Autodidacticism

"Self-taught" redirects here. For the hip hop group, seeSelf Taught.

"Self-taught learner" redirects here. For the Lissy Trullie album, seeSelf-Taught Learner.

For broader coverage of this topic, seeSchool of Hard Knocks,Praxis (process),Interdisciplinarity,Emancipation,andDelphic maxims.

Autodidacticism(alsoautodidactism) orself-education(alsoself-learning,self-studyandself-teaching) is thepracticeofeducationwithout theguidanceofschoolmasters(i.e.,teachers,professors,institutions).

Overview

For broader coverage of this topic, seeSelf-help,Unschooling,andLifelong learning.

Not to be confused withRevelationorIntuition.

Autodidactsareself-taughthumanswho learn asubject-of-study'saboutnessthrough self-study.This educativepraxis (process)may involve or complementformal education.Formal education itself may have ahidden curriculumthat requires self-study for the uninitiated.

Generally, autodidacts are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time. Autodidacts may or may not have formal education, and their study may be either a complement or an alternative to formal education.Many notable contributionshave been made by autodidacts.

The self-learningcurriculumis infinite. One may seek outalternative pathways in educationand use these to gaincompetency;self-study may meet some prerequisite-curricula criteria forexperiential educationorapprenticeship.

Self-educationtechniques used in self-study can includereadingeducationaltextbooks,watching educationalvideosand listening to educationalaudio recordings,or by visitinginfoshops.One uses somespaceas alearning space,where one usescritical thinkingto developstudy skillswithin the broaderlearning environmentuntil they've reached an academiccomfort zone.

Etymology

The term has its roots in theAncient Greekwordsαὐτός(autós,lit. 'self') andδιδακτικός(didaktikos,lit. 'teaching'). The related termdidacticismdefines an artisticphilosophy of education.

Terminology

For broader coverage of this topic, seeAndragogyandCommunitarianism.

See also:Ubuntu philosophy

Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such isheutagogy,coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon ofSouthern Cross Universityin Australia; others areself-directed learningandself-determined learning.In the heutagogy paradigm, a learner should be at the centre of their own learning.A truly self-determined learning approach also sees the heutagogic learner exploring different approaches to knowledge in order to learn; there is an element of experimentation underpinned by a personal curiosity.

Andragogy"strive[s] for autonomy and self-direction in learning", whileHeutagogy"identif[ies] the potential to learn from novel experiences as a matter of course [...] manage their own learning".Ubuntugogyis a type ofcosmopolitanismthat has acollectivistethics ofawarenessconcerning theAfrican diaspora.

Modern era

Autodidacticism is sometimes a complement of modern formal education.As a complement to formal education, students would be encouraged to do more independent work.TheIndustrial Revolutioncreated a new situation for self-directed learners.

Before the twentieth century, only a small minority of people received an advanced academic education. As stated byJoseph Whitworthin his influential report on industry dated from 1853, literacy rates were higher in theUnited States.However, even in the U.S., most children were not completinghigh school.High school education was necessary to become a teacher. In modern times, a larger percentage of those completing high school also attended college, usually to pursue a professional degree, such as law or medicine, or a divinity degree.

Collegiate teaching was based on the classics (Latin, philosophy, ancient history, theology) until the early nineteenth century. There were few if any institutions of higher learning offering studies in engineering or science before 1800. Institutions such as theRoyal Societydid much to promote scientific learning, including public lectures. In England, there were also itinerant lecturers offering their service, typically for a fee.

Prior to the nineteenth century, there were many important inventors working as millwrights or mechanics who, typically, had received an elementary education and served an apprenticeship.Mechanics, instrument makers and surveyors had various mathematics training.James Wattwas a surveyor and instrument maker and is described as being "largely self-educated".Watt, like some other autodidacts of the time, became a Fellow of theRoyal Societyand a member of theLunar Society.In the eighteenth century these societies often gave public lectures and were instrumental in teaching chemistry and other sciences with industrial applications which were neglected by traditional universities. Academies also arose to provide scientific and technical training.

