Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such is heutagogy, coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon of Southern Cross University in Australia; others are self-directed learning and self-determined learning. In the heutagogy paradigm, a learner should be at the centre of their own learning.[6] A truly self-determined learning approach also sees the heutagogic learner exploring different approaches to knowledge in order to learn; there is an element of experimentation underpinned by a personal curiosity.[7]
Andragogy "strive[s] for autonomy and self-direction in learning", while Heutagogy "identif[ies] the potential to learn from novel experiences as a matter of course [...] manage their own learning".[8]Ubuntugogy is a type of cosmopolitanism that has a collectivist ethics of awareness concerning the African diaspora.[9][10]
Autodidacticism is sometimes a complement of modern formal education.[11] As a complement to formal education, students would be encouraged to do more independent work.[12] The Industrial Revolution created a new situation for self-directed learners.
Before the twentieth century, only a small minority of people received an advanced academic education. As stated by Joseph Whitworth in his influential report on industry dated from 1853, literacy rates were higher in the United States. However, even in the U.S., most children were not completing high school. High school education was necessary to become a teacher. In modern times, a larger percentage of those completing high school also attended college, usually to pursue a professional degree, such as law or medicine, or a divinity degree.[13]
Collegiate teaching was based on the classics (Latin, philosophy, ancient history, theology) until the early nineteenth century. There were few if any institutions of higher learning offering studies in engineering or science before 1800. Institutions such as the Royal Society did much to promote scientific learning, including public lectures. In England, there were also itinerant lecturers offering their service, typically for a fee.[14]
Prior to the nineteenth century, there were many important inventors working as millwrights or mechanics who, typically, had received an elementary education and served an apprenticeship.[13] Mechanics, instrument makers and surveyors had various mathematics training. James Watt was a surveyor and instrument maker and is described as being "largely self-educated".[15] Watt, like some other autodidacts of the time, became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Lunar Society. In the eighteenth century these societies often gave public lectures and were instrumental in teaching chemistry and other sciences with industrial applications which were neglected by traditional universities. Academies also arose to provide scientific and technical training.
Years of schooling in the United States began to increase sharply in the early twentieth century. This phenomenon was seemingly related to increasing mechanization displacing child labor. The automated glass bottle-making machine is said to have done more for education than child labor laws because boys were no longer needed to assist.[16] However, the number of boys employed in this particular industry was not that large; it was mechanization in several sectors of industry that displaced child labor toward education. For males in the U.S. born 1886–90, years of school averaged 7.86, while for those born in 1926–30, years of school averaged 11.46.[17]
One of the most recent trends in education is that the classroom environment should cater towards students' individual needs, goals, and interests. This model adopts the idea of inquiry-based learning where students are presented with scenarios to identify their own research, questions and knowledge regarding the area. As a form of discovery learning, students in today's classrooms are being provided with more opportunity to "experience and interact" with knowledge, which has its roots in autodidacticism.
Successful self-teaching can require self-discipline and reflective capability. Some research suggests that the ability to regulate one's own learning may need to be modeled to some students so that they become active learners, while others learn dynamically via a process outside conscious control.[18] To interact with the environment, a framework has been identified to determine the components of any learning system: a reward function, incremental action value functions and action selection methods.[19] Rewards work best in motivating learning when they are specifically chosen on an individual student basis. New knowledge must be incorporated into previously existing information as its value is to be assessed. Ultimately, these scaffolding techniques, as described by Vygotsky (1978) and problem solving methods are a result of dynamic decision making.
In his book Deschooling Society, philosopher Ivan Illich strongly criticized 20th-century educational culture and the institutionalization of knowledge and learning - arguing that institutional schooling as such is an irretrievably flawed model of education - advocating instead ad-hoc co-operative networks through which autodidacts could find others interested in teaching themselves a given skill or about a given topic, supporting one another by pooling resources, materials, and knowledge.[20]
Secular and modern societies have given foundations for new systems of education and new kinds of autodidacts. As Internet access has become more widespread the World Wide Web (explored using search engines such as Google) in general, and websites such as Wikipedia (including parts of it that were included in a book or referenced in a reading list), YouTube, Udemy, Udacity and Khan Academy in particular, have developed as learning centers for many people to actively and freely learn together. Organizations like The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) have been formed to publicize and provide guidance for self-directed education.[21]
The first philosophical claim supporting an autodidactic program to the study of nature and God was in the philosophical novelHayy ibn Yaqdhan (Alive son of the Vigilant), whose titular hero is considered the archetypal autodidact.[22] The story is a medieval autodidactic utopia, a philosophical treatise in a literary form, which was written by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufail in the 1160s in Marrakesh. It is a story about a feral boy, an autodidact prodigy who masters nature through instruments and reason, discovers laws of nature by practical exploration and experiments, and gains summum bonum through a mystical mediation and communion with God. The hero rises from his initial state of tabula rasa to a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or highest form of human knowledge.
