In this chapter, we will describe the concept of agency and why it is vitally important to learning both from an educational context and from the point of view of the social good. This is a timely discussion given the problems we have in a world that has difficulty separating fact from fiction and in interpreting information, and in a world where lifelong learning is a critical skill. We then discuss heutagogy (self-determined learning) aligning it with the concept of learner agency and positioning heutagogy as a pedagogy of agency. 

In this chapter we explore the practical application of heutagogy. It begins by looking at some of the literature describing how heutagogy has been used in various contexts. We also examine the concept of the learning leader and what attributes they need to have in order to use heutagogy. The learner also needs to be prepared to adopt a heutagogic approach and we view this through the lens of the Pedagogy-Andragogy-Heutagogy (PAH) continuum. Finally, a number of suggestions are made about how agency may be applied.

Having written a novel examining how I discovered my learning agency and my personal heutagogy, I thought my learning agency came from the choices I made as a teenager concerning music I listened to during the Sixties, starting with The Beatles, and the friends and conversations it engendered. Since then, I’ve examined more closely how I discovered learning agency and have realised there were many implicit contextual factors which were less about choice and more about circumstance. I identified three that happened when I was “accidentally” home-schooled. Firstly, my mother became a librarian when I was seven years old and for two years I had to read in a library for an extra hour a day. Secondly, my father undertook a teacher-training course when I was ten years old and used me to test textbooks designed for fifteen-year-olds. Thirdly, in the twelve-months before I started secondary school, my family lived in four different houses, and I went to three different schools, which encouraged me to take my own decisions on how to be responsible for my own learning. Cumulatively, it seems I had developed a personal “craft of learning” before I entered formalised secondary education and The Beatles arrived. This chapter explores my personal journey and the factors that have influenced my discovery of learning agency.

The connections and networks we make both inside and outside of the classroom are critical to our current and future professional success and to the development of lifelong learning skills. Learner agency plays a central role in establishing and building those connections and networks, and by using a variety of online, networked theories, instructors are able to guide and support students in creating and developing their own network of personal learning. These teaching and learning approaches are not limited to heutagogy (self-determined learning), but also include connectivism and rhizomatic learning – all theories that promote learner agency through connectedness and connectivity in the learning process. This chapter discusses these learner-centred theories for networked learning and their role in promoting learner agency in online learning spaces and within learning ecologies as a whole.

Nurturing learner agency can foster critical citizenship for young adults in a relatively safe environment. The American University in Cairo (AUC) has a mostly Egyptian student body, coming from diverse educational backgrounds: some have experienced schooling which centers around memorization and teacher authority, thus stifling agency and critical thinking. In addition, we are surrounded by a culture and political environment that does the same: an authoritarian government that makes questioning authority and free speech in general risky. This chapter reflects on attempts to create space for learner agency over three years of teaching the course, Digital Identities and Digital Literacies in an Intercultural Context. Four co-authors reflect on these three approaches:

1. Ungrading via learner self-grading
2. Learner-contributed content and activities
3. Choose-your-own-pathway for developing digital literacies

This paper will describe how this approach evolved over time and how learner reactions were observed and listened to. Some of the challenges and how the underlying critical pedagogy values were used to guide the teacher in addressing them are also presented. Included is how the teacher’s own agency as the sole designer and teacher of this course (which is independent of other courses at the university) helped provide flexibility. In addition, the co-authors (students) will reflect on their learning experience (quotes are in italics).   

One of the more difficult issues related to agency in education is designing for equity for all learners. Learners enter into every course with unique learning goals, pre-existing knowledge, epistemological preferences, sociocultural contexts, and practical life constraints. Designing one course for this diverse array of factors can be overwhelming, especially when trying to distill all of these unique factors into one learning pathway. The concept of Self-Mapped Learning Pathways (SMLP) has recently emerged as a design methodology focused on encouraging learner agency and equity. The basic idea of SMLP design is to create a course that allows learners to create their own learning pathway when presented with the options of an instructor-led modality and a student-centered modality. Learners can follow either modality or mix the two as needed. This chapter will explore the basic theory behind SMLP as well as current research results, but the primary focus will be on how to critically conceptualize and practically design courses for encouraging learner agency and equity through SMLP.