Years of schooling in the United States began to increase sharply in the early twentieth century. This phenomenon was seemingly related to increasing mechanization displacingchild labor.The automated glass bottle-making machine is said to have done more for education than child labor laws because boys were no longer needed to assist.However, the number of boys employed in this particular industry was not that large; it was mechanization in several sectors of industry that displaced child labor toward education. For males in the U.S. born 1886–90, years of school averaged 7.86, while for those born in 1926–30, years of school averaged 11.46.

One of the most recent trends in education is that the classroom environment should cater towards students' individual needs, goals, and interests. This model adopts the idea ofinquiry-based learningwhere students are presented with scenarios to identify their own research, questions and knowledge regarding the area. As a form ofdiscovery learning,students in today's classrooms are being provided with more opportunity to "experience and interact" with knowledge, which has its roots in autodidacticism.

Successful self-teaching can require self-discipline and reflective capability. Some research suggests that the ability to regulate one's own learning may need to be modeled to some students so that they become active learners, while others learn dynamically via a process outside conscious control.To interact with the environment, a framework has been identified to determine the components of any learning system: a reward function, incremental action value functions and action selection methods.Rewards work best in motivating learning when they are specifically chosen on an individual student basis. New knowledge must be incorporated into previously existing information as its value is to be assessed. Ultimately, thesescaffoldingtechniques, as described byVygotsky(1978) and problem solving methods are a result of dynamic decision making.

In his bookDeschooling Society,philosopherIvan Illichstrongly criticized 20th-century educational culture and the institutionalization of knowledge and learning - arguing that institutional schooling as such is an irretrievably flawed model of education - advocating instead ad-hoc co-operative networks through which autodidacts could find others interested in teaching themselves a given skill or about a given topic, supporting one another by pooling resources, materials, and knowledge.

Secular and modern societies have given foundations for new systems of education and new kinds of autodidacts. As Internet access has become more widespread theWorld Wide Web(explored using search engines such asGoogle) in general, and websites such asWikipedia(including parts of it that were included in abookor referenced in a reading list),YouTube,Udemy,UdacityandKhan Academyin particular, have developed as learning centers for many people to actively and freely learn together. Organizations like The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) have been formed to publicize and provide guidance for self-directed education.Entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates are considered influential self-teachers.

History

See also:Education during the slave period in the United StatesandAnti-literacy laws in the United States

The first philosophical claim supporting an autodidactic program to the study of nature and God was in thephilosophical novelHayy ibn Yaqdhan(Alive son of the Vigilant), whose titular hero is considered the archetypal autodidact.The story is a medieval autodidactic utopia, a philosophical treatise in a literary form, which was written by the Andalusian philosopherIbn Tufailin the 1160s inMarrakesh.It is a story about a feral boy, an autodidact prodigy who masters nature through instruments and reason, discovers laws of nature by practical exploration and experiments, and gainssummum bonumthrough a mystical mediation and communion with God. The hero rises from his initial state oftabula rasato a mystical or direct experience of God after passing through the necessary natural experiences. The focal point of the story is that human reason, unaided by society and its conventions or by religion, can achieve scientific knowledge, preparing the way to the mystical or highest form of human knowledge.

Commonly translated as "The Self-Taught Philosopher" or "The Improvement of Human Reason", Ibn-Tufayl's storyHayy Ibn-Yaqzaninspired debates about autodidacticism in a range of historical fields from classical Islamic philosophy through Renaissance humanism and the European Enlightenment. In his bookReading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism,Avner Ben-Zaken showed how the text traveled from late medieval Andalusia to early modern Europe and demonstrated the intricate ways in which autodidacticism was contested in and adapted to diverse cultural settings.