Commonly translated as "The Self-Taught Philosopher" or "The Improvement of Human Reason", Ibn-Tufayl's story Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan inspired debates about autodidacticism in a range of historical fields from classical Islamic philosophy through Renaissance humanism and the European Enlightenment. In his book Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism, Avner Ben-Zaken showed how the text traveled from late medieval Andalusia to early modern Europe and demonstrated the intricate ways in which autodidacticism was contested in and adapted to diverse cultural settings.[22]
Autodidacticism apparently intertwined with struggles over Sufism in twelfth-century Marrakesh; controversies about the role of philosophy in pedagogy in fourteenth-century Barcelona; quarrels concerning astrology in RenaissanceFlorence in which Pico della Mirandola pleads for autodidacticism against the strong authority of intellectual establishment notions of predestination; and debates pertaining to experimentalism in seventeenth-century Oxford. Pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions; they surfaced in struggles for control between individuals and establishments.[22]
In the story of Black American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams presents a historical account to examine Black American's relationship to literacy during slavery, the Civil War and the first decades of freedom.[23] Many of the personal accounts tell of individuals who have had to teach themselves due to racial discrimination in education.
In architecture
Tadao Ando is a famous autodidact architect of the twenty-first century.
There are very few countries allowing autodidacticism in architecture today. The practice of architecture or the use of the title "architect", are now protected in most countries.
When a political state starts to implement restrictions on the profession, there are issues related to the rights of established self-taught architects. In most countries the legislation includes a grandfather clause, authorising established self-taught architects to continue practicing. In the UK, the legislation[24] allowed self-trained architects with two years of experience to register. In France,[25] it allowed self-trained architects with five years of experience to register. In Belgium,[26] the law allowed experienced self-trained architects in practice to register. In Italy,[27] it allowed self-trained architects with 10 years of experience to register. In The Netherlands, the "wet op de architectentitel van 7 juli 1987" along with additional procedures, allowed architects with 10 years of experience and architects aged 40 years old or over, with 5 years of experience, to access the register.[28]
However, other sovereign states chose to omit such a clause, and many established and competent practitioners were stripped of their professional rights.[29] In the Republic of Ireland, a group named "Architects' Alliance of Ireland" is defending the interests of long-established self-trained architects[30] who were deprived of their rights to practice as per Part 3 of the Irish Building Control Act 2007.[31]
Theoretical research such as Architecture of Change, Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment[32] or older studies such as Vers une Architecture from Le Corbusier describe the practice of architecture as an environment changing with new technologies, sciences, and legislation. All architects must be autodidacts to keep up to date with new standards, regulations, or methods.
Self-taught architects such as Eileen Gray, Luis Barragán, and many others, created a system where working is also learning, where self-education is associated with creativity and productivity within a working environment.
While he was primarily interested in naval architecture, William Francis Gibbs learned his profession through his own study of battleships and ocean liners. Through his life he could be seen examining and changing the designs of ships that were already built, that is, until he started his firm Gibbs and Cox.
Predictors
Openness is the largest predictory of self-directed learning out of the Big Five personality traits though in a study personality only explained 10% of the variance in self-directed learning.[33]:642
Future role
The role of self-directed learning continues to be investigated in learning approaches, along with other important goals of education, such as content knowledge, epistemic practices and collaboration.[34] As colleges and universities offer distance learning degree programs and secondary schools provide cyber school options for K–12 students, technology provides numerous resources that enable individuals to have a self-directed learning experience. Several studies show these programs function most effectively when the "teacher" or facilitator is a full owner of virtual space to encourage a broad range of experiences to come together in an online format.[35] This allows self-directed learning to encompass both a chosen path of information inquiry, self-regulation methods and reflective discussion among experts as well as novices in a given area. Furthermore, massive open online courses (MOOCs) make autodidacticism easier and thus more common.
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It also examines the concepts and presuppositions of education theories. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws inspiration from various disciplines both within and outside philosophy, like ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Many of its theories focus specifically on education in schools but it also encompasses other forms of education. Its theories are often divided into descriptive theories, which provide a value-neutral description of what education is, and normative theories, which investigate how education should be practiced.
