iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 09/10/2026

And here is Maturana and Varela in The Tree of Knowledge:

Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 09/10/2026

That's where their premise of structural coupling came from, which is what I'm referring to when I discuss learning loops. Here's an example that Maturana once gave:

MATURANA: On certain occasions I use the example of an instrument flight when I want to explain the difference between the internal operational dynamics of a system and what happens in the domain of interactions of the system as a whole. Imagine pilots sitting in the cockpit and flying a plane in complete darkness. They have no immediate access to the external world nor do they need it, they act on the basis of measurement values and indicators, employing their instruments when the values change or particular combinations of values emerge. They establish sensorimotor correlations in order to keep the relevant values within specified limits. When the plane has landed, friends and colleagues may appear who have observed the plane arrive, and congratulate the pilots on their successful and admirable landing in thick fog and dangerous storms. The pilots are confused and ask: “What storm? What fog? What are you talking about? We just handled our instruments!” You see: What happened outside the plane was irrelevant and without meaning to the operational dynamics inside the plane.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 01/10/2026

When I wrote Teaching Meaning, people commented on how well it captured teaching and learning. Yet, I didn't need to refer to storage or retrieval at all. Except, in this passage:

Through the ways we talk about knowledge, we create and
bring forth the idea of knowledge, to which our students will adapt.

It’s our responsibility to converse within our communities and
reflect on our criteria. The same is true of our students. They exist,
of course. We can all agree, for example, who they are, what they
look like, the form of their handwriting, and their school grades.
But through the ways we converse about students, we bring forth
who they are. If we discuss learning as storing and retrieving
information, then we bring forth students as storers and retriev-
ers. If we discuss learning as adapting and making meaning, then
we bring forth students as adaptive meaning makers.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes! Well, principally in my latest book, Teaching Meaning, which is fundamentals of enactivism applied to teaching. So, while I don't use the term "Structural coupling" the idea is baked into it. And chapter 1 is: Meaning can't be transmitted.

Figure 12: A conversation showing a dance between convergence (thinner lines) and divergence (thicker lines). The teacher fosters agreement by attempting clarity in communication. In turn, teachers prompt students to express and explore their understandings, which the teacher then absorbs.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

I had a play at making a stock and flow model today, to represent a continuous fermenter. A stock within a stock.

A stock and flow model of a countinuous fermenter, with a population stock and flow model inside it.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 26/09/2026

Spent yesterday and this morning re-reading this to sharpen up a paper I'm working on: @laurennross.bsky.social

The book cover of Explanation in Biology by Lauren Ross

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 20/09/2026

Ok, done, I think, ready to share with my team and co-construct with my 11-year-olds:

A stock and flow diagram showing condensation of gases to liquids.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 20/09/2026

So, from global centralisation, the great forum of EduTwitter, to local Whatsapp groups. Is EduSocialmedia in "alpha" now?

The panarchy model. Systems develop, breakdown, reorganise temporarily, breakdown, and develop again.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026

I've not read Seth's work directly. From what I know of it, it is based on the predictive processing paradigm. I read a paper recently that put his work in the cognitivist side, but more on the organicist side than pure information processing. My position is more firmly in enactivism.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026

Second iteration (with some mistakes included).

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026

I wanted to redesign my model for teaching condensation to my 11-year-olds. My physics-teacher colleague and I came up with this. We'll have to see how it works in the classroom (using a bottle of cold water to help). I'm not sure if the evaporating flow should be in a lighter colour, or omitted.

A stock and flow model of condensation on a bottle's surface, with the flows: condensing, colliding and staying as a gas, and evaporating.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 19/09/2026

Ha! that's not one I would attempt without practice. I've always got my pentadactyl limb images saved and ready. I do do a really simple generic one though (1 bone, two bones, lots of bones, digits).

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026

Interesting data from the new PISA report on the use of AI and performance in science:

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026

New PISA ranking for science: www.oecd.org/content/dam/...