Autodidacticism apparently intertwined with struggles overSufismin twelfth-century Marrakesh; controversies about the role of philosophy in pedagogy in fourteenth-centuryBarcelona;quarrels concerningastrologyinRenaissanceFlorencein whichPico della Mirandolapleads for autodidacticism against the strong authority of intellectual establishment notions of predestination; and debates pertaining toexperimentalismin seventeenth-century Oxford. Pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions; they surfaced in struggles for control between individuals and establishments.

In the story of Black American self-education,Heather Andrea Williamspresents a historical account to examine Black American's relationship to literacy duringslavery,theCivil Warand the first decades of freedom.Many of the personal accounts tell of individuals who have had to teach themselves due toracial discriminationin education.

In architecture

Tadao Andois a famous autodidact architect of the twenty-first century.

Many successful and influentialarchitects,such asMies van der Rohe,Frank Lloyd Wright,Violet-Le-Duc,Tadao Andowere self-taught.

There are very few countries allowing autodidacticism inarchitecturetoday. The practice of architecture or the use of the title "architect", are nowprotected in most countries.

Self-taught architects have generally studied and qualified in other fields such asengineeringorarts and crafts.Jean Prouvéwas first a structural engineer.Le Corbusierhad an academic qualification in decorative arts.Tadao Andostarted his career as a draftsman, andEileen Graystudiedfine arts.

When apolitical statestarts to implement restrictions on the profession, there are issues related to the rights of established self-taught architects. In most countries the legislation includes agrandfather clause,authorising established self-taught architects to continue practicing. In the UK, the legislationallowed self-trained architects with two years of experience to register. In France,it allowed self-trained architects with five years of experience to register. In Belgium,the law allowed experienced self-trained architects in practice to register. In Italy,it allowed self-trained architects with 10 years of experience to register. In The Netherlands, the "wet op de architectentitel van 7 juli 1987"along with additional procedures, allowed architects with 10 years of experience and architects aged 40 years old or over, with 5 years of experience, to access the register.

However, othersovereign stateschose to omit such a clause, and many established and competent practitioners were stripped of their professional rights.In the Republic of Ireland, a group named "Architects' Alliance of Ireland"is defending the interests of long-established self-trained architectswho were deprived of their rights to practice as per Part 3 of the Irish Building Control Act 2007.

Theoretical research such asArchitecture of Change, Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environmentor older studies such asVers une ArchitecturefromLe Corbusierdescribe the practice of architecture as an environment changing with new technologies, sciences, and legislation. All architects must be autodidacts to keep up to date with newstandards,regulations,ormethods.

Self-taught architects such asEileen Gray,Luis Barragán,and many others, created a system where working is also learning, where self-education is associated withcreativityandproductivitywithin a working environment.

While he was primarily interested innaval architecture,William Francis Gibbslearned his profession through his own study ofbattleshipsandocean liners.Through his life he could be seen examining and changing the designs of ships that were already built, that is, until he started his firmGibbs and Cox.

Predictors

Opennessis the largest predictor of self-directed learning out of theBig Five personality traits,though, in a study, personality only explained 10% of the variance in self-directed learning.

Future role

The role of self-directed learning continues to be investigated in learning approaches, along with other important goals of education, such as content knowledge, epistemic practices and collaboration.As colleges and universities offerdistance learningdegree programs and secondary schools providecyber schooloptions for K–12 students, technology provides numerous resources that enable individuals to have a self-directed learning experience. Several studies show these programs function most effectively when the "teacher" or facilitator is a full owner of virtual space to encourage a broad range of experiences to come together in an online format.This allows self-directed learning to encompass both a chosen path of information inquiry, self-regulation methods and reflective discussion among experts as well as novices in a given area. Furthermore,massive open online courses(MOOCs) make autodidacticism easier and thus more common.

A 2016Stack Overflowpollreported that due to the rise of autodidacticism, 69.1% ofsoftware developersappear to be self-taught.

