Eighteen months ago, on World Heutagogy Day 2022, Vijaya Bhanu Kote launched her heutagogy Primary School the Heutagogy Brainery. This was 100 years after AS Neill launched his Summerhill school and, personally I think of Vijaya as a digitally-enabled 21st Century AS Neill. Not because she was inspired by Summerhill but, rather like Neill in A Dominies Log, she was informed by watching how her children learnt. Unlike Neill in his small quiet village in Scotland she found resources about Heutagogy and learning agency on the Web and, believing she had permission to develop a learner-centred approach to learning, she began developing her version of Heutagogy in her school, which ultimately culminated in the Brainery.
In recent discussions with Vijaya, her Heutagogs and their heutagogic parents I realised that another lens with which to view the Brainery by was our earlier Community Development Model of Learning. From research into existing digital community learning centres in 2002, we had discovered that effective community learning centres (in England) both evolved and improved in tandem with the human communities that they served. John Cook, who carried out this research, called this the lifecycles model of the learning centre, and he argued for a dynamic, responsive learning institution not a static, rigid, one trapped in the pedagogy of content-delivery.
This community-centred curriculumis another way of describing a human-centred approach to learning; arguably an Andragogy approach in that it comes out of negotiations with a community of people active in the learning centres activities. These are not only about learning but also represent a value, or need, of the community that the centre serves, in some specific way. John Cook described this as the hook; the attractor that made the centre inviting to the community that it was a part of. The attractor is a value in itself; it might be a creche, it might be a football team. The attractor then also shaped the evolution and development of the centre which would evolve in line with the interests of those people who attended and shaped the purpose of the centre and thereby its lifecycle.
Learning Architecture of Participation(AoP); to Nigel Ecclesfield and I this lifecycle model represents a learning AoP in which those attending and taking part in the learning offer are actually the subjects of the learning process, not the objects by which the institution measures and manages its performance. So the curriculum, or what people choose to learn in such a centre, evolves dynamically depending upon who turns up. Another aspect of the lifecycle model is that, almost like medieval guilds and their apprentice model, people who go evolve from having an erratic, occasional attendance just watching from the sidelines (or browsing the centres’ activities), to being part-time learners, then to full-time learners, to part-time assistants, to full-time assistants and, in some cases, employees. We called them trusted intermediaries; because they have earned the trust of those who attend due to their involvement with centre activities. Clearly at the Brainery and in her local community in Andhara Pradesh, Vijaya is highly trusted and significantly, in return, she trusts both her heutagogs and their parents in a wonderful virtuous circle of learning…
Vijaya Bhanu Bote (Primary School teacher and community learning initiator): a brief introduction
In our book, Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation (Ecclesfield N and Garnett F (2020)) we devoted a substantive section of Chapter 8 to the work of our friend and collaborator Vijaya Bhanu Kote who lives and works in Andhra Pradesh as a headteacher in a rural primary school working with her students, colleagues, parents and her wider community to promote heutagogy (self-determined learning) – see Hase S and Kenyon C (2013) “Self-Determined Learning”. In the three years that have passed since we drafted our note on Vijaya’s work, much has happened, including more publication on heutagogy and a wider recognition of Vijaya’s work both within India and internationally. Now seems an appropriate time, to revise and update our original piece and celebrate Vijaya’s work up to the present, covering the period 2009 to 2022 and encourage further exploration of her work and those wider activities she has contributed to since 2019.
From 2013 onwards, we have been involved in ‘World Heutagogy Day’ as contributors and, latterly as co-ordinator for the day (Fred). Fred has also contributed to ‘Self-Determined Learning’ Hase and Kenyon ed. (2013) op cit, which, focused on heutagogy. It is through contacts made in our activities to promote heutagogy; we were made aware of the work of a primary school teacher in the state of Andhra Pradesh (India) who has implemented heutagogic practices with her pupils/learners and is leading training and development activities with teachers and secondary school learners, parents and members of her local community across this large state, nationally, across India and internationally making use of digital technologies and developing architectures of participation with these participants. Producing training and learning resources to help implement heutagogy for learners, parents and her colleagues, Vijaya is leading changes in practice in her state and continuing to build rich external links to enhance her work with wider perspectives and practices, drawn from around the world. What follows is a short, amended account of her work and an analysis of its implications for our work, especially our concerns with architectures of participation.