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 06/09/2026

As AI disrupts learning relationships, Teaching Meaning couldn't be more consequential: ● Students don't just learn content; they learn their teacher. Very happy with this review (although, the book's written for all teachers):

A must-read for every Biology teacher! This book offers valuable insights for anyone looking to become a better educator, embrace a more human-centered approach to teaching and learning, and help students make meaningful sense of Biology. In a world where AI and technology are increasingly shaping learning environments, this book empowers us to continue being the architects of meaningful learning experiences. Its greatest strength lies in the fact that it is written by a Biology teacher who truly understands the practical challenges of the classroom, making it both authentic and incredibly inspiring.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 23/08/2026

With our Year 7s, I started the course with the particle model, then brought up Phet's diffusion simulation and started asking how the different settings would affect the rate of diffusion. We then had to work out what to do to find out (vary one thing, measure something... what?).

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 18/08/2026

In biology, students may read a textbook for revision in KS4. Otherwise, my scholarly work has focused around co-constructing causal models. In other words, what matters in biology, is the ability to construct, explain, and infer from causal models, e.g.:

A stock and flow diagram for thermoregulation

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 14/08/2026

● The Wrong Ends of the Constructivist Stick The middle way isn't a mix of "some telling and some exploring". It's a distinct pedagogy in its own right, just one that few people are aware of. Read about it in my new post: christianmooreanderson.com/teaching-wit...

Figure 3: A representation of teaching in which learning emerges from mutual adaptation, not through gathering of facts nor independent discovery.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 13/08/2026

Yes, this is what I wrote in Teaching Meaning. I connected the tension between "agreement" (between teacher and student) and "exploration". The problem comes when going too far towards one side.

A graph representing four different styles of teaching according to
how much emphasis is placed on agreement and exploration of content.

What does this pattern tell us? As meaning can’t be transmitted,
neither focusing on agreement nor exploration works in isolation.
We can’t just have students get all the answers correct. Nor can we
just have students explore concepts and topics. Instead, the tension
between agreement and exploration is precisely what
characterises teaching. It’s always present. Even when you meet
teachers who describe their style as more teacher-led or more
student-led, they can’t escape it. It makes sense, then, to embrace
it and ride its rhythm.
The tension also means that there isn’t a magic optimum
between the two. We can’t think in terms of “Aim for 80% of
lesson time on agreement, and 20% on exploration”.15 Agreement
and exploration aren’t competing demands. That push and pull is
teaching itself. It must be danced.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 11/08/2026

NEW POST ↓↓↓ ● Teaching with the wrong ends of the constructivist stick christianmooreanderson.com/teaching-wit...

Figure 1. A representation of "Say it how it is": students obtain information about the world as it is, and their meanings are the result.

Figure 2. A representation of "It is how you say it": students construct their meanings, and the world is the result.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 10/08/2026

Ha! Recursion is basically a rotation in loops of feedback. The continual folding back on oneself. Or the continual feeding back into oneself. I wrote this in my book Difference Maker:

Communication is often recursive and serves as a good example. As
person A communicates with person B, they may use a certain word
and meaning. Person B may then use it similarly with person C, who
may then use it again with person A, and so on. In this case, the original
word feeds back to the original speaker. These recursive loops bring
a stable language into being (Foerster 2014) and can, therefore, bring
about a shared way of seeing and talking about our subjects. This is
something I'll discuss in Chapter 4.
In the classroom, we could see either recurrent or recursive activity.
For example, in recurrent interaction, a teacher may explain a concept
without conversation, then have students complete activities and move
on with the lesson as each activity is finished, or students have uttered
the correct (or wrong) answers. It's just a repetition of teachers and
students alternating their actions. Recursive teaching, however, is based
on conversation. Our discussions with students continually feed back
into us, and we start talking about what we're talking about. We may
rephrase previous utterances as students ask us questions. We may
refer to what we're saying and to previous conversations in such a way
that conversations continually build on each other (Maturana 2011).
As we'll see in this book, these looping conversations trigger a sort of
coordinated co-regulation – a coupling – between teacher and students.
The class coevolves as both parties adapt to each other, ensuring mutual
understanding before moving forward (something absent from teaching
via recurrent activity).

