Teaching

This note is about pedagogy. As such, it relates to Teaching and Learning.

Cf.

• Astroethical education
• Biocentric education
• Ecocentric education
• Ecological education
• Ecojustice education
• Earth-centred pedagogy
• Environmental education
• Future literacy education
• Gaian pedagogy
• Geoethical education
• Green pedagogy
• Inter-species pedagogy
• More-than-human pedagogy
• Multispecies education
• Multispecies pedagogy
• Nature-centred education
• Non-anthropocentric pedagogy
• Planetary education
• Posthuman pedagogy
• Relational pedagogy
• Sustainability education
• Wild Pedagogies
• Planetary Pedagogy
• Gaia
• Design
• One Design

Core Definition

Pedagogy is any activity by a living system that modifies the conditions under which another living system (including a future state of itself) acquires, refines or transmits adaptive patterns, at an energetic or functional cost to the scaffolding system.

This definition works across scales because it rests on four substrate-neutral criteria, each already present in your notes or their references.

1. A learner with information-processing capacities. The learner need not be a brain. Basal cognition research extends this to cells, plants and slime moulds (Baluška, Reber, Calvo, Levin; see Plant, Decision Making, Subjectivity). The tentative definition in Learning, "entropy-resisting pattern formation," already covers this generalisation.
2. A scaffolder that alters the learner's ecology. The scaffolder can be an individual, a conspecific group, a symbiotic partner, a superorganism, a multispecies assemblage, a niche or an infrastructure. This follows directly from niche construction theory and the "learning ecologies as niches" thesis.
3. A cost borne by the scaffolder. This distinguishes pedagogy from incidental learning. Costs include energy, time, risk, attention, reproductive opportunity or genetic fidelity. The remark that "learning and teaching are forms of violence … energetically and structurally expensive" captures this Learning.
4. A functional gain in the learner's capabilities, measured against its mode of life. The gain need not be encoded as propositional knowledge. It can be a behavioural, metabolic, developmental or epigenetic adjustment.

Approach to Conceptualising Pedagogy

1. Premise: Life is sustained by continuous information exchange within and across living communities.
2. Constraint: Energy, time, and attention are limited; transmission demands compression, and understanding relies on decoding and pattern matching (inference).
3. Characterisation: Learning is pattern discovery and alignment under resource constraints.
4. Modalities of learning:
   • Individual: habituation, conditioning, exploration–exploitation, predictive processing.
   • Social: imitation, instruction, language; enables cumulative culture.
   • Inter-/intra-species: signalling, mutualisms, co-regulation and coordination.
5. Implication: Learning is embedded in, and reshapes, ecological and cultural niches.
6. Pedagogical thesis: Pedagogy is any costly activity by a living system that scaffolds the conditions under which another living system, or a future state of itself, acquires, refines or transmits adaptive patterns. Pedagogy therefore occurs at every scale of life: within cells, between kin, across symbioses, within superorganisms, across species assemblages and across generations of ecosystems. Human intentional pedagogy is one culturally elaborate case within this wider continuum. The work of more-than-human pedagogy is to recognise, respect and sustain this continuum rather than to monopolise it.

Core functions of pedagogy:

- expand capabilities for information processing, innovation, autonomy,
- steward/economise scarce resources (energy, attention, materials),
- coordinate with other living beings for mutual benefit, in competition, in symbiosis, etc.,
- balance compression with fidelity and error-correcting feedback.

Pedagogies are "purposive" in two senses: (a) intentional pedagogy, which requires mental states, and (b) functional pedagogy, which requires only a reliable, costly effect on learning. The functional sense is primary, human intentional pedagogy is one limit case.

A compact operationalisation comes from the animal-behaviour literature, which already proposes three criteria usable without invoking mind1:

• The scaffolder modifies its behaviour only in the presence of a naïve conspecific.
• The scaffolder incurs a cost or derives no immediate benefit.
• The naïve conspecific acquires knowledge or skill faster than it would otherwise.