This chapter investigates how to support the pedagogy of choice as a means of developing learner agency. In this case study, 30 preservice student teachers participated in a hybrid pedagogical approach combining heutagogy, problem-based learning (PBL) and universal design for learning (UDL). The aim was to support learner agency by providing an environment that nurtured self-determined collaborative, authentic and ill-structured learning. The approach illustrates new opportunities in higher education teaching to bridge the gap between traditional content-focused, discipline-centred teaching and the demands of our increasingly fast paced, collaborative and technology-driven society and working environments. The study found that the students enjoyed having choice, however, experienced high levels of anxiety in exercising agency. The need for additional scaffolds to alleviate anxiety was highlighted, in particular information literacy skill building exercises, increased reflection on the learner’s experience and emotion to promote self-regulation and to nurture self-reliance and learner confidence. Further consideration needs to be given to encouraging agency during the provision of professional development for higher education educators, particularly in the context of risk taking, opening teaching approaches and articulating metacognition around their teaching decisions to students to facilitate the modelling of agency in the educational system.

The ability of learners to successfully exercise agency depends on four key elements: positive relationships, self-confidence, self-management, and program design. Psychological safety and unconditional positive regard are the bedrock of the positive relationships that enable learners to progressively take more agency. Self-confidence paired with self-management skills enable learners to feel competent drivers of their own learning. Program design, based on voice, choice and self-determination, further creates the opportunities for learners to practice agency. This chapter examines the practical application of these four elements in the Learnlife Barcelona Urban Hub’s full-time program, which serves learners aged 12-19.

Learner agency plays a key role in self-determined learning (heutagogy) since, in heutagogy, the learner becomes fully responsible for the whole learning experience. Learner agency is further increased in online learning environments because learners require a great deal of self-regulation. Self-regulation and self-directedness are crucial aspects of learner agency and heutagogy: learner agency is perceived as learners’ lurking potential for self-directed engagement. Learner agency emerges from the interaction of several factors such as self-concept, beliefs, motivation, affect, self-regulation and self-efficacy. Learner agency in general, and in the literature of heutagogy as well, is often studied within a qualitative framework, and research carried out with quantitative measures on attributes that contribute to learner agency is scarce. Our study’s focus was to understand which attributes among self-efficacy, self-reflection and insight, and internet skills were statistically significant contributors to self-directed learning readiness of Language MOOC learners. Our findings highlighted that insight and self-efficacy were the most important predictors of learners’ readiness for self-directed learning. As a result of this study, we propose a framework based on the empirical findings and the theory of heutagogy to help educational designers and course owners enhance learners’ self-directed and self-determined learning attributes.

This chapter examines the role of agency and heutagogy in work-based learning and in preparing learners in tertiary education for work. The world is moving at a fast pace, with change occurring extremely rapidly in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Workplaces need people who are able to respond to change and adapt quickly. To do this requires that future employees have the ability to learn as well as exhibit agency. We will look at the role heutagogy can play in enabling agency, helping people be effective learners and also how learning at work can be harnessed, valued and used effectively. Finally, we examine the role of digital technologies in work-based learning.

This chapter introduces a school-wide intervention program in Tomer Elementary School in Beer Sheva, Israel. The program emphasizes agentic engagement and self-determination among students and teachers by supporting their psychological needs (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and implementing heutagogy. The teachers developed a wide range of methods for these aims, which are described in detail. The program was followed by a qualitative study in which students and teachers were interviewed. The results indicate meaningful conceptual and behavioral changes that occurred following the teachers' and students' psychological need support. While teachers emphasized the pedagogical contribution of the intervention, students highlighted the social aspect, focusing on the need for belongingness to their peers and teachers. The students' responses indicated a proactive approach to learning and to social life. They exhibited triple-loop reflections by reporting what they had learned of themselves as students and human beings. They also expressed a sense of autonomy and a sense of competence. The process was spiral and continuous, ranging over the entire school community. It was a gradual change along a consistent process encompassing both teachers and students. The results have implications for the implementation of Self-Determination Theory and heutagogy in the educational system.

