Heutagogy in the Era of Industry 4.0: Teachers as Student Coaches and Learning Leaders

Education systems are facing many challenges today. Information technologies and the nature of work have been changing rapidly and redefining the concepts of training and workforce. Professions will evolve and some of the jobs we know today will disappear in the near future. For that kind of a blurry future, in schools, teachers are expected to guide students to develop a vision of their goals in life, build skills such as time management, self-advocacy, and academic & professional development skills to achieve their goals. However, the approaches and methods being applied today in classes are not really helping through the route to the future. For that, new approaches and methods have been of great interest to researchers, educators and decision-makers. As a response to the needs of the era, heutagogy (self-determined learning) and coaching have been two of the concepts with increasing interest upon. In this study, based on an extensive review of the current literature and research, heutagogy and student coaching concepts are examined in an inter-related fashion as a suggested means through the route to respond to the needs of the era of industry 4.0.