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 03/08/2026

I have been waiting for August to read this book. It is time, and I'm excited:

The cover of Darwinizing Gaia: Natural Selection and Multispecies Community Evolution by Ford Doolittle.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 03/08/2026

It utterly convinced me around the time when learning to learn was so viscerally attacked. I too had people ask me to fit in numeracy, literacy, etc, but I wanted to do biology. I thought James gave a great solution. I cited it in Teaching Meaning & fit it with the law of requisite variety.

Yet, if we return to the student and apply this idea directly to them,
we find another loop; one that deserves special attention because it
changes the entire dynamic. There’s another level of problem solving:
The student’s self-regulation. Essentially, students become
problem solvers for their own participation in learning. They
develop their own certainty about how to act, rather than relying on
the teacher’s regulation. I’ve represented it in the following formula.
THE CAPACITY TO ENGAGE ≥ THE COMPLEXITY FACED
↓
student’s relevant knowledge
+ student’s certainty about how to act
+ student’s self-regulation
+ teacher’s support
+ teacher’s certainty about how to act

Self-regulation involves several things. It refers to how aware
learners are of their strengths, weaknesses, and how they learn. It
also includes their ability to motivate themselves and create techniques
that boost their learning.12 According to the law, the
students’ capacity includes both their own self-regulation and
their teacher’s regulation. Often, schools organise themselves in
ways that students experience few opportunities to develop their
self-regulation. Students cope with challenges through the support
a school offers.
However, the law suggests that students with better self-regulation
should cope better with complex ideas and tasks. And could

do so without needing extra support; a more skilful coping. This
sounds like a worthy goal, but what does the research say?
James Mannion’s research on learning to learn supports the idea.13
Rather than enacting short interventions, individual lessons, or
activities, he developed a department for learning to learn in a
secondary school. It had its own “learning skills” curriculum and
timetabled lessons. The curriculum focused on three general
categories: metacognition, self-regulated learning, and oracy.
Students attended these lessons over their five years of secondary
schooling. So, how did those students fare?
By the end, they outperformed the previous year group (which
hadn’t experienced this intervention) in all subjects on England’s
standardised exams by a considerable margin. The achievement
gap was vastly reduced. And their teachers also noted a difference
in how the students were able to handle novel situations and work
together. Importantly, this improvement in each subject occurred
despite having four hundred fewer lessons in those subjects compared
to the other year group. Those four hundred lessons were,
instead, dedicated to the “learning skills” lessons. A time that
taught and nurtured students’ self-regulation and metacognition,
as well as ways of conversing with others and with oneself.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 02/08/2026

I opened Vellend's Theory of Ecological Communities again and immediately realised that his image is essentially a stock-and-flow model. Which I then turned into a stock and flow diagram.

Vellend's model:
As an initial brief illustration, consider one of the simplest questions
one can ask about an ecological community: what can cause a change in the number of species (S) present in a particular place over time? Figure 4.2
shows one community, initially with nine individuals divided among three species.
There are only four fundamental ways to change the number of species,
which we can imagine in a hypothetical sequence of steps:
1. Speciation: One subpopulation of the white species diverges
from the other, forming a new species; the community now has four
species instead of three.
2. Dispersal (immigration): An individual of a species not already
present locally arrives from somewhere else and joins the community. A
species has been added to the community.
3. Drift: Even if all individual organisms have the same expected
rates of survival and reproduction, there is a nonzero probability that,
for example, the solid gray individual will die before reproducing. If
this happens, the number of species will decrease.
4. Selection: The white species has a fitness advantage over the
black and dotted species (i.e., it deterministically makes a greater per
capita contribution to the community in the next time step), thereby
excluding them from the community. The number of species has decreased
again.

A stock and flow model of Vellend's model of species richness.
Inflow: immigration and speciation
outflow: drift and selection (distinct modes of extinction).

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 02/08/2026

Error found: the link to my models for teaching plants to 16–18. The link now works here ↓↓↓ christianmooreanderson.com/models-16-18...

