview of lessons learnt from World Heutagogy Day 2018 #wHday18. We need to build a learning infrastructure not educational institutions

1. What is learner-centred
learning? Some thoughts
World Heutagogy Day 2018
@fredgarnett and the World Heutagogy Crew…

2. Self-determined learner age 5;
Philippe; Shall we read the book together?
Do you want to read the book to me?
Nina; I don't want to read the book aloud!
I want to read it with my imagination!
If other people read the story to me...
“It will spoil my imagination”

3. What is learner-centred learning?
 AS Neill A Dominies Log
 The Academy as Conversation
 Communities of Scholars hijacked by Cities
 Liberal Arts as enabling learning
 Schooling as a bullying infrastructure
 Folksonomy not Taxonomy
 How we might learn
 Building a Learning Infrastructure
 Trust the Learner
 Resources

4. AS Neill – A Dominies Log
 Just before WW1 AS Neill, who later founded the learner-
centred school Summerhill, took up a job teaching in his local
school. He kept a log, A Dominies Log, in which he daily
recorded what went on and then reflected on that to further
enable his ability to teach as a craft professional
 There were plans to both, hold a national teaching conference,
and to make Education Science an aspect of the British Society
for Social Responsibility in Science. The war ended this hopeful
project to make education ethical and Neill merely set up a
democratic school to inspire

6. The Academy of Conversation
 Today we tend to think that learning and the academic model
of learning started with the first Academy 2,500 years ago. It's
more likely based on a Renaissance painting (Raphael) than an
informed history of education.
 Platos Academy, in Athens, however had a completely non-
academic learning model based on conversation. Arguably it
combined formal, non-formal and informal learning processes.
Harvard University's Socratic model of learning is about the
learner "owning" their learning, if in a very guided and
institutionally-based way.

8. The Lectern dictates
 Oxford University argue that they invented the lecture by
creating the lectern so the text of rare books could be read
allowed and copied by "pupils." Unfortunately Dumbledore has
propagated this dumbing down of learning through the 9
3/4//100 school of Hogw*** could do better
 Before Bologna and Paris invented the University, in order to
hijack learning for financial reasons, the European model of
Learning was the self-organised Community of Scholars, self-
organised on the actual Academy model, of finding a "master"
and discussing thoughts with each other.

9. This is not the learning you are looking for

10. The Liberal Arts of Learning
 At Everything Unplugged, the learning conversations
discussion group, one of our profoundly useful conclusions was
that the (education) system should be based around providing
us with formats of expression rather than subjects of study; an
enabling education
 Turns out the medieval Western university, for a time, taught
this way. The Liberal Arts model was based on the scientific
arts - music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and the
humanities arts - grammar, logic and rhetoric. A subject
discipline "Masters" followed that grounding…

11. Grammar
Rhetoric
Logic
Music
Geometry
Arithmetic
Alchemy

12. Schooling as Bullying
 The disastrous 19th century triumph of educational
taxonomies as schooling, not as the final "mastery" of learning,
inverted our learning skill set. One education system with only
one mode of expression examined
 This way is right – your way is wrong…
 Humans are a bio-diverse species, we survive because our
human qualities are widely dispersed.
 Let each learner find their own interests and find their own
modes of expression
 All ways are Alright

13. School pokes your
eyes out
University teaches
you Braille
Post-graduate study
is speed-reading in
Braille
Fred Emery 1965

14. Folksonomy not Taxonomy
 Folksonomy; the collaborative definition of learning boundaries –
suitable for a time of resource abundance
 Folksonomy; the basis of collaborative inter-disciplinary learning
 Taxonomy; the hierarchical definition of subject boundaries - possibly
useful in times of resource scarcity (Fahreneit 451)
 Taxonomy; the basis of educational discipline; don't spare the rod
 Collaborative Wisdoms not hierarchical expertise

15. o r a t i o n

16. How we might Learn
0-6 Human Learning
6-12 Social Learning
12-18 Creative Learning

18. Michael Newman from Summerhill
'Humans as learners’ is a definition that can
isolate learning from creating. I like humans as
creators, the creation of ourselves through
exploration of our natural and community
worlds.
Robert Owen’s views that we create our
identities, and this realisation, with reason,
allows us to free ourselves from environmental
determinism."

20. Building a Learning Infrastructure
 What I learned from World Heutagogy Day about learner-
centred learning is that we need to build a learning
infrastructure…
 Learning is an emergent process and each learner has a unique
way of learning both as process and in terms of valued
consequences.
 To build a learning future we need both development
frameworks to help us think afresh
 And inspiring examples like CROS the Universitatea
Alternativă in Romania who Trust the Learner

22. Trust the Learner
 We can start by learning to trust the learner
 We can use our ears for deep listening (Keith Sawyer)
 It's not the sunshine of institutions that enables you to
learn It's the gravity of your intent to learn
 Most of we need to create new metaphors of learning
 More in Part 2…

23. World Heutagogy Day Resources;
What is Learner-centred learning?
 WORLD Heutagogy Day https://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/world-
heutagogy-day
 What is Learner-centred learning Part One
https://heutagogicarchive.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/what-is-learner-centred-
learning-1/
 What is learner-centred learning Part Two
https://heutagogicarchive.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/what-is-learner-centred-
learning-2/
 Trust the Learner https://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/wikiquals-and-
personalised-learning
 Before and after Institutions https://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/before-and-
after-institutions