Heutagogy (Because We Need New Education Jargon)

There are, apparently, three siblings in the Gogy family-- pedagogy, andragogy, and heutagogy.

Pedagogy you already know, at least in some vague way. Andragogy is the method and practice of teaching adults. Heutagogy--well, heutagogy is a made-up word. Miriam-Webster hasn't heard of it. The word was coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon "to describe self-learning independent of formal teaching." Those two scholars were, at the time, at Southern Cross University in Australia.

That short, simple definition suggests why the term has been gathering steam over the past several years (a Google Ngram search shows an almost uninterrupted explosion of the term's use). If someone in your immediate vicinity starts using it, should you be alarmed? Well.....

On the one hand, learner-directed learning is pretty much what most grown-ups do. If I want to learn about something (like heutagogy), I start digging and reading and asking and cogitating. It was one of the things my liberal arts education explicitly aimed to do--to set me up to be able to teach myself whatever I wanted or needed to know for the rest of my life. 

But that's as an educated adult, and some heuta-fans are clearly intending that a heutagogical future should be in the cards for learners of all ages. And some of their materials are not entirely encouraging.

For instance, there seems to be a tendency to stack the three Gogy siblings and simplify their explanations in ways that feel like: peda is the sage on the stage, andra is the guide on the side, and heuta is fly free and follow your educational bliss. Here's instructional coach Lauren Davis:

Meanwhile, the heutagogical approach encourages students to find their own problems and questions to answer. Instead of simply completing the tasks teachers assign, these students seek out areas of uncertainty and complexity in the subjects they study. Teachers help by providing context to students' learning and creating opportunities for them to explore subjects fully.

This is where my traditionalist flag flies. I think there's always a place for the sage on the stage (if she knows what the hell she's talking about) and the guide on the side is also a useful classroom role (if, again, one knows their way around the territory). But in my career, I would have been embarrassed to say that I learned as much from the kids as they did from me. Nor would I have claimed not to have any real knowledge of the material, or have suggested that I could aid education by giving neither lecture, guidance or nudging. As a teacher, if I'm not the subject matter expert in that classroom, what the heck am I doing there? That doesn't mean I'm the God of my subject matter or that I can never gain anything from actually listening to my students, but if I'm not the most knowledgeable person in the room and my roll is to sit in the corner while the students wander unguided and unaided, why are the taxpayers paying me? 

Some of the folks in the heutagogy game are not encouraging. One name that pops up is Jacki Gerstein, who writes blog posts about "user-generated education" with titles like "I do not teach for a living--I live teaching as my doing...and technology has amplified my passion for doing so." Terry Heick ("education expert interested in modern knowledge demands") has written a piece about the gogy siblings in which he posts a set of presentation slides based on Gerstein's work that includes things like a slide that asserts (with a nod toward the discredited learning styles approach) that we learn 100% from participating in activities, but, below "viewing pictures" or "teaching the activity" we find reading coming in at 10%.

Heutagogy is popping up all around the globe. Here's an article from just last week from India (and heavily lifted from this Schoology article from 2018)  touting heutagogy as "the new lifelong-learning shift" and defining it as "a student-centered instructional strategy to teach lifelong learning and aims to produce a learning ecosystem that is well-prepared for the complexities of today's workplace."  There's a heutagogy community of practice on line, though like many of these sources, it has been pretty sleepy for the past few years.

 

There are plenty of definitions offered for heutagogy, but certain ideas keep turning up.  Self-determination. Autonomy. And technology. 

Reading about heutagogy reminds me of the open school movement of the sixties. My aunt opened a school in Connecticut; the idea was that the children would be immersed in a rich environment where they would simply follow where their curiosity led them. It did not last long. Turns out that small humans don't exactly thrive in unguided adult-free situations. 

Heutagogy, like many 21st century education ideas, appears to think that computers can magically change the equation, much like presenters I heard two decades ago breathlessly announcing that students would soon all be carrying mini-computers in their pockets. Which has turned out to be true--but students consider them as remarkable and inspiring as pencils and pens and books. One of my own crusades for my last very many years in the classroom was to try to convince students that they could use those mini-computers to find answers to questions and not just to play with this week's hot app. It's the great paradox of computers and education--they change everything, except that they don't change anything. 

And some heutagogical types seem to get this. There's talk about "competencies and capabilities" and the idea that students need tools if they're going to self-direct their learning. But there's also talk like this: "the heutagogical approach encourages students to find their own problems and questions to answer. Instead of simply completing the tasks teachers assign, these students seek out areas of uncertainty and complexity in the subjects they study. Teachers help by providing context to students' learning and creating opportunities for them to explore subjects fully."

You can see why the approach is going to be popular in some quarters. The "prepared for the complexities of the workplace" part fits those who think corporations shouldn't have to pay to train their workers. And the self-directed technology use is right out of the personalized [sic] learning playbook-- give the kid a computer and let her figure out her education on her own. No need to pay for a teacher--just a "coach" or "mentor", and not even that much need for highly-developed educational software. 

Is there room, even necessity, for some self-direction in education? Sure, and even more need for a teacher who can identify and respond to the directions that would be most useful for students. But abdicating all adult responsibility to say, "You students just go ahead and educate yourselves" is a lousy idea, even if you slap a cool made-up Greek name on it.