“It's not my safe zone”: student-teachers' perspectives on readiness and facilitator practices in heutagogy-inspired courses

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Educational systems increasingly require teacher education to cultivate agency, adaptability, and self-determined learning. Although previous research has explored learner experiences in heutagogical environments or theorized the facilitator's role, less attention has been given to how learners’ readiness for self-determined learning intersects with specific facilitation practices. This study aimed to examine how student-teachers experienced facilitation practices in heutagogy-inspired courses and how these practices interacted with different forms of readiness for self-determined learning. This qualitative phenomenological study employed an interpretive thematic analysis of ten semi-structured interviews with student-teachers from early childhood, elementary, secondary, and special education programs who participated in heutagogy-inspired courses facilitated by three instructors. Data were analyzed through iterative phenomenological and thematic analysis, with limited quantitizing used to support interpretive comparison. From students’ perspectives, heutagogical facilitation emerged as a set of complementary practices enacted flexibly throughout the course in response to learners’ evolving needs. Four interrelated practices were identified: designing an autonomous learning space, constructing cognitive and structural scaffolding, providing psychological and emotional anchoring, and fostering peer learning. The analysis suggested three interpretive learner “patterns” reflecting different ways participants navigated autonomy, scaffolding, and emotional support within the heutagogical environment: “Naturals,” who readily embraced autonomy; “Transformers,” who appeared to undergo developmental shifts through scaffolding; and “Survivors,” who experienced autonomy as threatening and relied heavily on structure and relational support. Each “pattern” appeared to involve a different configuration of facilitation practices and support needs. The findings suggest that effective implementation of heutagogy in teacher education depends on adaptive facilitation that balances autonomy, scaffolding, peer learning, and emotional support, aligned with learners’ readiness. The study contributes to understanding how facilitation practices mediate the relationship between learner readiness, agency development, and emerging professional identity in heutagogical learning environments.