Vijaya works in an elementary school in the heart of rural Andhra Pradesh having over twenty years’ experience as a teacher and working in her community as a freelance journalist. In one of her published accounts of how she came to adopt heutagogic practices she describes her motivation in the following words.
“Over time, as I happened to observe kids and their common attitude towards simple yet important aspects in their life, I could gradually understand what wrong is happening in the education system. As educators, we try to insert pieces of information and knowledge into their brains to let them gain good grades in “high stakes assessments.” I could see that the kids rushed out of the class, as if they wore wings when the games period bell rang. Their joyful screams lingered in my ears for long time. (“Enabling kids enjoy learning through heutagogy – The Hans India”) One thought always triggered me. “How would it be if the same attitude for learning develops in kids?
Now, I wanted a model that could fulfil my dream. My dream where kids enjoy learning and learn by themselves just like they play games. I wanted the same passion towards learning on their own. Bhanu Kote (2019a) After a decade of my experiments on various methods, I found Heutagogy during my Independent research into learning and teaching methods. I researched more on this “Gogy. Later, I created a format for this “Gogy” that could suit an Indian context of learning. My small experiments resulted in tremendous success and following these successes with my grade V kids (Aged 9-10) authored “Letha Akasalu” (Tender Skies) book on how they learned through Heutagogy.”
(Vijaya sees that teaching practice can be characterised as consisting of three inter-related elements Pedagogy, Andragogy and Heutagogy which are not mutually exclusive, but intertwined as in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of pedagogy and child psychology.
“Relationship between pedagogy and child psychology
Pedagogy is not the application of psychology; pedagogy is entirely child psychology.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010) p69 Merleau-Ponty’s analysis adopts a position that seems to see education as taking place in schools and concerned with children, hence his reference to child psychology reflecting the time and context of his writing (1949-50) in France. Equally, he sees child psychology as focused on learners and pedagogy as focused on teacher (adult) reactions to learners as interlinked components of learning and teaching practices see Ecclesfield and Garnett (2020)). He summarises his views about teaching and learning as follows “We do not thus find three naturally distinct disciplines, but instead unique work (our emphasis) whose manner depends on where the work is directed, be it toward the rules of behaviour (morality), toward objective knowledge (child psychology) or toward the adult’s reaction to the child (pedagogy).” (Ibid p69)).”
At the time of writing, much of Vijaya’s work has been published in Telugu, the official language of Andhra Pradesh and this is predominantly through the Ministry of Education of the state. There are accounts published in English in Australia, India, Finland, and the UK although it is hoped that translations of “Letha Akasalu” and her training manual on heutagogy for teachers, recently published by the Ministry of Education, will be made available in other languages. Since 2020, however, two works have been published (in English), setting Vijaya’s work in a comparative context These are Ecclesfield, Bhanu Kote and Ecclesfield (2021) and Bhanu Kote, Ecclesfield and Ecclesfield (2022), looking at Heutagogy in the context of primary and early years learning. It is hoped, in future, to publish work emerging from a recent partnership with a primary school in London and further work looking at early years (Ages 2-5)
What is significant about Vijaya’s work is how her pupils, parents, the local community, and participants in her training are drawn in to learning activity and encouraged to see themselves as contributors to each other’s learning. School pupils work collaboratively to produce works that show both how they have learned something and the outcomes of their learning, while parents are encouraged to share their knowledge and expertise as craftspeople and professionals in school along with members of the community who demonstrate their work and encourage participation in vocational tasks e.g., weighing goods and calculating their prices in market settings. Similar approaches are used with teacher participants in training programmes, making use of peer groups and local networks to illustrate a key objective of this approach “learning outside the classroom” or “learning beyond teachers” In this work is embedded a recognition of learners as being part of the “ecology of resources” described by Luckin and co-creators of their own learner-generated contexts that are individual (Vijaya refers to self-determined learners as “Heutagogs”). In this they share characteristics of the children described by Mitra and his colleagues in their work, and the far earlier work of the School of Barbiana in Italy in their “Letter to a Teacher.”