These criteria extend readily to collectives and symbionts when "behaviour" is replaced by "activity" and "naïve conspecific" by "less-patterned learner."

Scaffolding is substrate-neutral, it appears in Vygotsky, in developmental systems theory, in niche construction and in stigmergy. It also avoids the implication of an overarching designer.

This account aligns with the argument in Design that design and engineering are not exclusively human. If design is the collective construction of conditions for life under constraints, then pedagogy is one of design's core modes: the intentional or functional shaping of learning conditions across organisms, collectives, symbioses and ecosystems. In this sense, pedagogy and design are coextensive in living systems, and both can be practised by human and nonhuman agents.

Implications include for example, the right to learn for animals, for animals to live better in human societies.2 For wild animals to have their ability to learn and teach protected in the wild. For other living beings to have their epistemic and information-processing capabilities respected and supported.

Cf. a controversial example:

“Again, the fact that the horse is at first annoyed by the bridle is not a negative thing in the capabilities approach, any more than is the annoyance of human children at compulsory schooling. It can be justified by its role in promoting adult flourishing and capability.”3

Cf.

• Natural pedagogy: living beings have evolved to teach and learn from each other.4
• Activity theory: learning occurs through goal-directed actions within social contexts.
• Distributed cognition: knowledge is spread across people, tools, and environments.5
• Situated learning: learning is embedded in authentic activity and context.

Legacy of environmental changes gets passed to future learners. Learning ecologies and learning institutions act as cognitive/behavioural/informational/cultural niches. Thus, co-presence of nonhuman innovators and stakeholders changes what is possible.

Example of Scaling Across Agents

Agent type	Learner	Scaffolder	Pedagogical activity
Individual cell	Daughter cell	Parent cell	Epigenetic marks, cytoplasmic inheritance, quorum-sensing primers
Plant	Seedling	Mother tree	Mycorrhizal carbon and chemical signalling in shared networks
Social animal	Juvenile	Conspecific	Demonstration, correction, opportunity-provision (Thornton and Raihani's criteria for teaching)
Holobiont	Host	Microbiome	Immune tuning, metabolic priming, developmental induction
Superorganism	New worker	Colony	Pheromonal trails, nest architecture, trophallaxis
Multispecies assemblage	Any member	Co-evolved partners	Stigmergy, mutualist signalling, cross-species alarm networks
Ecosystem	Future biota	Legacy of past biota	Soil memory, seedbanks, fire regimes, beaver-built hydrologies
Planet	Future life	Gaian feedbacks	Atmospheric and climatic envelopes that select for learnable regularities

Notes on Conceptual Approach

• Premise

  • Life entails continuous information exchange across living communities.
  • Limited energy and attention impose constraints; learning leverages compression, efficient coding, and pattern matching (inference).
  • Distinguish signal transmission (Shannon) from meaning-making (biosemiotics/semiosis).

• Forms of learning

  • Individual: habituation, conditioning, exploration–exploitation, predictive processing/active inference.
  • Social: imitation, instruction/teaching, language, norm learning; supports cumulative culture.
  • Intra-/inter-species: mutualisms, co-evolutionary signalling, stigmergy, ecosystem-level coordination.

• Niche construction and learning ecologies

  • Organisms (including humans) modify physical, semiotic, and institutional environments, reshaping selection and learning landscapes.
  • Developmental and cultural niches scaffold perception–action, memory, and skill (tools, trails, stories, archives, infrastructures, AI).
  • Feedback loops across scales with potential lock-ins and path dependence; multi-level selection dynamics.

• Complementary theories to integrate

  • Dual inheritance/gene–culture coevolution; cultural evolution.
  • Developmental systems theory and epigenetic scaffolding; ontogenetic niche.
  • Ecological psychology (affordances), enactivism, extended and distributed cognition.
  • Signalling theory and biosemiotics; meaning beyond Shannon bits.
  • Complex adaptive systems, resilience, panarchy, and networked feedbacks.
  • Commons governance and collective intelligence for coordinating shared niches.