A teaching method is a set of principles and methods used by teachers to enable student learning. These strategies are determined partly on subject matter to be taught, partly by the relative expertise of the learners, and partly by constraints caused by the learning environment. For a particular teaching method to be appropriate and efficient it has take into account the learner, the nature of the subject matter, and the type of learning it is supposed to bring about.
Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. It can mean any form of learning adults engage in beyond traditional schooling, encompassing basic literacy to personal fulfillment as a lifelong learner, and to ensure the fulfillment of an individual.
Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. This concept is distinct from experiential learning, however experiential learning is a subfield and operates under the methodologies associated with experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed. The Journal of Experiential Education publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical academic research within the field.
In education, a curriculum is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. A curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Curricula are split into several categories: the explicit, the implicit, the excluded, and the extracurricular.
Lifelong learning is the "ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated" pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It is important for an individual's competitiveness and employability, but also enhances social inclusion, active citizenship, and personal development.
Andragogy refers to methods and principles used in adult education. The word comes from the Greek ἀνδρ- (andr-), meaning "adult male", and ἀγωγός (agogos), meaning "leader of". Therefore, andragogy literally means "leading men ", whereas "pedagogy" literally means "leading children".
Constructivism is a theory in education which posits that individuals or learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by passively perceiving it within a direct process of knowledge transmission, rather they construct new understandings and knowledge through experience and social discourse, integrating new information with what they already know. For children, this includes knowledge gained prior to entering school. It is associated with various philosophical positions, particularly in epistemology as well as ontology, politics, and ethics. The origin of the theory is also linked to Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
Ibn Ṭufayl was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, and vizier.
Democratic education is a type of formal education that is organized democratically, so that students can manage their own learning and participate in the governance of their school. Democratic education is often specifically emancipatory, with the students' voices being equal to the teacher's.
This glossary of education-related terms is based on how they commonly are used in Wikipedia articles. This article contains terms starting with A – C. Select a letter from the table of contents to find terms on other articles.
Moses Narbonne, also known as Moses of Narbonne, mestre Vidal Bellshom, maestro Vidal Blasom, and Moses Narboni, was a medieval Catalan philosopher and physician. He was born at Perpignan, in the Kingdom of Majorca, at the end of the thirteenth century and died sometime after 1362. He began studying philosophy with his father when he was thirteen and then studied with Moses and Abraham Caslari. He studied medicine and eventually became a successful physician, and was well versed in Biblical and rabbinical literature.
Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is an Arabic philosophical novel and an allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century in Al-Andalus. Names by which the book is also known include the Latin: Philosophus Autodidactus ; and English: The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān was named after an earlier Arabic philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna during his imprisonment in the early 11th century, even though both tales had different stories. The novel greatly inspired Islamic philosophy as well as major Enlightenment thinkers. It is the third most translated text from Arabic, after the Quran and the One Thousand and One Nights.
Independent study is a form of education offered by many high schools, colleges, and other educational institutions. It is sometimes referred to as directed study, and is an educational activity undertaken by an individual with little to no supervision. Typically a student and professor or teacher agree upon a topic for the student to research with guidance from the instructor for an agreed upon amount of credits. Independent studies provide a way for well-motivated students to pursue a topic of interest that does not necessarily fit into a traditional academic curriculum. They are a way for students to learn specialized material or gain research experience.
Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.
An adult educator or AE is one who practices the profession of facilitating the learning of adults by applying the principles of andragogy. The broader term of trainer is sometimes used for an adult educator when listing job categories. However, a trainer is not necessarily an adult educator. As Malcolm Knowles proposes, to be a successful adult educator, one must recognize that adult learners are self-directed. That is, they know basically what they need to learn at a given point in their career and seek to engage in the process of their learning through active participation.
An adult learner or, more commonly, a mature student, is a person who is older and is involved in forms of learning. Adult learners fall in a specific criterion of being experienced, and do not always have a high school diploma. Many of the adult learners go back to school to finish a degree, or earn a new one.
One of the most visible approaches to peer learning comes out of cognitive psychology, and is applied within a "mainstream" educational framework: "Peer learning is an educational practice in which students interact with other students to attain educational goals." Other authors including David Boud describe peer learning as a way of moving beyond independent to interdependent or mutual learning among peers. In this context, it can be compared to the practices that go by the name cooperative learning. However, other contemporary views on peer learning relax the constraints, and position "peer-to-peer learning" as a mode of "learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything." Whether it takes place in a formal or informal learning context, in small groups or online, peer learning manifests aspects of self-organization that are mostly absent from pedagogical models of teaching and learning.
