{"id":3084,"date":"2026-02-25T08:36:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T07:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo2.egm.at\/www.thelivingcore-original.com\/?p=3084"},"modified":"2026-04-13T10:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T08:55:10","slug":"education-as-exduction-and-co-becoming-blogpost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo2.egm.at\/www.thelivingcore-original.com\/en\/education-as-exduction-and-co-becoming-blogpost\/","title":{"rendered":"Education as Exduction and Co-Becoming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What if we were to think of education as opening out into a terrain that is ever-unfolding? What if it were a way of studying with<\/em> the world we inhabit, rather than making studies of<\/em> the beings and things we find there? (Ingold 2022, ii).<\/p>\n\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From Knowledge Transfer to Co-Becoming: Why Education Needs a Radical Re-Orientation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a world defined by dynamic uncertainty and rapid change (VUCA world), the traditional foundations of our educational systems are beginning to crack. For decades, we have operated under a \u201cbanking model\u201d of education: it is a paradigm where learners are viewed as passive containers to be filled with factual data. However, as explored in our paper \u201cEducation as Exduction and Co-Becoming\u201d, this model of simple knowledge transfer is no longer sufficient for navigating a world that is constantly unfolding.
\nDrawing on the profound insights of anthropologist Tim Ingold (Ingold, 2017) and the latest developments in 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive; Gallagher, 2023; Newen, de Burin, and Gallagher, 2018; Ward, Silverman, and Villalobos, 2017), we propose a transformative shift. Instead of learning about the world as a detached observer, we have to shift our attention to how to become with the world as active and co-creative participants. This blog post explores the core arguments of the paper, detailing how the concept of \u201cexduction<\/em>\u201d and \u201cco-becoming\u201d offer an alternative and new perspective for human development and education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Poverty of Propositional Knowing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We argue that modern education is overwhelmingly focused on propositional knowing<\/em>: the \u201cknowing that\u201d Vienna is the capital of Austria or that water boils at 100\u00b0C. While these verifiable facts are essential for logical inference and symbolic manipulation, they are inherently disengaged<\/em> and decontextualized<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we rely solely on propositional knowledge, we treat the mind as a computer processing\/manipulating symbols (symbolic representations). However, this cognitivist approach lacks an experiential foundation; it remains \u201cdetached and self-referential\u201d. Vervaeke and Mastropietro\u2019s (2024) \u201c4P\u201d taxonomy, argues that we have neglected three other vital forms of knowing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Procedural Knowing<\/em>: The \u201cknowing how\u201d embodied in skillful action, such as riding a bike or building a shelter. This form of knowing is governed by performance and (bodily) interaction with the world rather than truth.<\/li>\n
  2. Perspectival Knowing<\/em>: The embodied, context-sensitive awareness of \u201cwhat it is like\u201d to be in a specific situation. It is about \u201coptimal grip\u201d: the felt sense of being well-aligned with your current environment.<\/li>\n
  3. Participatory Knowing<\/em>: The most foundational layer, involving the dynamic coupling between the agent and their environment where both co-create one another. This is \u201cknowing through being\u201d, where the learner is not a spectator but an inhabitant and an active co-creator of a \u201clifeworld\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Vervaeke and Mastropietro (2024) (among many others) suggest that meaningful contact<\/em> with reality must precede formal articulation; therefore, all other forms of knowing emerge from this foundational participatory ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Leading Out: Education as Exduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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    One goes not from facts on the ground to theories, by in-duction, nor conversely from theories to facts by a reverse process of de-duction, but rather along the sensible path of a continuous variation, that is by ex-duction. One is led out along the way. (Ingold 2017, 41)<\/p>\n\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    While the \u201cbanking model\u201d of education is about in-duction (generalizing facts to \u201ctheories\u201d) or de-duction (applying theories to facts), our paper, following Ingold (2017), proposes a third path: Exduction<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The term, used in Ingold\u2019s work, comes from the Latin word \u201cex-ducere\u201d, meaning \u201cto lead out, to bring forth<\/em>\u201d. In this view, education is not about transferring a fixed curriculum or body of knowledge into the minds of learners; rather it is about leading them out into the world<\/em> to attend to its unfolding, diversity, and (still) unknown and undiscovered dynamics and dimensions. In an alternative reading, \u201cleading out\u201d can also be interpreted as bringing the learner\u2019s potentials to life. As stated in the quotation above, \u201cOne is led out along the way\u201d through a process of continuous variation and discovery, as well as, of enacting the inner (\u201cmind\u201d) and outer world by overcoming this seeming duality in a process of inter-action and correspondence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This shifts both the roles of the teacher and learner: The teacher is no longer an \u201cexplicator\u201d of