Inconvenient Truths About Learner Agency

Abstract

Formal education, in all its guises, faces some significant challenges to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world where personal access to information and the capacity to learn has never been easier. Education is a an inherently conservative undertaking, slow to give up traditional and outmoded curricula, methods and policies, based on folklore for evidence-based practice and new realities. For some areas of educational endeavour, notably higher education, the commodification of what is called learning has diminished the role of pedagogy for pragmatism.

This presentation explores the relevance of learner agency and its offspring, heutagogy or self-determined learning, as a modern pedagogy for the digital age. It will then issue some challenges for educators and educational policy makers in adopting innovative, evidence-based practices.