Bernard D. Bull is an American academic administrator and scholar. He is currently serving as president of Concordia University Nebraska. Bull previously served as president of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
References
↑ "autodidact". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024. a self-taught person
↑ "autodidact". Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, LLC. 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024. a person who has learned a subject without the benefit of a teacher or formal education; a self-taught person.
↑ "Autodidact". Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press & Assessment. 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024. a person who teaches himself or herself, rather than being taught by a teacher
↑ "self-educated". Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge University Press & Assessment. 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024. A self-educated person has obtained knowledge or skills by themselves rather than being taught by other people
↑ "self-educated". The Britannica Dictionary. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2024. Retrieved 10 April 2024. educated by your own efforts (such as by reading books) rather than in a school
↑ Samantha Chapnick & Jimm Meloy (2005). "From Andragogy to Heutagogy". Renaissance elearning: creating dramatic and unconventional learning experiences. Essential resources for training and HR professionals. John Wiley and Sons. pp.36–37. ISBN9780787971472.
↑ Hase Stewart and Chris Kenyon. Self-Determined Learning: Heutagogy in Action. Bloomsbury Academic 2015.
↑ "Pedagogy, Andragogy, & Heutagogy". Center for Online Learning, Research and Service. University of Illinois Springfield. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
↑ Bangura, A. K. (2005). "Ubuntugogy: An African Educational Paradigm That Transcends Pedagogy, Andragogy, Ergonagy And Heutagogy". Journal of Third World Studies. 22 (2): 13–53. JSTOR45198556. Retrieved 10 April 2024. [T]he essence of ubuntugogy is that it is imperative and urgent for African educators to be concerned about broader education as well as training and to be concerned about approaches to learning and teaching which are undergirded by humanity or fellow feeling toward others.
↑ van der Walt, J. L. (2010). "'Ubuntugogy' for the 21st Century". Journal of Third World Studies. 27 (2): 249–266. JSTOR45194719. Retrieved 11 April 2024. Ubuntu rejects this modernistic and atomistic individualism since it overemphasizes the seemingly solitary aspects of human existence at the expense of the communal aspects and interests. It also rejects Western-style collectivism which views society as a collection of separately existing and detached individuals or small groups. Ubuntu views the individual in terms of his or her relationship with others; individuals only exist only in and through their relationships and bonds with others.
↑ "University lecturers do not guide their students' learning to the same extent; they do not organise their students' private study (no more set homework!); nor do they filter knowledge for you in the same way. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that you are expected to be independent, capable of organising your life, your time, your studies and your learning, so that when you graduate you are able to function successfully in your chosen profession". Extract from: The student's guide to learning at university, by Geoffrey Cooper, published in 2003 Australia by TheHumanities.com, ISBN1-86335-510-3
↑ Refer to document on the Dutch Registration System drafted after a meeting between the General Secretary and Dr. Hans Groenevald, Director of the Stichting Bureau Architectenreglster, (SBA) in the Hague on 1 October 1993. 1 October 1993 is a significant date because on that day the protection of the title "architect" came into force in the Netherlands.
↑ Refer to the example of the Republic of Ireland, where hundreds of professionally trained architects oppose new legislation that would prevent them from practicing. See Parliamentary records for more information.
↑ Hmelo-Silver, C.E.; R.G. Duncan; C.A Chinn (2007). "Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Krischner, Sweller and Clark". Educational Psychologist. 42 (2): 99. doi:10.1080/00461520701263368. S2CID1360735.
↑ Barab, S.A.; J.G. MaKinster; J.A. Moore; D.J. Cunningham (2001). "Designing and Building an online-community: The struggle to support sociability in the inquiry learning forum". Educational Technology Research and Development. 49 (4): 71. doi:10.1007/bf02504948. S2CID17614349.
Hailey, Kendall (1 January 1989). The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter. Delta. ISBN978-0440550136.
Hase, Stewart; Kenyon, Chris (January 2000). "From Andragogy to Heutagogy". Original UltiBASE Publication. Southern Cross University. Retrieved 10 April 2024.
Llewellyn, Grace (29 September 2021). The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education. Lowry House Publishers. ISBN978-0962959196.
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