21 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
21 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Autodidacticism"
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chunk: 1/3
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodidacticism"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T15:28:03.991303+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
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---
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Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning, self-study, and self-teaching) is the practice of education without the guidance of teachers. Autodidacts are self-taught people who learn a subject through self-study. Autodidacticism may involve, complement, or be an alternative to formal education. Formal education itself may have a hidden curriculum that requires self-study for the uninitiated.
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Generally, autodidacts 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 contributions have been made by autodidacts.
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The self-learning curriculum is infinite. One may seek out alternative pathways in education and use these to gain competency; self-study may meet some prerequisite-curricula criteria for experiential education or apprenticeship.
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Self-education techniques can include reading educational books or websites, watching educational videos and listening to educational audio recordings, or by visiting infoshops. One uses some space as a learning space, where one uses critical thinking to develop study skills within the broader learning environment until they've reached an academic comfort zone.
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== Terminology ==
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The term autodidact has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός (autós, lit. 'self') and διδακτικός (didaktikos, lit. 'teaching'). The related term didacticism defines an artistic philosophy of education.
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Various terms are used to describe self-education. One such is heutagogy, coined in 2000 by Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon of Southern Cross University in Australia; others are self-directed learning and self-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.
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Andragogy "strive[s] for autonomy and self-direction in learning", while Heutagogy "identif[ies] the potential to learn from novel experiences as a matter of course [...] manage their own learning". Ubuntugogy is a type of cosmopolitanism that has a collectivist ethics of awareness concerning the African diaspora.
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== Modern era == |