Many writers have described and explored heutagogy in terms of discrete problematics such as the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in lifelong learning, distance education (e.g. Blaschke, 2012) or from within higher education frameworks (Cochrane, 2020). This chapter explores the work of two teachers and their early years’ learners who engage in the practices of heutagogy or self-determined learning, as described by Hase and Kenyon (2013) and explored in Blaschke, Kenyon and Hase (2014). The accounts of these two teachers demonstrate that self-determined learning should not be assumed to be the province of higher education (Ecclesfield & Garnett, 2020), nor can it be absorbed in practices such as instructional technologies. Rather, Vijaya Bhanu Kote and Philip Ecclesfield work in primary and early years settings with a focus on learning and learner agency. A short afterword looks at the issues surrounding their work and heutagogy in practice across all forms of educational provision.

For education to create and develop a self-determined learner, it is imperative to utilise the best approaches to teaching and learning and to ensure that students are empowered by giving them the opportunity to make choices, manage and control of their own learning. This chapter provides techniques to self-determined learning or heutagogy in a heterogeneous classroom. A heterogeneous classroom is composed of diverse learners with varying abilities, different learning styles, language and race, among others. This holistic approach to teaching and learning requires educators to allow students to take the reins of their learning and to relinquish dominance by facilitating learning instead of centering teaching around themselves. To prepare learners for future careers, the 21st century learner would require new, complex and wide range of cognitive and metacognitive skills (Blaschke 2014, p.1) which includes curiosity, innovation, problem solving, decision making and self-control.

This chapter describes the journey of a teacher (learning leader) and his students (learners) in applying some innovative approaches to enhance learning in a higher education setting. Based on the principles of heutagogy or self-determined learning, the learning leader used action research to implement and investigate some innovative learning experiences in a History of Art class in an Australian university. For both the learning leader and two groups of learners, this experiment in learner-centred learning was very successful because the delivery and receiving of required essential course material became less predictable, less prescribed. This created a sense of spontaneity and discovery of knowledge. Such engagement in the process makes for more meaningful learning and interaction between parties. The impact of implementing a heutagogical approach encouraged other lecturers to re-examine their teaching methods to re-structure some of their units of teaching.

Novice researchers become experienced researchers by developing their skills in varied contexts, typically within higher education institutions as part of their university degrees. This chapter focuses on the novice researcher who progressively develops their research capacities during the process of completing a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy degree) within a higher education institution or university.

Four established areas of research about the education of novice researchers, also known as research training, are examined: 1) the pedagogy of supervision; 2) threshold concepts of PhD candidates; 3) the Researcher Skill Development Framework; and 4) research metaphors. From these fields of research, practical recommendations are extricated to articulate how higher education institutions can promote learner agency, according to heutagogical principles, within the candidate’s doctoral journey.

During this chapter, researchers are viewed as learners and the purpose of the chapter is to explore how the agency of these learner-researchers can be recognised and promoted, in practical terms, within the tertiary education sector.

The future is unpredictable, and we need to prepare our students to be ready for it. To navigate such uncertainty, higher education institutions need to provide students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed for success in life. These new challenges require higher education institutions to evaluate their teaching and learning practices and develop new ways to inspire, empower, and transform students' learning experiences – which requires enabling students to exercise agency over their learning choices. Teachers can support agency by recognizing students’ individuality, abilities, and interests. Together, teachers and students can co-create personalized learning plans that will motivate and empower students to develop the skills they need to nurture their passions and pursue their goals.

In 2019, Greta Thunberg became globally famous demanding that climate change be taken seriously with her #FridaysforFuture school strike. As a green activist, I welcomed her call, choosing to make World Heutagogy Day 2019 about “How Do We Green Our Learning?” I ran a series of weekly green learning workshops at New Cross Learning. With my heutagogy hat on, I saw Ms Thunberg’s demand as a wish that her chosen path of self-determined learning should be around climate change. I knew that schools, institutions of compulsory education acting in loco parentis, would not voluntarily change so I decided to review how we might green the provision of mainstream education. This chapter draws together reflections from my green blog (Garnett, 2019a) concerning how this might be addressed. Progressively we need to "green" many aspects of education such as reading, libraries, curricula, research and, crucially for compulsory education, and governance. My wish was to provide Greta Thunberg with a route map that enabled educational institutions to design learning agency into their offer. My view was that if I could discover how we might “green our learning” that would also provide a guide whereby we could design in learning agency and heutagogy across the curriculum.

This chapter consists of some of the feedback I have collected from my students and other teachers over 30 years as an educator of their experience of agentic learning and heutagogy. The comments are not categorised in any particular way and are left for the reader to draw their own conclusions. In some respects what you will read are a comment on an educational life that has been focused on learner agency.