A stock and flow diagram I designed for teaching the mechanism of transpiration

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 01/08/2026

Yes, of course. That was in Teaching Meaning:

2. Close the gap between your teaching and their learning.
This goal brings us back to my second basic move: conversing.
Pask’s vision of conversation didn’t just involve spoken words; it
included conversing via other interactions. Be it through written
work, gestures, physical demonstrations, images, hands-up
voting, or via a machine, with others or oneself. The key was the
mutual communication that coordinated and reorganised the
participants’ understandings.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 29/07/2026

Here is, for example, an image from Krippendorf's book on communication. It shows the uncertainty reduction between a shop keeper and shopper. The field of possibilities is already defined: what they can sell and is shown as a closed box. It's probabilistic within the predefined stock in that shop.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 23/07/2026

I read this paper yesterday. It discusses teaching about gaps in explanations that are hidden by terms such as "leads to". In the discussion it compares the two issues: content knowledge as a limit, & an epistemic grasp of explanations as a different limit. One is domain-specific, the other isn't.

RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS
Into the Black Box: Explicating Black Boxes and Its Effect
on Mechanistic Reasoning
Gur Arie Livni Alcasid | Michal Haskel-Ittah
Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 15/07/2026

What do you think of Heinz von Foerster's broad mood on computing?

Harmlessly enough, computing (from com-putare) literally means to reflect,
to contemplate (putare) things in concert (com), without any explicit
reference to numerical quantities. Indeed, I shall use this term in this most
general sense to indicate any operation (not necessarily numerical) that
transforms, modifies, rearranges, orders, and so on, observed physical entities
(“objects”) or their representations (“symbols”). For instance, the
simple permutation of the three letters A,B,C, in which the last letter now
goes first—C,A,B—I shall call a computation; similarly the operation that
obliterates the commas between the letters—CAB—and likewise the
semantic transformation that changes CAB into taxi, and so on.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 12/07/2026

Right, I think that fits my view on variation theory (from my book). I'm interested whether you'd call these distinctions (abstractions we perceive) as "information" in the ecological sense. I see these as differences that make a difference (to someone), so they aren't "out there"

Making perceptible the content that makes a difference is a key
move in teaching meaning. For this reason, these key distinctions
are known as the critical aspects in variation theory (I’ll use them
synonymously in this book). Critical aspects are, then,
distinctions that communities of teachers and experts agree are
important. Because they shape how we notice, make sense of,
and work with the content.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 12/07/2026

Read "Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn't Enough" for a great alternative! christianmooreanderson.com/teaching-mea...

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 11/07/2026

I mean, surely you hadn't paid more attention because Pask's work is the most impenetrable of all the cyberneticians! As a teacher, I've looked to Pask for certain things, but much I haven't found that useful, like P and M individuals, for example. This general idea is very useful (from my book):

Conversations are built on communication, but the two are
distinct. In the introduction, I presented communication
(which includes telling, exemplifying and demonstrating) as the
most basic and intuitive of teaching moves. The value of communication
is in its clarity.
Conversations arise when two participants become entangled in
communication. Their value lies in sharing, generating and
coordinating meanings.

The distinction is often observed in classrooms:
• A poor explanation by a teacher (the communication) may
prompt a talkative class to ask lots of questions
(the conversation).
• A carefully designed explanation (the communication) may
be given to a keen and attentive class. But little discussion
(the conversation) takes place between students and the
teacher to check their understanding.
Pask thought that the information age, networked computers
and the internet had endangered conversation.23 I fear that
classroom technology has pushed lessons in a similar direction.
The ability to project slide decks and virtually any video has
actively hindered conversation.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 10/07/2026

This is a figure from one of my books. In flipped learning, the idea is that students do the learning without the teacher, and then converse about it some time afterwards. In my enactive view, the learning and the teaching are inseparable; they are mutual adaptation.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

No, don't always start from the same point (I can't always remember where I had started before). And yes, the order and what is discussed changes depending on the class. As I said in Teaching Meaning:

