Changing the Titanic’s trajectory: introducing heutagogy to in-service teachers via the flipped classroom

Abstract

The passive learning phenomenon continues to thrive in high school classrooms as traditional teacher-centred pedagogy remains the norm. In this article, I investigate how a learning-centred pedagogic intervention can address learners’ basic psychological need for competency, relatedness, and autonomy (collectively known as self-determined behaviours), thereby initiating a move across the Pedagogy-Andragogy-Heutagogy (PAH) continuum. The pedagogic intervention was implemented by in-service teachers across the Western Cape Province. I drew from four datasets: semi-structured online interviews; feedback questionnaires; a spontaneous response; and research diaries. The analysis reveals three primary factors that can either promote or deter the successful activation of learners’ self-determined behaviours, namely the complex relationship between learner autonomy and teacher control, teachers’ struggle to embrace alternative teaching methods, and learners’ readiness to shift across the PAH continuum. Acquiring self-determined behaviours will assist high school learners to become lifelong learners and will ease the transition from the Further Education and Training Phase to the sphere of Higher Education and Training and will develop critical and necessary 21st-century skills.