How to learn about teaching
An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23314263 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michelle A Kline (0000-0002-1998-6928, Arizona State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Pages | e31-e31 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Behavioral and Brain Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0140-525X • E-ISSN: 1469-1825 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0140525x14000090 |
| PMID | 24856634 |
| OpenAlex | W2064673991 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 87 |
| References cited | 135 |
The human species is more reliant on cultural adaptation than any other species, but it is unclear how observational learning can give rise to the faithful transmission of cultural adaptations. One possibility is that teaching facilitates accurate social transmission by narrowing the range of inferences that learners make. However, there is wide disagreement about how to define teaching, and how to interpret the empirical evidence for teaching across cultures and species. In this article I argue that disputes about the nature and prevalence of teaching across human societies and nonhuman animals are based on a number of deep-rooted theoretical differences between fields, as well as on important differences in how teaching is defined. To reconcile these disparate bodies of research, I review the three major approaches to the study of teaching – mentalistic, culture-based, and functionalist – and outline the research questions about teaching that each addresses. I then argue for a new, integrated framework that differentiates between teaching types according to the specific adaptive problems that each type solves, and apply this framework to restructure current empirical evidence on teaching in humans and nonhuman animals. This integrative framework generates novel insights, with broad implications for the study of the evolution of teaching, including the roles of cognitive constraints and cooperative dilemmas in how and when teaching evolves. Finally, I propose an explanation for why some types of teaching are uniquely human, and discuss new directions for research motivated by this framework.
Adaptation (eye) · Biology · Cognition · Cognitive science · Cultural transmission in animals · Empirical evidence · Empirical research · Epistemology · Mathematics education · Restructuring · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Teaching method · Computer Science · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Language and cultural evolution · Neuroscience · Primate Behavior and Ecology · Psychology
Social Signals and Sense of Autonomy Jointly Modulate Learning in Children
Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind
Cultural Evolution and Gene–Culture Coevolution
Theory of mind as a proxy for Palaeolithic language ability
Unseen Weird Assumptions
Designing cultural multilevel selection research for sustainability science
Breeding cooperation
Who teaches children to forage? Exploring the primacy of child-to-child teaching among Hadza and BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania and Congo
Let's talk teaching
Appendix
Learning to walk in the forest
Socialization, Autonomy, and Cooperation
Le research domain criteria (RDoC), le réductionnisme et la psychiatrie clinique
Reversing implicit first impressions through reinterpretation after a two-day delay
Selective learning and teaching among Japanese and German children
Cognitive performance across the life course of Bolivian forager-farmers with limited schooling
Teaching Through Collaboration
Belief, culture, & development
How Children Invented Humanity
The Evolution and Development of Inferential Reasoning about Ethnic Markers
What Makes Us Social
Storytelling as Adaptive Collective Sensemaking
Children’s Judgments of Cultural Expertise
Exploring Knapping Learning Processes Amongst Upper Palaeolithic Hunter-Gatherers
The effect of trauma on Neanderthal culture
Program satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between program choice and learning behavior of undergraduate students in the university of Cape Coast
Impact of technical reasoning and theory of mind on cumulative technological culture
Cumulative culture
Teaching as evolutionary precursor to language
A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science
Flexible Cultural Learning Through Action Coordination
Growing Technological Opacity and the Social Brain
Parental teaching behavior in diverse cultural contexts
Cultural transmission vectors of essential knowledge and skills among Tsimane forager-farmers
Associations between men's reputations for fathering and their reproductive success among BaYaka foragers in the Congo Basin
Inferential communication
The effects of information utility and teachers’ knowledge on evaluations of under-informative pedagogy across development
Development of teaching in ni-Vanuatu children
Children seek help based on how others learn
Simulating peers
How Children Learn From Others
The Role of Explanation in the Evolution of Technology
Does Despotic Leadership Impact Employees' Career success
The Origins of Religious Disbelief
Who to Observe and Imitate in Humans and Robots
Four-Field Co-evolutionary Model for Human Cognition
Toys as Teachers
