Understanding Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Heutagogy

“Pedagogy typically refers to how the instructor facilitates the learning (the process) where the focus is on what the instructor does (how they design activities and content) as opposed to what the participants do or what they bring to the learning environment - teacher centered.” For pedagogy, we gave them ideas and topics to work on. We designed the activities and the contents of it so the camper had an idea of what they were going to do in the summer camp. We assume responsibility for making decisions about what is learned, and how and when something will be learned. The educational focus here is on transmitting, in a very teacher-controlled environment, the content subject matter.

“Andragogy is best understood as an adult learning concept popularized by Malcolm Knowles. It is based upon understanding the motivations behind learning. It is noteworthy to point out that the focus is upon the student and their intrinsic desire to create knowledge and an understanding that the instructor facilitates students’ self-actualization of their full potential.” The educational focus of this is on facilitating the acquisition of and critical thinking about the content and its application in real-life practical settings. The camper made had had some ideas of open sources but I asked them at the beginning and at the end of the camp, they did learn a lot about open sources.

“Heutagogy promotes the concept of self-determined holistic learning through critical reflection. The approach facilitates a flexible modality where the instructor shares resources and learners help design the course or path of learning. Heutagogy involves encouraging learners to become deeply reflective while developing their capabilities. Reflection focuses upon helping the learner understand how experiences affect their values, beliefs, goals, habits, conceptual frameworks, and previously held ideals and to contemplate ways in which the learner might expand their self-efficacy in these areas.” The approach has been proposed as a theory for applying to emerging technologies in distance education and for guiding distance education practice and the ways in which distance educators develop and deliver instruction using newer technologies such as social media. In an easier way of putting it, it is a self-determined learning process. An example of it would be when we have group of team works, they were all self-efficacy which they are knowing how to learn and they developed better communication skills and working wells with others. The projects they did were creative and also they apply knowledge to new and unfamiliar situations by being adaptable and flexible in approaches.