Notable individuals

Main article:List of autodidacts

Some notable autodidacts can be broadly grouped in the following interdisciplinary areas:

• Artists and authors
• Actors, musicians, and other artists
• Architects
• Engineers and inventors
• Scientists, historians, and educators

Educational materials availability

Main article:Open knowledge

For broader coverage of this topic, seeOpen access,Open source,Open education,andOpen data.

See also:Citizen science

Most governments havecompulsory educationthat may deny theright to educationon the basis ofdiscrimination;state schoolteachers may unwittinglyindoctrinatestudents into theideologyof theoppressivecommunity and government via ahidden curriculum.

See also

• Academic conference
• Analytical skill
• Anti-intellectualism
• Body of knowledge
• Critical thinking
• Criticism of schooling
• Course (education)
• Cryptanalysis
• Curriculum studies
• Democratic education
• Democratization of knowledge
• Do it yourself
• Distance education
• Extracurricular activity
• Handbibliothek des allgemeinen und praktischen Wissens
• Hermeneutics of suspicion
• Independent study
• Individualism
• Informal learning
• Intellectual need
• Intelligence
• Learner autonomy
• Learning
• Liberation psychology
• Lifelong learning
• List of self-managed social centers
• Metacognition
• Open-source curriculum
• Pedagogy
• Personal development
• Polymath
• Procedural knowledge
• Reading (process)
• Rhizome (philosophy)
• Scholar
• Self awareness
• Self-experimentation
• Subject (documents)
• Tutorial
• Unschooling

Further reading

• Bach, James Marcus(11 October 2011).Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion.Scribner.ISBN978-1-4391-0908-3.
• Blaschke, L. M. (2012)."Heutagogy and lifelong learning: A review of heutagogical practice and self-determined learning".The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.13(1): 56–71.doi:10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1076.
• Brown, Resa Steindel (28 January 2007).The Call to Brilliance: A True Story to Inspire Parents and Educators.Fredric Pr.ISBN978-0-9778369-0-1.
• Cameron, Brent (4 November 2005).SelfDesign: Nurturing Genius Through Natural Learning.Sentient Publications.ISBN978-1-59181-044-5.
• Hailey, Kendall(1 January 1989).The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter.Delta.ISBN978-0440550136.
• Hase, Stewart; Kenyon, Chris (January 2000)."From Andragogy to Heutagogy".Original UltiBASE Publication.Southern Cross University.Retrieved10 April2024.
• Hase, Stewart; Kenyon, Chris (2019) [July 2007]."Heutagogy: A Child of Complexity Theory".Complicity.4(1): 111–118.doi:10.29173/cmplct8766.Retrieved10 April2024.
• Llewellyn, Grace(29 September 2021).The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education.Lowry House Publishers.ISBN978-0962959196.
• McAuliffe, M.; Hargreaves, D.; Winter, A.; Chadwick, G. (11 November 2015) [2009]."Does Pedagogy Still Rule?".Australasian Journal of Engineering Education.15(1): 13–18.doi:10.1080/22054952.2009.11464018.Retrieved10 April2024.
• "Open Syllabus: Mapping the college curriculum across 20.9 million syllabi".Open Syllabus.Retrieved10 April2024.Non-profit archive [...] provides top-down views of the curriculum across thousands of schools to support curricular innovation, lifelong learning, and student success.
• Rancière, Jacques(1 July 1991).The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation.Stanford University Press.ISBN978-0804719698.
• Reimer, Everett(1 January 1971).School is Dead:An Essay on Alternatives in Education.Penguin.ISBN978-0140801699.
• Solomon, Joan (28 August 2003).The Passion to Learn: An Inquiry into Autodidactism.Routledge.ISBN978-0415304184.
• Stark, Kio (10 April 2013).Don't Go Back to School: A Handbook for Learning Anything.Kio Stark.ISBN978-0988949003.

External links

• Quotations related toAutodidacticismat Wikiquote