• Pedagogical implications (planetary, more-than-human)

  • Design learning as niche construction: cultivate diverse affordances and situated practices.
  • Optimize justice and capability expansion under energy/information budgets (equity, access, care).
  • Balance compression and fidelity: multi-representation, uncertainty disclosure, redundancy for safety-critical knowledge, error-correcting feedback.
  • Multisensory, multilingual, cross-species cue integration; place-based and practice-based learning.
  • Foster cooperation, reciprocity, and stewardship of common-pool resources (Ostrom-aligned).
  • Ensure data sovereignty, consent, and ethical sensing with more-than-human considerations.

• Practices and infrastructures

  • Living labs, field stations, restoration studios, community science, participatory sensing.
  • Agent-based models, digital/situated twins, scenario planning for anticipatory learning.
  • Maker/ver­nacular technologies, open hardware, low-power/edge computing; embodied and cartographic methods.
  • Narrative, ritual, and craft as culturally robust compression for transmission and memory.
  • Open, modular, repairable infrastructures that reduce energy and attention costs.

• Assessment and feedback

  • Track capability gains, inclusion, reciprocity, and legitimacy.
  • Ecological indicators: biodiversity, connectivity, regeneration, resilience.
  • Information efficiency: rate–distortion trade-offs, signal-to-noise, model calibration and uncertainty.
  • Detect maladaptive niche effects and externalities; adjust via rapid feedback cycles.

• Risks to mitigate

  • Maladaptive construction, brittle simplifications from overcompression, harmful lock-ins.
  • Epistemic domination, anthropocentrism, algorithmic bias, inequitable access to learning niches.
  • Data/extractive practices harming communities or species.

• Design heuristics

  • Make affordances legible and plural; scaffold cross-generational and cross-species teaching.
  • Compress where context can restore meaning; build redundancy where failure is catastrophic.
  • Close feedback loops at appropriate scales; align with planetary boundaries.
  • Prefer open standards, commons-based knowledge, and governance that sustains learning ecologies.

• Pedagogy-design link

  • Treat pedagogical interventions as design interventions in niche construction.
  • Evaluate design proposals by their effects on distributed learning capacities, not only human utility.
  • Include nonhuman ecosystem engineers as active co-shapers of learning environments.

Opportunities of Ecocentric Education

Kopnina, Helen. 2019. “Ecocentric Education.” In Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education, edited by Walter Leal Filho, 419–80. Cham: Springer.

Problems with Human education

Cf. curriculum violence: academic programming which compromises the intellectual or psychological well-being of learners (or others).

Problems with Critical Traditional

Freire figures nonhuman animals in three main ways: as non-communicative and non- dialogical, as non-agential and non-transforming, and as without history or culture.

Corman, Lauren. “Impossible Subjects: The Figure of the Animal in Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, no. 16 (2011): 29–45.

Acampora, Ralph. “Zoögogy of the Oppressed.” Journal for Critical Animal Studies 18, no. 1 (2021): 4–18.

More-than-Human Approaches and Pedagogy

Edwards, Ferne, and Ida Nilstad Pettersen. 2023. “Speculative Design for Envisioning More-than-Human Futures in Desirable Counter-Cities.” Cities 142:104553. https://doi.org/10/gsqcx9.

Eriksson, Eva, Daisy Yoo, Tilde Bekker, and Elisabet M. Nilsson. 2024. “More-than-Human Perspectives in Human-Computer Interaction Research: A Scoping Review.” In Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 1–18. NordiCHI ’24. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10/g8kv92.

Jukes, Scott, and Ya Reeves. 2020. “More-than-Human Stories: Experimental Co-Productions in Outdoor Environmental Education Pedagogy.” Environmental Education Research 26 (9–10): 1294–1312. https://doi.org/10/ggnwvg.

