Monumental shifts are happening… and monumental shifts are on the horizon… The question isn’t whether to make these shifts, but how quickly and thoughtfully can they be done. Learners of all kinds—and a rapidly changing world—are waiting.

If you’re an educator, designer, architect, administrator, learner, rep… don’t walk, sprint into 2026 – a year where educational design is no longer held by ridiculous boundaries, but LET LOOSE with foundational concepts in understanding, confidence, and exponential capability. Bring in the new year with out-of-the-box concepts and perspectives …

Buckle Up: Disruptive Design Ahead

Designing to Empower Self-Determined Learners

For generations, education has operated a pedagogical model where educators direct learning processes, determining what individuals learn, when they learn it, and how they demonstrate mastery. While this approach has served its purpose, in many contexts, the demands of a rapidly evolving world call for a fundamental shift in how learning spaces are designed.

It’s time to embrace heutagogy—the study of self-determined learning.

From Pedagogy to Heutagogy

Pedagogy, derived from the Greek words for “child” and “leading,” positions the instructor as the central figure who guides learners through predetermined content. The educator holds the expertise, designs the curriculum, and assesses whether learning has occurred.

This model works well for foundational knowledge and structured skill development, particularly with younger learners.

Heutagogy, on the other hand, comes from the Greek “heurisko,” meaning “to find” or “to discover.” It recognizes learners as capable agents who can identify their own learning needs, navigate their own paths, and determine when they’ve achieved competency. In heutagogical spaces, educators become guides who create environments where all individuals can explore, experiment, and develop the metacognitive skills necessary for lifelong learning.

Why This Shift Matters Now

The case for moving toward heutagogy has never been stronger. Consider the realities facing today’s learners:

The knowledge landscape is constantly shifting. Skills that are in high demand today may become obsolete within a decade. Rather than stockpiling facts and procedures, learners need to develop the capacity to continuously adapt, unlearn, and relearn. Heutagogy builds this adaptive capability by making the learning process itself transparent and transferable.

Information is ubiquitous. In an age where nearly any fact can be retrieved instantly, education must move beyond information transmission. The real value lies in developing judgment, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize information from multiple sources—all hallmarks of self-determined learning.

Learners bring diverse experiences and goals. Whether in higher education, workplace training, or professional development, adult learners arrive with varied backgrounds and specific objectives. A one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach often fails to honor this diversity or leverage the rich experiences learners bring to the table.

Motivation and engagement flourish with autonomy. Research consistently shows that learner agency drives intrinsic motivation. When people have a genuine say in their learning journey, they invest more deeply and persist through challenges. Heutagogy places agency at the center of the learning design.

Designing with a Heutagogical Influence

Shifting to a heutagogical focus doesn’t mean abandoning structure or guidance—it means reimagining how to provide both. Effective heutagogical learning spaces share several characteristics:

1. Multiple Pathways: Heutagogical environments offer multiple routes to competency. Learners might choose a variety of pieces, engage with different layouts, or collaborate with peers based on their interests and goals.
2. Competency Over Clockwork: Progress is measured by demonstrated capability, not seat time. Learners advance when they’re ready, spending more time on challenging concepts and moving quickly through areas where they already have strength. This can be reflected in differentiated seat types, differentiated worksurface heights, pockets for ground work and audio-centric focus.
3. Central Focus – Learning How to Learn: The curriculum explicitly includes metacognitive skills—reflection, self-assessment, goal-setting, and learning strategy development. These “meta-level” capabilities become just as important as domain-specific content. The space mimics these characteristics by providing structured support like ‘safe spaces’ which provide rich reflection and self-challenge/risky play opportunities
4. Consistent Feedback Loop: While learners direct their own journey, they benefit from frequent feedback from multiple sources: peers, mentors, authentic audiences, and their own reflective practice. This feedback informs ongoing learning decisions rather than serving as a final judgment. Feedback can be structured through the environment via consistent environmental practices of Guided Discoveries, Notice/Wonders, seminars, votes/debates etc.
5. Authentic Problems: Heutagogical spaces engage learners with messy, open-ended challenges that imitates the complexity they’ll encounter beyond the classroom. These authentic contexts make learning immediately relevant and transferable.

Practical Steps

Transitioning from pedagogy to heutagogy represents a significant mindset shift, but educators can start with concrete actions:

1. Inviting Learning Input: What topics are they most curious about? What skills do they hope to develop? Use their responses to shape layouts, select supportive pieces, and include the learning community in assessing these ooptions.
2. Build in Choice: Could learners select which problem to solve, which medium to use for demonstrating understanding, or which resources to consult? Even small choices cultivate agency – small choices such as selecting a smart learning spot, seating styles, worksurface heights, sensory inclusion/disclusion, etc.
3. Make Thinking Visible: Guides can incorporate modeling, reflection protocols, and learning narrations. Help learners understand not just what they’re learning but how they’re learning it. Within the learning space, guides can utilize the environment to model these processes. Create avenues where learners can work through the problem solving and reflection process by playing spatial tetris, coding centers, compartmentalizing actions etc.
4. Shift Assessment Practices: Move toward self and peer assessment. Involve learners in developing spatial rubrics, reflecting on their own growth, and providing constructive spatial feedback.
5. Exploration in All Spaces: The learning space should communicate that failure is expected and valued as part of the learning process. Designate time for experimentation, iteration, and following curiosity.

What’s the Impact?

Moving learning spaces toward a heutagogical focus, means more than changing pedagogical practices—it’s preparing people for the realities of the 22nd century.

Self-determined learners become self-directed employees, adaptive professionals, engaged citizens, and lifelong learners who can navigate uncertainty with confidence.

This shift also democratizes expertise. In pedagogical models, the teacher is the sole authority. In heutagogical spaces, expertise becomes distributed. Learners recognize their own and each other’s knowledge, building collaborative learning communities that extend far beyond traditional spatial boundaries.

Perhaps most importantly, heutagogy honors learners as whole people with agency, experience, and valuable perspectives. It moves us from a deficit model—where learners lack knowledge that must be deposited—to an asset model that recognizes and builds upon the capabilities learners already possess.