Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Heutagogy Hotchpotch

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Mirjam Neelen and Paul Kirschner continue to frustrate me. Here's an example of their reasoning (as usual conflating 'learning' with 'content knowledge'), "Do adults really learn differently than children? An adult can be just as unknowing (i.e., be a novice) in an area as a child, and a child can have expertise in areas that adults might not know about." They also write, "Heutagogy is underpinned with assumptions grounded in humanism and constructivism... so, we can ask ourselves why we need a term like 'heutagogy' at all." Whatever the merits of the term, it is used in research. The authors cite a (paywalled, naturally) study by Robert Moore that rolls up "33 peer-reviewed publications published between 2000 and 2019" that reference heutagogy, then complain that it's a "hotchpotch of heutagogical stuff". Well sure, that's the inevitable result of combining 33 studies over 20 years. I agree with them that it would be nice if there were a clear and universally agreed-up conception of heutagogy, but as is the case with everything in the field, there is not. And as a result  their cherry-picked criticisms o the term as a generalization are not even remotely convincing. Image: Flemish Hotch-Potch.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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