Teaching, naturally

Abstract

Teaching is one of mankind's most important achievements. It allows cumulative human culture to exist and enables us to have a history. Despite its significance, it has not been studied much in the cognitive sciences. We review two exceptions to this neglect. Both make claims about teaching as being natural to humans. The first view is that teaching is a natural cognitive ability. This view pays much attention to teaching and little to the learner. A second view is that humans are naturally attuned as learners to teachers' ostensive, pedagogical communications. This view largely neglects the teacher. We propose ways to integrate and expand these two theories that also take into account the dynamic bi-directional nature of the teacher–learner dyad. One is to consider the mutuality or its lack in the ostensive communications between the both the teacher and the learner. A second way is to include the neurosciences to investigate interactions between teachers' and learners' brains during teaching sessions. A third way is to explore a different information flow in such a way that the teacher learns when she teaches, thus suggesting that there are situations where the teacher and learner are one and the same person.