Poikolainen Rosén, Anton, Antti Salovaara, Andrea Botero, and Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard, eds. 2025. More-than-Human Design in Practice. London: Routledge.

References

Carvalho, Isabel Cristina de Moura, Carlos Alberto Steil, and Francisco Abrahão Gonzaga. 2020. “Learning from a More-than-Human Perspective. Plants as Teachers.” The Journal of Environmental Education 51 (2): 144–55. https://doi.org/10/gscb6m.

Gagliano, Monica, Michael Renton, Martial Depczynski, and Stefano Mancuso. “Experience Teaches Plants to Learn Faster and Forget Slower in Environments Where It Matters.” Oecologia, no. 1 (2014): 63–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-013-2873-7. Plant habituation; a minimal case of being-taught-by-environment)

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Hill, Cher, Neva Whintors, and Rick Bailey. 2022. “We Are the Salmon Family: Inviting Reciprocal and Respectful Pedagogical Encounters with the Land.” Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching and Learning 8 (4): 1–22. https://doi.org/10/g9r6vc.

Kline, Michelle Ann. “How to Learn about Teaching: An Evolutionary Framework for the Study of Teaching Behavior in Humans and Other Animals.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38 (2015): e31. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X14000090.

Laland, Kevin N., and Michael J. O’Brien. “Cultural Niche Construction: An Introduction.” Biological Theory 6, no. 3 (2011): 191–202. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0026-6.

Levin, Michael. “Darwin’s Agential Materials: Evolutionary Implications of Multiscale Competency in Developmental Biology.” Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 80, no. 6 (2023): 142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-023-04790-z. (agency across scales, multiscale competency)

Pérez, Daniel R., and Laísa M. Freire. 2024. “Restoration-Based Education: A Brief Overview of a Field under Construction.” Restoration Ecology 32 (1): e13983. https://doi.org/10/g9r6t6.

Sidebottom, Kay, and Lou Mycroft. 2024. “[Birdsong]: Pedagogies of Attunement and Surrender with More-than-Human Teachers.” Australian Journal of Environmental Education 40 (2): 143–56. https://doi.org/10/g9r6t8.

Simard, Suzanne. “Mycorrhizal Networks Facilitate Tree Communication, Learning, and Memory.” In Memory and Learning in Plants, edited by Frantisek Baluska, Monica Gagliano, and Guenther Witzany, 191–213. Cham: Springer, 2018. (Inter-plant scaffolding via fungi)

Sultan, Sonia E., Armin P. Moczek, and Denis Walsh. “Bridging the Explanatory Gaps: What Can We Learn from a Biological Agency Perspective?” BioEssays 44, no. 1 (2022): 2100185. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.202100185.

Walsh, Denis M. Organisms, Agency, and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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Footnotes

1. Caro, Timothy M., and Mark D. Hauser. “Is There Teaching in Nonhuman Animals?” The Quarterly Review of Biology 67, no. 2 (1992): 151–74. https://doi.org/10.1086/417553. Refined by Thornton, Alex, and Nichola J. Raihani. “The Evolution of Teaching.” Animal Behaviour 75, no. 6 (2008): 1823–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.12.014. Hoppitt, William J. E., Gillian R. Brown, Rachel Kendal, Luke Rendell, Alex Thornton, Mike M. Webster, and Kevin N. Laland. “Lessons from Animal Teaching.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23, no. 9 (2008): 486–93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.05.008.˄

2. Schneeberger, Doris. Envisioning a Better Future for Nonhuman Animals: Towards Future Animal Rights Declarations. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.˄

3. Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. p. 395˄

4. For human infants, see: Csibra, Gergely, and György Gergely. “Natural Pedagogy.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 4 (2009): 148–53. doi:10/dmst37.˄

5. Clark, Andy. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.˄