One of the keys to Vijaya’s approach to learning and teaching is that she engages learners and teachers simultaneously, to experience heutagogy together. As she describes her approach.
“Freedom to the teacher
“Teachers are given freedom to implement their ideas and prepare appropriate tools to implement their innovative ideas. Bhanu Kote (2019b)) Tools should be prepared based on the needs of the students. We can consider the societal background and the environment of the students while preparing ideas or tools.” This approach can be readily compared with Merleau-Ponty’s perspective quoted above.
Kids are naturally Heutagogical learners
“Primary school is a wonderful opportunity to build on their skills of hypothesis making, hypothesis testing, exploration, working together, failing, playing, watching others, hands-on learning, researching, and learning ‘what is wheat and chaff’- Hase S – personal contribution to World Heutagogy Day” (2019).
Context is Queen, localising self-determined learning
“For Heutagogy, as self-determined learning to work for India, or in any other location, it must be localised. It needs to be India’s or Andhra Pradesh’s Heutagogy, it needs to be the teacher’s Heutagogy, it needs to be the school’s Heutagogy. We have a phrase, borrowed from the Learner-Generated Context Group that “Context is the Queen”. So, there is not one “best” or “ideal Heutagogy,” but there is only the practical Heutagogy, that you develop together and share.” “Teachers need to “own” the framing educational practices as much as the learners need to “own” the learning.” – Whitworth, Garnett, and Pearson (2012).
26th September is “World Heutagogy Day” and this is the day in 2013, the first book on Heutagogy, “Self-Determined Learning” ( Hase and Kenyon (2013) was published. Bhanu Kote (2019a). The slides launching the book were based on the 50-word submissions by the authors in the book, providing their definitions of heutagogy for a “curated conversation” Garnett (2019). The resulting definition emerging from this conversation was “Heutagogy is the process by which teachers help learners to determine their learning interests and follow them as much as possible within the education system in school, college, or university.”
Heutagogy brings informal interest-driven learning into formal subject-based learning contexts. Ideally, it enables the curiosity of all learners to stay with them after they leave education.” Bhanu Kote who works in a rural context with high levels of poverty and where resources are often scarce in the sense of both equipment and consumables, although Vijaya brings an ecological focus to her work to promote the re-use and recycling of materials as well as using digital technologies in highly developed ways to support learning and create rich and engaging collections of resources gathered and created by her learners, their families and the wider community, which includes “sponsors” who donate learning resources and their time to supporting Vijaya’s school and its children.
Nevertheless, teachers appropriate existing resources themselves and incorporate resources from “beyond the classroom” to the extent that they can create, or become part of, architectures of engagement and participation that inform and support the “ecologies of resources” Luckin et al (2010) op cit that they build around their learners and their practice. Vijaya is an example of these practices, using and incorporating digital technologies as part of a practical and philosophical stance to her work that uses her local, regional, state, national and international peers to extend and develop her work. As noted above, she often insists that learners and teachers learn about heutagogy together with learners as teachers and teachers as learners, coming together in “obuchenie,” see Luckin (2010) and Luckin et al (2010) for discussions of this concept.
Most recently, Vijaya, responding to her poor health, is in the process of setting up a Heutagogy institution/ Academy (the Heutagogy Brainery) with her partner and son to continue her work and to provide a means for her students, who are now in secondary education, to continue to progress their self-determined learning as co-operative and independent learners and to support teachers, parents and adults working in their own communities to pursue their learning projects and enhance community projects. We will continue to follow this work and the work referenced in the books noted below. What we would like to ask, for World Heutagogy Day 2023 (26th September) is for those of you reading this note to participate in the discussions and sharing of practice initiated on Learn Teach 21 and to send comments and questions to Vijaya via this blog. (https://learnteach21.wordpress.com) to extend dialogue and disseminate your good practice. An ePub file of the first draft of Vijaya’s book providing an extended introduction to her work and her approach to learning and teaching will soon be available, prior to editing and publishing via more conventional routes, on Learn Teach 21 and the World Heutagogy Day blog (https://heutagogicarchive.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/establishing-heutagogy-whday22), please feel free to contribute to the discussions initiated there.
Self-organised group discussing the structure of flowers
References
Ecclesfield N and Garnett F (2020). “Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation,” IGI Global, Hershey, PA.