Testing the Effect of Learning Conditions and Individual Motor/Cognitive Differences on Knapping Skill Acquisition
The Development of Cumulative Cultural Learning in Context
Machiavellian strategist or cultural learner? Mentalizing and learning over development in a resource-sharing game
Learner-driven innovation in the stone tool technology of earlyHomo sapiens
The cultural evolution of teaching
Children and innovation
Where innovations flourish
The evolution of similarity-biased social learning
Autonomy and risk perception in Congo Basin developmental systems
The Cognitive Foundations of Teaching
Sex, mathematics, and the brain
Does child-directed speech facilitate language development in all domains? A study space analysis of the existing evidence
A joint future for cultural evolution and developmental psychology
Four misunderstandings about cultural attraction
The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation
How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta-Ethnographic Review
Inferring cultural reproduction from lithic data
Homo Pedagogicus
Natural Pedagogy in Second Language Learning and Teaching
Betwixt and between
Coherence, Muller’s Ratchet, and the Maintenance of Culture
Cultural Learning Among Pastoralist Children
Stone tool shaping without direct cultural transmission
Rethinking causal understanding and reverse engineering through the lens of cultural ecology
Teaching Recombinable Motifs Through Simple Examples
Opportunities for Interaction
Early Plant Learning in Fiji
Autonomy, Equality, and Teaching among Aka Foragers and Ngandu Farmers of the Congo Basin
The Life History of Learning Subsistence Skills among Hadza and BaYaka Foragers from Tanzania and the Republic of Congo
Ecological and Developmental Perspectives on Social Learning
Young children consider the expected utility of others' learning to decide what to teach
Demonstration and pantomime in the evolution of teaching and communication
Broadening Perspectives on the Evolution of Human Paternal Care and Fathers' Effects on Children
Teach
Learning From Others
How Do Children Become Workers? Making Sense of Conflicting Accounts of Cultural Transmission in Anthropology and Psychology
Why Don't Anthropologists Care about Learning (or Education or School)? An Immodest Proposal for an Integrative Anthropology of Learning Whose Time Has Finally Come
Early Stone Tools and Cultural Transmission
The Archaeology of Teaching and the Evolution ofHomo docens
Archeological insights into hominin cognitive evolution
Parents' cultural belief systems
Trust in Testimony
Natural pedagogy
Choosing your informant
Cultural learning
From meta-processes to conscious access
Preschoolers Mistrust Ignorant and Inaccurate Speakers
Learning Words from Knowledgeable versus Ignorant Speakers
Ratcheting up the ratchet
The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins
Theory of mind in nonhuman primates
Metarepresentations in an Evolutionary Perspective
Gesturing in mother-child interactions
Is There Teaching in Nonhuman Animals?
Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later
Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind
Teaching among wild chimpanzees
The moral, epistemic, and mindreading components of children’s vigilance towards deception
Culture in whales and dolphins
Social Learning in Animals
Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation
Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
Understanding and sharing intentions
Apprenticeship
Cultures of teaching in childhood
Why Culture Is Common, but Cultural Evolution Is Rare
Social learning and social cognition
The Afterlife Is Where We Come From
The evolution of costly displays, cooperation and religion
The evolution of prestige
Prestige-biased cultural learning
Why does culture increase human adaptability
Epistemic Vigilance
The evolution of cultural evolution
A New Guinea Childhood
The emergence of human uniqueness
On Modeling Cognition and Culture
Tutoring in Wild Golden Lion Tamarins
Relevance
Prosody and focus in speech to infants and adults
The Deer and the Tiger
Accounting for Variability in Mother–Child Play
Anthropology of childhood
Firsthand Learning Through Intent Participation
The Evolution of Conformist Transmission and the Emergence of Between-Group Differences
Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity
Five Misunderstandings About Cultural Evolution
Constraints of knowing or constraints of growing
Cross-cultural Comparison of Learning in Human Hunting
Learning, life history, and productivity
Children on the reef
Teaching and the Life History of Cultural Transmission in Fijian Villages
Learning 'From Nobody
Ice and travel among the Fort Norman Slave
Primitive Education in North America
The Works of the People of Old
Situated Learning
From Child to Adult
From Child to Adult
Cognitive Tracks of Cultural Inheritance
Does Biology Constrain Culture
The Human Adaptation for Culture
The Anthropology of Teaching and Learning
Side by Side
Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation
Evolution of Cooperation among Mammalian Carnivores and Its Relevance to Hominin Evolution
The Evolution of Giving, Sharing, and Lotteries
Our Educational Emphases in Primitive Perspective
| Unique citing works | 87 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,91 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 69 |