Traditional education measures success by correctness: did the student reproduce the expected answer? Did they memorise the procedure? Did their work match the standard?
From a representational perspective, correctness seems natural — knowledge is a fixed object, and learning is faithful replication. But in a relational ontology of learning, correctness is misleading. What matters is coherence within the field — the degree to which inclinations, affordances, and construals align to produce shared, emergent understanding.
1 — Correctness as a Misplaced Metric
Correctness treats learning as linear and atomised. It ignores:
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Contextual variability: What is “correct” in one field of experience may not align with another.
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Emergent meaning: Understanding often arises in unpredictable ways. Multiple construals can be valid within the same aligned field.
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Relational dynamics: Learning is co-constructed; isolating individuals from the field misrepresents the process.
Reliance on correctness reduces the field to a static snapshot, masking the processes of negotiation, adaptation, and alignment that produce understanding.
2 — Coherence as Relational Success
Coherence is the degree to which the system — learners, teacher, materials, and environment — sustains a mutually intelligible field.
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Individual coherence: A learner’s construal integrates with their own inclinations and prior knowledge.
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Dyadic coherence: Two learners’ construals resonate, producing a shared understanding in dialogue.
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Collective coherence: The classroom or learning community maintains alignment across diverse perspectives.
Coherence accommodates multiplicity. Different paths, interpretations, or strategies can coexist, provided they contribute to the field’s shared intelligibility. The goal is not uniformity but relational resonance.
3 — Implications for Pedagogy
Pedagogy shifts from policing correctness to tuning the field:
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Design affordances that allow multiple pathways to align.
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Encourage discussion, reflection, and feedback that reveal divergence and create opportunities for reconciliation.
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Value experimentation and emergent solutions, not merely reproduction of canonical answers.
Assessment becomes formative and relational: it maps field coherence rather than tallying right and wrong answers. It senses the degree to which learners’ construals integrate into the collective understanding.
4 — Ethics and Equity in Coherence
Coherence requires attention to whose voices shape the field. If only dominant perspectives align, the field may appear coherent while marginalised learners are excluded. Ethical relational pedagogy ensures inclusive alignment: the ecology of learning must be capable of sustaining diverse contributions without privileging a single pathway.
5 — Beyond the Scoreboard
Correctness gives a single metric; coherence gives a living map. By focusing on relational alignment rather than static answers, we cultivate learning environments where the field itself becomes the arbiter of understanding, responsive, adaptive, and generative.
In short: success is not who got the “right answer,” but whether the system can continue to produce new, shared meaning — whether the field remains fertile for further construal.
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