Hase S and Kenyon C (2013) “Self-Determined Learning” Bloomsbury, London
Merleau-Ponty M (2010) “Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952”. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois
Bhanu-Kote V (2019b) “Letha Akasalu (Tender Skies), Government of Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati
Ecclesfield N, Bhanu-Kote V and Ecclesfield P (2021), “Learner Agency and Architectures of Participation” in Hase S and Blaschke L M (eds) (2021) “Unleashing the power of Learner Agency”. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/up
Bhanu Kote V, Ecclesfield P and Ecclesfield N (2022). “Digital learning, innovative learning strategies for modern pedagogy, self-directed learning” A.S.A. Lawrence & M. Manivannan (Eds.), Emerging trends of psycho-technological approaches in heutagogy (pp 2 -6). Tamil Nadu Open University
Mitra, S. (2012). “Beyond the Hole in the Wall” TED Books, New York
Mitra S. (2019). “The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Learning” Corwin, Thousand Oaks CA
The School of Barbiana (1971). “Letter to a Teacher.” Penguin, London (A new edition of this important work has been published for Kindle by Boiraag Publication, Kolkata: released on 15th September 2022)
Whitworth, A., Garnett, F. and Pearson, D., (2012) “Aggregate-then-Curate: how digital learning champions help communities nurture online content.” (“Aggregate-then-Curate: how digital learning champions help communities …”) “In Research in Learning Technology, [S.l.], v. 20, Dec. 2012.” (“(DOC) Ambient Learning City | Fred Garnett – Academia.edu”) ISSN 2156-7077
Luckin R., Clark W.; Garnett, F., Whitworth A, Akass J., Cook J, Day P; Ecclesfield, N, Hamilton, T., and Robertson, J (2010) “Learner Generated Contexts: A framework to support the effective use of technology for learning”, in Lee M., Sturt C. and McLoughlin C. (Eds.) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching. IGI Global, Sydney
Luckin R (2010) “Redesigning Learning Contexts: Technology-Rich, Learner-Centered Ecologies”, Routledge, London
A New and Significant Launch for World Heutagogy Day 26th September 2022
Introduction; From her home in rural Andhra Pradesh, Vijaya Bhanu Kote, whose work has featured as part of World Heutagogy Day since 2014, has set up “The Heutagogy Brainery” to promote and support Heutagogic (self-determined learning) practice across the educational spectrum from early years to post-compulsory education. To support the launch, we are featuring Vijaya’s own introduction, below, to her work and the “Brainery, and the outline of her new book, which pulls together her work up to date. The “Brainery is an important development, drawing on over twenty years of engagement as a parent and teacher encouraging learner agency and self-determination, whose work has implications for learners and practitioners worldwide and is now recognised across India and around the world; Nigel Ecclesfield – September 2022
Launch of Heutagogy Brainery World Heutagogy Day 2022; by Vijaya Bhanu Kote
Objectives of Heutagogy Brainery
To create awareness about Heutagogy.
To conduct awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students.
To publish books on Heutagogy.
To establish a research wing for Heutagogic research.
Counselling parents, teachers and students
It had been a long journey from 2006 to 2022 with Heutagogy. Heutagogy has changed my life as well as my family’s outlook about life and education. My son was about 18 months of age when I started experimenting on him. I wanted his brought up to be unique, with no pressure, no stress. I started experimenting on little things like letting him see me and imitate. Letting him do things on his own. For example, applying crayon colours on the pictures after watching me do it for few days, putting his toys in a carton after playing. Tidying up his workspace after playing or drawing, letting him do things on own, however he likes them to do, like selecting his own picture in the book or selecting his own toy.
I read many books when he was in my womb. I used to talk to him placing my palm on my stomach. I read stories to him as well. May be, it was a compensative emotion to lessen my agony for the loss of my first two twin kids Glory and Gracy. He started doing things on his own after few months of imitation. He started growing up as a Heutagog. Some years later, he started school. He was self-determined in his choices and execution, but the schooling was quite different from his thoughts and expectations. My husband worked with the same institution where my son a pupil. Due to the frequent Asthma suffered by my child, we had the opportunity to make suggestions to his teachers. At our request, Buddy was not given any homework, nor put under any pressure to study as per the school norms or coerced to obtain grades in his work or exams. He was free. He practiced piano, played games, enjoyed being with his friends and family, learned new skills, read so many books, learned drawing and other skills., after his school hours. This gave him good insights and when he was in Grade III, we noticed a leadership spark and deft in writing in him. He collaborated with my school kids and established an organization named, “Impact” with the help of Green Climate Magazine team. He led many social awareness programs and, from then on, wrote stories and articles for magazines and painted many pictures.
