Teachers urged to act like heutagogical professionals

heutagogy – A UK education influencer argues that classrooms don’t need to become “heutagogical,” but teachers should learn to identify and nurture the self-directed curiosity that sustains long-term expertise.

On a Saturday evening, when most educators are winding down, Ross Morrison McGill says he’s been doing the opposite. Nobody pays him to read neuroscience papers, and nobody asks him to weigh fMRI brain scans against classroom practice. Still, he spends hours on both—until a new label clicks into place.

Last week, he discovered “heutagogy,” a term he hadn’t encountered in nearly 35 years of teaching. He describes it as a kind of learner that doesn’t wait for instructions: someone whose curiosity becomes self-sustaining, and whose learning is driven from within.

The moment is more than a vocabulary update for McGill. In his view, it reframes what teachers are actually doing when they move beyond routine professional development—especially when the work isn’t triggered by a curriculum deadline or an external expectation.

McGill has spent years understanding pedagogy, which he defines as learning led by a teacher for children and novice learners. In pedagogy. he says. the teacher is responsible for deciding what is taught. when it is taught. and how learning happens—an approach he describes as entirely appropriate for younger learners and those still building their foundations.

He later came across andragogy, which he connects to the ideas of Malcolm Knowles. Knowles, as McGill presents it, argued that adults want learning to be relevant, practical, and immediately applicable. Adults still value expert guidance. but they also expect to adapt ideas to their own context. not have their time wasted. The emphasis, in his telling, shifts from what an instructor decides to what adults choose to make meaningful.

Then comes the third term, he says: heutagogy. Here, the learner drives everything. McGill is clear that it isn’t “another teaching strategy,” or an acronym for how schools should operate. In heutagogy, he writes, nobody tells the learner to learn. Nobody sets homework, and nobody checks completion. Learning runs on curiosity—fuelled by the learner’s own pull toward understanding.

But he doesn’t argue that classrooms should be turned heutagogical. Instead. he urges teachers to become “heutagogical professionals.” The distinction matters in his telling: he wants teachers to recognize the learning mindset that can outlast formal instruction. even if they’re still teaching within school structures.

To illustrate the difference, McGill gives an example of a pedagogy resource. He says it can’t be forced on anyone. In a different context—where “how to use these ideas” is made clear—other resources might be useful because implementation plans show how to translate ideas and use them in a specific context. which he places under andragogy.

Heutagogy, in contrast, begins when curiosity takes over with no assignment attached. McGill describes how enjoying ideas on TeacherToolkit—particularly anything related to neuroscience—can lead someone from an article to a research paper. then to another author. until reading books. listening to podcasts. and watching lectures happens because curiosity has already taken control. Nobody, he says, has asked the learner to do it. No one is checking progress.

His focus then turns from learning theory to professional identity. He argues that every teacher seems to develop a “professional hobby”—whether it’s behaviour. SEND. artificial intelligence. questioning. curriculum. or maths mastery—not because school leaders told them to. or because Ofsted expects it. but because they’re genuinely curious. Over time, he says, that curiosity becomes disciplined expertise.

McGill ties the idea of expertise to self-direction. Expertise, he argues, isn’t something people acquire simply by being taught everything. At some point. every expert becomes self-directed. he says. because the most accomplished teachers he knows pursue a subject or idea more deeply for no reason other than wanting to understand it.

The questions he leaves readers with are blunt: what are you learning when nobody is asking you to?. Looking back over his own career. he says he can now see professional development moving through all three stages—pedagogy shaping his classroom practice. andragogy helping him translate research into his own context. and heutagogy sustaining his curiosity long after any formal qualification ended.

In his closing reflection. he reduces the whole framework to a feeling teachers recognize: not knowing all the answers. but refusing to stop asking better questions. “It’s not common sense. it’s heutagogy – expertise kicking in. ” he writes. framing the term as something that finally makes sense of why learning sometimes keeps going long after the course ends.

heutagogy pedagogy andragogy Ross Morrison McGill TeacherToolkit Malcolm Knowles professional development self-directed learning expertise neuroscience