Towards an expanded cognitive developmental science understanding of human teaching / Hacia un conocimiento ampliado de la enseñanza humana basada en la ciencia del desarrollo cognitivo

Abstract

Teaching is one of nature’s remarkable inventions. Despite over two millennia of academic discussion about teaching, it remains in need of a broad scientific footing. The cognitive and developmental sciences, writ large, are candidates for such a footing. The purpose of this article is to go beyond teaching as knowledge transmission and present an expanded cognitive developmental account of teaching’s remarkable complexity. A minimalist and maximalist approach for describing teaching are presented, with a preference offered for the latter. It can serve as a map for backward engineering so as to get to the origins and developmental trajectories of the map of teaching’s components. An expanded mind-to-mind coupling version of the complexity of normative adult teaching is presented which includes stage-setting with emotion-, motivation- and mind-reading, organizing teaching sessions, scaffolding, detecting knowledge gaps and intervening by knowledge transmission strategies intended to reduce the gaps. In a backward engineering move, research is presented on infants’ abilities for some of what is presented for adults. Teaching is also prosocial, with heart-to-heart coupling. It is inextricably intertwined with teaching, and is another part of teaching’s complexity. Teaching’s prosociality is analysed via the economic concept of non-rivalry. It is shown that teaching is a form of helping behaviour but is not altruistic. Directions for further work in this maximalist approach to the scientific study of teaching are presented.