His success increased from then on leading him to talk about the National and the International issues in seminars and conferences, becoming a published writer and a social activist. He became a small farmer after watching the suicides of farmers in India. He wanted to understand how our agriculture can be transformed to ensure that farmers can live with dignity and sufficient wealth. He conducted many experiments in farming. He received State Eco Friend Award when he was in Grade VI (10-11 years). His school correspondent was so happy for him that he allotted land on his farm for Buddy to conduct his experiments. Buddy did experiments on mono cropping and mixed cropping and with the results he went to Ahmedabad to present his experiments at National Children’s Science Congress when he was in Grade IX. He gained the National KVR Scientific Society Award at the same time. His work won laurels from many organisations. During Covid 19, he read continually, listened to podcasts, did a Junior MBA course to find his further education course. He is now pursuing his education in Business Administration and wants to be a Social Entrepreneur.
When anyone asks him “What Heutagogy is about, he will just smile and say, “Liberty.”
When Buddy (Vardhishna Vibhavas Rajith Elipe) was growing up, being a Heutagog, my husband was overwhelmed with his son’s happy, easy-going, stress-free attitude. He started practicing Heutagogy for his school kids too. His teaching career took a new turn, and he was happier than before. He worked in a corporate school where experimentation was not so much encouraged. He took the permission of the school’s Joint Secretary and the principal to implement Heutagogic mode of learning. He had a hectic schedule, owing to which he could document not much of his work but was very much happy being a Heutagogy Practitioner. He submitted his experiments on “Introspective Heutagogy” for the World Heutagogy Day 2020 to wikiquals. He presented his paper on “Introspective Heutagogy” to CCE Finland Global Symposium in April 2022, that won laurels from the chair, UNESCO.
I was diagnosed with Brain (pituitary)Tumour in 2021. My world toppled down as I was diagnosed with an exceedingly rare disease named “Cushing’s Disease” that was not identified earlier, though I suffered a great deal. The disease, along with its associated tumour existed in my body for at least 10 years without treatment. The rest was a story of search for a doctor who had proper skill in removing my tumour from an extremely critical area of my pituitary gland, my surgery, my walk towards recovery which is still going on.
On the day of my surgery, only thing that pricked me hard was, “What will be the fate of the Heutagogic way of learning I have developed for Indian context?” I asked my husband and son to start a Heutagogy Academy and propagate Heutagogy. I asked them to encourage teachers, parents, and students to learn through Heutagogy and even urged them to establish a “Research Wing” that could encourage teachers, parents, and students to experiment and document their Localized Heutagogy.
I survived the critical surgery but still on recovery mode with different health issues persisting and newly developing. My husband Bangarraju quit his job few months back and started working on the launch of “Heutagogy Academy.” I cannot be involved in the academy as I am working for the Government. So, both my husband and son got engaged with the works related to the academy. At last, on 26th September 2022, on the eve of World Heutagogy Day, we are launching “Heutagogy Brainery” at our place, may be the first of its kind in the world, as the founder of Heutagogy, Stewart Hase said. (There are so many agencies and academies in India that the auditors asked us for any other synonym for academy, so we gave the name Brainery)
We designed both awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students. We are planning to propagate Heutagogy around the world with these 5 principles;
To create awareness about Heutagogy.
To conduct awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students.
To publish books on Heutagogy.
To establish a research wing for Heutagogic research.
Counselling parents, teachers and students
Thanks, is a very small word but we would love to thank Stewart Hase ji, Fred Garnett ji and Nigel Ecclesfield ji for their constant support. Thank you so much for helping with editing and modelling my module that is being released on the World Heutagogy Day 2022. I would rather say, it is the soul talk of four souls. Thanks for everything.
Learn Teach 21 