New Perspectives in Science Education

This essay proposes an ontological approach to learning based on the Relational Availability Hypothesis (RAH), according to which relationships precede relations; this means that no physical, cognitive, or social entity manifests itself in isolation. The emergence of any function requires the simultaneous constitution of its relational analogue. Thus, manifestation necessarily occurs in pairs: teacher and student, observer and observed, each emerging as a systemic function only to the extent that the other also becomes available in the relationship. There is no “teacher per se” or “student per se”; there is a functional co-emergence produced by the relational field that links them. The relationship is therefore prior and generative, while the relations are local effects of this primary relational organization. The classroom is not merely a space where a teacher relates to a student; it is a relational field in which the very dynamics of learning bring about, in a co-constitutive way, the functions of teacher and student as interdependent systemic positions. From this perspective, the educational process requires a profound revision of the conventional notion of teaching: it is not a matter of one subject transmitting content to another, but of sharing ways of knowing in which the teacher narrates, rewrites, and reinterprets their own learning, that is, tells how they learned, producing the most empathetic conditions for the student to express themselves, preserving their cognitive function and making themselves available autonomously. The shift in focus from “teaching” to “learning” dissolves the traditional asymmetry that assumes that whenever one teaches, the other learns. This understanding, by naturalizing linear causalities, obscures the dispositional and systemic dynamics of learning and perpetuates unproductive pedagogical expectations. It is also argued that there is a recurring misconception in the pedagogical interpretation of the idea of “understanding the student's context.” In many practices, this understanding becomes a functional displacement: teachers begin to take on parental, emotional, psychological, or therapeutic roles, distancing themselves from their epistemic function and disrupting the relational balance necessary for the student to emerge as a learning subject. HDR thus offers a conceptual key to redefining inclusive education: inclusion does not mean indefinitely expanding the scope of the teacher's role, but preserving the integrity of their systemic function, ensuring that the school relational field is sufficiently stable to allow the student to emerge cognitively. Based on Vygotsky, Freire, Maturana, Morin, and the contributions of neuroeducation, it is argued that belonging, bonding, and symbolic security are structural conditions for meaningful learning, conditions that only operate when the teacher remains entirely positioned in their relational function. It is concluded that learning is not an individual act, but a coemergence that requires the simultaneous manifestation of the functions of teacher and student; it is this reciprocity, not transmission, that sustains the pedagogical process and gives rise to what we mistakenly call “teaching institutions,” when, in fact, they are learning institutions.

Keywords: Relational Availability Hypothesis; Learning; Inclusive Education; Belonging.

REFERENNCES

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