In a relational ontology, cognitive development is not an individual linear progression but an emergent property of the learning ecology. Learners do not grow in isolation; they develop through interaction with the affordances of the field and the readiness they bring to it. Understanding arises when potentialities align — when what the learner is prepared to perceive meets what the environment offers.
1 — Readiness as a Relational Gradient
Every learner possesses a gradient of readiness: a set of tendencies, skills, and inclinations that determine how they perceive and act in the field.
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A learner may be ready to grasp conceptual relations but not procedural details.
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Another may be poised for collaborative meaning-making but struggle with abstraction.
These gradients are not fixed. They shift dynamically with exposure, experience, and interaction. Effective pedagogy recognises these gradients, tuning affordances to meet readiness without forcing conformity.
2 — Affordances as Configurable Potentials
Affordances are not properties of objects or activities alone; they are relations between learner and environment. A concept, a tool, a discussion prompt affords understanding only to the extent that learners can perceive and act upon it.
Pedagogy becomes the design of mutable affordances: materials, tasks, and interactions that can be perceived in multiple ways, scaled to the readiness of different learners, and capable of evolving as the ecology shifts.
3 — Development as Emergent Alignment
Cognitive growth emerges when readiness and affordance intersect repeatedly across contexts. This is a field-level phenomenon:
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Individual learners internalise relational patterns through repeated participation.
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Peer interaction amplifies or redirects emergent understanding.
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Teacher interventions modulate the field, adjusting gradients and realigning affordances.
Over time, the ecology itself evolves, producing new potentials for construal that did not exist before. Learning is not merely acquired; it is co-actualised within the system.
4 — Implications for Differentiation
Differentiation in this framework is relational, not prescriptive. It is about shaping the ecology to accommodate diverse gradients of readiness:
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Adjusting affordances so learners encounter challenges aligned with their current potential.
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Designing interactions that allow more advanced learners to expand the field without constraining others.
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Ensuring the field remains flexible and responsive, capable of sustaining emergent understanding across levels of development.
Differentiation is thus a practice of dynamic calibration, not a catalogue of pre-set levels.
5 — Cognitive Development as Systemic Reflexivity
As learners engage with the field, they leave traces that reshape affordances for themselves and others. This is a recursive process:
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Each act of understanding alters the topology of the learning ecology.
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Peer contributions expand possibilities for future construals.
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Teacher interventions adapt to the new configuration, creating a self-tuning system.
Cognitive development is therefore not linear, but an ongoing dance between readiness, affordance, and emergent alignment.
6 — Ethics of Development in the Relational Field
Because development emerges relationally, inequities in the field become ethically significant. If some learners’ gradients are systematically ignored or constrained, the ecology loses its capacity for broad, inclusive alignment. Ethical pedagogy requires attuning the field to diverse potentials, ensuring that the evolution of affordances supports collective flourishing.
Learning, at this level, is not the acquisition of static skills or knowledge. It is the emergent, relational calibration of the system itself, in which learners and ecology co-develop, tuning the field for ever-expanding possibilities of meaning.
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