existing facts, but becomes a guide<\/em> in a process of (re-)discovery and shaping of the world. In the paradigm of exduction, the educator does not merely transmit authorized knowledge across generations but participates in a \u201csocio-material-epistemic continuity and co-construction process\u201d where students and teachers alike lead and engage in life together by jointly exploring, understanding, and enacting the world. They become co-creators, in the sense that they collaboratively create knowledge and\/by jointly enact\/-ing both the world and themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    \u201cAttending to\u201d Instead of \u201cKnowing of\/about\u201d Things: Educating from Of and About to With and Through<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    In this context, attention becomes central: While traditional views see attention as a strategic spotlight by selectively concentrating on a specific aspect of the world (and ignoring others), Ingold (2017, p 20ff) suggests to frame it ontologically as stretching toward things<\/em> (\u201cad-tendere\u201d) and going along with them<\/em>. This formative \u201cattentionality\u201d implies a mutual shaping between the self and the environment, functioning as a mode of cognitive niche construction. Educating attention attunes perception to resonate with the world\u2019s becoming and variation, shifting correspondence from mental mirroring of the world to an \u201cenactive dance\u201d of co-responding to, with, and through the world. Instead of pursuing predefined goals, education understood as exduction explores and develops uncharted paths into the \u201cadjacent possible\u201d (Kauffman, 2000) and future potentials, favoring movement, emergence, and perpetual beginning over fixed stand- and endpoints. Knowledge is thus undergone together<\/em> (Ingold, 2014) rather than explicated, serving to actualize potentials and the as-yet-unthought. This leads to a \u201cpedagogy of presence\u201d in which the educator becomes a guide in shared (re-)discovery and co-creation as well as sensing and actualizing future potentials where both participants are transformed through mutual resonance with and co-enacting an unfolding world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Education, therefore, is not memorization and replication, it is transformation<\/em>: it becomes a process of co-becoming and co-creation, (co-)enaction, resonance (Rosa, 2019), correspondence (Ingold, 2013), a kind of growing together<\/em> between the learner, teacher, and the world. \u201cGrowing together\u201d in both the sense of uniting\/(co-)becoming one and thriving together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Three Dimensions of Co-Becoming<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The central thesis of the paper is that knowing and learning are processes of transformative co-becoming. This is not a solely mental act but a relational dynamic that involves the agency of the social, material, and future world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    1. Socio-epistemic practice (co-operation with others): Learning is a social\/collective endeavor where meaning is negotiated and co-created. It involves response-ability<\/em>, the capacity to respond and be responded to. In this social dimension, learners offer their participatory knowing to others and receive theirs in return, leading to a \u201chuman becoming\u201d that transcends individual belief revision in a process of participatory sense making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007) and meaning construction.<\/li>\n
    2. (Socio-)Material practice (co-respondence with an unfolding world): Drawing on the work of Malafouris\u00b4 (2013, 2019) Material Engagement Theory and Ingold\u00b4s (2013) concept of making and co-respondence, we argue that we do not just think about<\/em> things; we think with and through them<\/em> so that thinking becomes a process of \u201cthinging<\/em>\u201d.
      \nThis involves an engaged epistemology<\/em> (De Jaegher, 2021) where the knower practices \u201cletting be\u201d. This means reducing epistemic control and respecting the autonomy and creative agency of the world\/known. Instead of imposing past structures or expectations onto the world, we enter into an \u201cenactive dance\u201d or resonance with our material environment. Knowledge is thus not a static object but an emergent process of mutual enaction between the learner and the \u201cagency of the world\u201d.<\/li>\n
    3. Temporal practice (co-becoming with an unfolding future): Finally, the paper argues that learning as exduction becomes an anticipatory<\/em> act. It is not merely about solving present problems using past knowledge, but about \u201clearning from the future as it emerges<\/em>\u201d (Scharmer, 2016), being led by and actualizing emerging future potentials.
      \nThis involves engaging with potentiality\u2014what Aristotle referred to as dynamis\u2014rather than just actuality. In this mode, the learner becomes attuned to emergent affordances, adjacent possibles (Kauffman, 2000), and future potentials. We are not just adapting to a pre-set future; we are acting and intervening to co-create novel social and material niches. This is \u201canticipatory resonance<\/em>\u201d, where our internal potentials align with the unfolding potentials of the world and by co-enacting each other.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Skills and Mindsets of the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      Exduction asks us to \u201ctake off our armour of control\u201d and meet the world with open arms, rendering ourselves vulnerable to being changed and transformed by what we encounter. This is the beautiful as well as challenging risk of education, the willingness to restore things to their presence rather than consuming them in a repository of the already known.
      \nWhat does this look like in practice? Our paper outlines several radical reorientations for the modern learner and educator:<\/p>\n\n\n\n