Freedom to learn, freedom to scroll: heutagogy, connectivism, and technology use in a Sudbery school
Sharon Hardof-JaffePurpose
This study aims to examine how educational staff in a Sudbury school perceive technology’s role in self-determined learning. Drawing on in-depth interviews with eight staff members and analyzed through heutagogy and connectivism, four themes emerged: technology as a natural learning environment; connectivist learning extending across human, physical and digital networks; technology as a disruptor of productive boredom; and technology as a catalyst for reflective community deliberation. The study introduces the concept of community heutagogy, proposing that collective critical discourse about technology itself constitutes a meaningful learning practice that cultivates digital literacy and independent judgment.
Design/methodology/approach
Context – A 12-year-old Israeli Sudbury democratic school serving students aged 6–18, governed through shared democratic institutions including a school Assembly and Community Rights Committee. The school offers diverse physical learning spaces alongside open access to communal computers and personal devices. The researcher maintained extended field presence over two years, enhancing contextual familiarity while acknowledging potential bias and using member checking and systematic attention to internal contradictions as credibility measures. Participants – Eight staff members, including the founder, two school graduates and members with varied professional backgrounds in education, engineering and design. Research tools and analysis – In-depth interviews of approximately ninety minutes each, analyzed through inductive and deductive thematic content analysis drawing on heutagogy and connectivism. Ethics – Institutional ethics approval was obtained, informed consent secured from all participants and pseudonyms used throughout.
Findings
Technology as an irreplaceable learning environment – Staff perceive technology as a primary channel of natural curiosity-driven learning fostering knowledge acquisition social connection and student agency. Trust in learners capacity for self-regulation underpins this view. Learning as a self-determined connectivist process – Learning extends across human physical and digital networks. Democratic institutions physical spaces and social interactions function as knowledge nodes alongside digital tools. Technology as disruptive and challenging – Smartphones undermine productive boredom a cornerstone of Sudbury pedagogy replacing self-initiated inquiry with passive consumption and continuous stimulation. Technology as a trigger for reflective discussion – Community deliberation about technology use constitutes a meaningful metacognitive practice cultivating critical judgment and digital literacy through collective self-directed discourse.
Originality/value
This study contributes to an emerging and underexplored intersection in educational research: the role of technology in environments of radical learner autonomy. Analyzing staff perspectives at a Sudbury-model school through the integrated lens of heutagogy and connectivism, it offers an original theoretical contribution to the heutagogy approach: the extension of self-determined learning from the individual to the school community level. The findings demonstrate that a school community can engage in authentic, reflexive deliberation over technology use, enacting critical digital literacy. This reframes the Sudbury school context as a model for community-level self-determination in the digital age, enhancing responsible technology use.