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Pedagogy

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

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 the purposive structuring of learning ecologies to
    • 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.

Implications include for example, the right to learn for animals, for animals to live better in human societies.1 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.”2

Cf.

  • Natural pedagogy: living beings have evolved to teach and learn from each other.3
  • Activity theory: learning occurs through goal-directed actions within social contexts.
  • Distributed cognition: knowledge is spread across people, tools, and environments.4
  • 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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