We should specify a lesson only somewhat; its content, and
the key distinctions we’ll vary. And then play through the
unfolding conversation in the direction we want to go.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 04/07/2026

That's it! Every single diagram uploaded to my site. This is the next step, after my books, in developing a community I'd like to be part of. christianmooreanderson.com/models/ #EduSky #UKed #iTeachBio

Models for teaching biology

I dream of a community of biology teachers who draw and explore models with students. Unlike many slide decks, the models I share aren’t the lesson itself. They aren’t to be presented or delivered, but co-constructed in conversing, step by step; a teaching method I explain in my books, Difference Maker and Teaching Meaning.

Through sharing our best models and teaching moves:

We become better teachers: combining the best of professional coordination and teaching autonomy.
We have a lighter workload by avoiding laborious resource creation; our planning time involves making sense of models and checking subject knowledge.
Our students learn more by reaping the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint slides and developing understanding beyond knowledge.

An example of one of my drawn stock and flow models (global heating) on my site.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 03/07/2026

Teaching Meaning's already earned 4.83⭐ from 17 ratings. This is a disruptive book. The EduCognitivist movement read research on study techniques & recreated the lesson in their image. I dig wider into cognitive science to create a model, not of study techniques, but of the lesson itself.

The book cover and rating of Teaching Meaning on the website goodreads.com

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 01/07/2026

Did you see the note at the end? I've always been fond of this passage by Spencer-Brown. He was a mathematician, but I think he captures understanding well.

This might be a helpful moment to introduce a distinction between following a course of argument and understanding it. I take understanding to be the experience of what is understood in a wider context. In this sense, we do not fully understand a theorem until we are able to contain it in a more general theorem. We can nevertheless follow its proof, in the sense of coming to see its evidence, without understanding it in the wider sense in which it may rest.

Following and understanding, like demonstrating and proving, are sometimes wrongly taken as synonymous. Very often a person is regarded as not understanding an argument, a process, a doctrine, when all that is certain is that he has not followed it. But his failure to follow may be quite deliberate, and may arise from the fact that he has understood what was presented to him, and does not follow it because he sees a shorter, or otherwise more acceptable, path, although he might not, yet, know how to communicate it.

Following may thus be associated particularly with doctrine, and doctrine demands an adherence to a particular way of saying or doing something. Understanding has to do with the fact that what ever is said or done can always be said or done a different way, and yet all ways remain the same.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 28/06/2026

My in-laws have this fantastic variegated ficus. One leaf is entirely white! Losing its function & becoming parasitic. But look at that lone branch with no variegated leaves. I'm used to seeing branches with malformations, not ones with improvements. What happened? Epigenetic switch? Virus loss?

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 28/06/2026

My distinction comes from Varela. Enactivism has its roots in the constructivism of 2nd order cybernetics. Von Foerster was considered a leader, and his work was fundamental for influencing Varela. So there is much overlap, but his enactivism foregrounds mutuality and so distinguishes it.

Poerksen: What you call the bringing forth of a world, related thinkers simply designate the construction of reality. The difference between these two concepts is, for me, that constructivists have traditionally foregrounded the subject part. You seem to plead for a more balanced view of the relationship between subject and object. You insist: there must be both; both are indispensable for the act of cognition.

Varela: That is the central idea. Only the co-construction of subject and object can overcome the traditional logical geography of the strict separation of knower and known, internal and external world. There is no subject, as the constructivists suggest, on one side, constructing its reality in the desired way. And there exists no object, as the realists believe, on the other side, which determines what happens in the organism. My view is that subject and object determine and condition each other, that knower and known arise in mutual dependence, that we neither represent an external world inside nor blindly and arbitrarily construct such a world and project it outside. My plea is for a middle way that avoids both the extremes of subjectivism and idealism, and the presumptions of realism and objectivism.

The philosophical problem factory

Poerksen: Perhaps two aphorisms by Heinz von Foerster could contribute to further clarification. He epitomises the central idea of realism with the words: “The world is the cause, experience the consequence.” The fundamental principle of constructivism is, however: “Experience is the cause, the world the consequence.”

