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.

Introduction: Teaching and its Building Blocks

“…Animal teaching is thus seen as proto-teaching by some developmental and cognitive researchers (Csibra 2007, Premack 2007. Teaching in young children is sometimes described as proto-teaching because while lacking the necessary ingredients of teaching, they are considered to be precursors of teaching (Strauss 2018;Strauss and Ziv 2012). At the other end of the spectrum, functional-behavioral definitions have been proposed in the framework of animal and cultural studies, which admit the existence of simple forms of teaching but abandon any reference to the cognitive requirements that are necessary for teaching and do so at the risk of throwing away the baby with the bath-water (Byrne and Rapaport 2011;Caro and Hauser 1992;Fogarty et al 2011;Hoppitt et al 2008;Thornton & McAuliffe 2012;Thornton & Raihani 2008).…”

“…In his research on education and developmental psychology, Sidney Straussone of the two co-editors of this special issuehas proposed a characterization of human teaching as a Bnatural cognitive ability^, i.e. it is universal, developmentally reliable, found in our ancient hominin ancestors, has a phylogenetic history and specific neurocognitive underpinnings (Strauss 2005, 2018, Strauss & Ziv 2012, Strauss et al 2002. Strauss (2018) posits that although teaching involves information giving, complex human teaching encompasses more than that.…”

“…it is universal, developmentally reliable, found in our ancient hominin ancestors, has a phylogenetic history and specific neurocognitive underpinnings (Strauss 2005, 2018, Strauss & Ziv 2012, Strauss et al 2002. Strauss (2018) posits that although teaching involves information giving, complex human teaching encompasses more than that. It includes stage-setting with emotion-, motivation-and mind-reading, organizing teaching sessions, scaffolding, detecting knowledge gaps and reducing them via teaching strategies such as demonstrations and verbal explanations.…”

“…On the practical side, research in cognitive science has been valuable in inspiring better practices in education. However, although progress has been made in analyzing, say, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying learning, much less is known about those supporting teaching (Battro 2010(Battro , 2013Battro et al 2013;Clark and Lampert 1986;Kane and Staiger 2008;Konstantopoulos 2007;Nye et al 2004;Olson and Bruner 1996;Pearson 1989;Rivkin et al 2005;Rodriguez 2012;Strauss 2001Strauss , 2005Strauss , 2018Strauss and Ziv 2012;Strauss et al 2014). This gap has become untenable in the light of increasing evidence that teachers have a long-lasting impact on the socioeconomic fate of their pupils (Chetty et al 2011;Chetty et al 2014).…”

“…Developmental studies on babies and children point to the existence of specific mechanisms that facilitate learning from teaching (Csibra 2007;Gergely and Csibra 2006;Csibra andGergely 2006, 2009;Csibra and Gergely 2011a, b) and of processes that shape children's selective choice of whom to learn from (Corriveau and Harris 2009, Eaves and Shafto 2012, Gweon et al 2014, Harris and Corriveau 2011, Sperber et al 2010. Children have also been described as natural teachers, because their motivation and capacity to transmit information and knowledge appears early in life, and follows a developmental path even in the absence of explicit instruction about Bhow to teach^ (Akagi 2012, Ashley and Tomasello 1998, Bonawitz et al 2011, Calero et al 2015, Corriveau and Harris 2009, Davis-Unger and Carlson 2008, Eaves and Shafto 2012, Gweon et al 2014, Harris & Corriveau 2011, Knudsen and Liszkowski 2012, Köymen et al 2015, Sperber et al 2010, Strauss 2005, 2018, Strauss and Ziv 2012, Strauss et al 2002, Tomasello 2009. Moreover, growing evidence supports the existence of teaching across cultures and societies, including contemporary traditional societies of hunter-gatherers and agro-pastoralists (Hewlett et al 2011;Kline 2013Kline , 2015Kline et al 2013;Lancy & Grove 2010;Maynard 2002Maynard , 2004Maynard and Greenfield 2005;…”