Varela: I do not agree with either position. As one printed version of this conversation is intended for a German audience, I should like to state quite clearly and unambiguously: I am not a realist, and I do not consider myself a constructivist, however often I may be classified as such in Germany. Classical constructivism does not at all impress me as a convincing mode of thought because it posits one side of the cognitive process as absolute: the organism forces its own logic and its own models on the world. I do not believe that to be the case at all. Such an assumption appears to me to be a relapse into neo-Kantian thinking. I have been trying for years to keep my name out of this debate - but obviously I have not been very successful.

Poerksen: To repeat the question: when confronted by the distinction between subject and object, you refuse to side with one or the other?

Varela: The goal of my work in cognitive science is not the dialectical negation of one side or the other. My question is not whether the world is represented in the organism, whether the subject is primary or whether the decisive influence is due to an object, my point is the total abolition of both extreme positions, not their affirmation or negation. My point is that neither the subject nor the object is primary. Both exist only in mutual dependence and in mutual determination.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 27/06/2026

I'm still working on building a community of biology teachers playing the same teaching game, exploring and sharing the best moves and models. As a first move, I wrote my books; now I'm sharing every model I've designed and taught. christianmooreanderson.com/models/

A screenshot of my site, which says:
I dream of a community of biology teachers who draw and explore models with students. A vision explained in my books, Difference Maker and Teaching Meaning. Through sharing our best models and teaching moves:

We combine the best of professional coordination and teaching autonomy: We become better teachers with a lighter workload.
Students reap the benefits of teaching without PowerPoint slides and develop understanding beyond knowledge: Students learn more.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 21/06/2026

What a fantastic review of my book Teaching Meaning! Thank you :D

This book arrived two months ago. It has taken me that long to read it…

Because this is a book not to be rushed!!!

Every page has something that leaves you imagining all the ways you could use it in your lessons.

Whether you are an ECT or a well seasoned teacher, whether you are a teacher of science, art, English, maths, etc this book presents the ways in which meaning is really made and gives evidenced insights on how you can help your students make meaning.

This book talks about how knowledge needs to acted upon by students to make meaning. They need to be able to take a new idea and explore it. Vary the ways it can be used, using the idea of “If X, then what?”, helping students see the limits in which their new knowledge can be used. We must not “confuse agreement with making meaning.”

This is a book to be savoured and I know it is one that I will be referring back to many, many times.

The cover of the book Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn't Enough.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 20/06/2026

NEW POST: ● Understanding isn't just knowledge (and how we can teach it) → christianmooreanderson.com/understandin...

An image of a person throwing stones at a piece of paper to measure its size, influenced by Gregory Bateson.
We can only throw questions at students and see how many land.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 19/06/2026

So what about what we do in lesson? We can't have students *do* settled knowledge. We can only focus on the immediate coping; how students *engage* with tasks. From enactive cognitive science I make this distinction in Teaching Meaning:

There’s a second, but related, problem with overly emphasising
agreement. It can be seen by distinguishing between two ways of
engaging: skilful coping (relying on established knowledge)
or exploring (enacting new knowledge).6
Skilful coping draws on existing ways of seeing and acting to get
things done. In other words, students can skilfully cope with a
task and still not learn what we’d like them to learn. They’re good
at learning contextual cues that help them say the right words at
the right time.7 Task completion can resemble understanding,
especially when all students are expected to give the
same answers.

Exploring, in contrast, reshapes those ways of seeing and acting:
altering what becomes possible for the student in that situation.
This is the purpose of sense-making exploration.
There’s an important relationship between the two. Preparing our
students to skilfully cope with whatever life throws their way is
exactly what we want to achieve. But to teach students to cope better,
they must learn to perceive and act in new ways; they must explore.
Therefore, if reshaping ways of seeing and acting is our goal in
the classroom, we must limit the use of coping as a successful
strategy for completing tasks.

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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 18/06/2026

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