Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Learning

Introduction to the Learning Theory

The central focus of Gibson’s Ecological Perceptions is the idea of direct perception (Gibson, 1979). Direct Perception posits that there is enough information present in the environment that can be directly perceived and acted on, that there is no need for an interpretation layer. This is in contrast to information processing-based theories that suggest the human brain works on inference. In Gibson’s model, learning is not merely a processing of internal representations but is an active and emergent feature of the interaction of a system (hence the ecology in the name). The creator and primary architect of the theory is J.J. Gibson.

Gibson’s work on direct perception created a fundamental shift in how perception is interpreted within the context of behavior phenomenology and offers a new lens to examine learning and skill acquisition. This work helps to provide a better explanation for the ways that learners engage with and understand information. This theory has made a significant contribution to both psychology and education because it challenged traditional views that see learning as something more static. Instead, it suggested that skills and knowledge emerge from the dynamics of interplay between an individual and their environment. In doing so, it gives us a new framework that accounts for the context-based nature of learning.

Origins of the Learning Theory

J.J. Gibson is the most important figure in the theory’s history. He created the theory and laid out its structure in his seminal work The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Gibson, 1979). His work emerged as a response to the limitations he found in the dominant “information processing” theories explanation for perception. At the time, he criticized their stance that sensory information was “impoverished”—or subject to a “poverty of the stimulus.”. The idea was that sensory information could never describe the world on its own, and the brain needed to infer reality and fill in the details.

Gibson argued that these models failed to capture and understand the richness of environmental information and the active role of a learner in their own skill acquisition. In his research, he determined that the environment provided more than enough information for our perception to act directly on without the need for complex interpretation.

These ideas were merging in the mid-20th century, which was a time of significant intellectual transformation. Computing was beginning to emerge, and the information processing theories were drawing heavily from how they perceived computation to work. Gibson’s work is in refutation of these ideas. This created a ripple effect in the psychological community, eventually spawning the branch of ecological psychology profoundly changing the landscape of fields like neuroscience, education, and others while leading the way for theories to come. To date, his theory has been widely applied in sport education, particularly in sports like soccer.

These later theories that either directly or indirectly influenced or are in alignment with Gibson’s ideas are the Four E’s of cognition (embedded, extended, enacted, and embodied) (Newen, de Bruin, & Gallagher, 2023), active inference by Friston (Linson et al., 2018), and most recently the Conscious Agent Theory by Hoffman and Prakash (Hoffman et al., 2014), among others. It also shares some similarities with constructivism, albeit on a deeper ontological ground. It also rejects the idea of the brain and body as an interpretation machine or a top-down controller of action.

Constructivist principles have been increasingly used in instructional design by focusing on engaging learners in immersive and hands-on experiences. This has shown up in simulation-focused learning, like a medical simulation lab; it has appeared in gamified learning. All with the intent to have students actively “construct” their knowledge. Gibson’s ideas are highly aligned with these principles, as Ecological Perception focuses on active rather than passive engagement for skill building. These theories differ primarily in ontology and have much overlap in practice.

Fundamental Tenets of the Theory

At the core of this theory is the principle of direct perception, which revolves around the idea that there exists enough information in the environment that we can perceive without the need to interpret the information and instead can act directly on it. The key aspects that arise from this core idea are affordances, invariants, and attractors. We will get into explaining each of these from the theory’s perspective.

Affordances are possibilities for action that we can directly perceive. An example of this would be a chair, which, in our perception, “affords” us the act of sitting. Invariants are aspects of an environment that remain constant as the individual changes their perspective; they help guide perception/action and learning. An example of an invariant is the texture gradient of a surface; this never changes despite different perspectives. Attractors are solution patterns that have emerged; they represent a pattern that is likely to occur given the constraints of the environment (they can be efficient or inefficient, i.e., desirable or something to be improved). The way you tie your shoes is an example of an attractor in behavior. Overall, Gibson’s ideas highlight that learning is not passive but is an active exploration.

Important terms that come from this are intention and attention. These two become almost a mantra in the methods and practices that emerge from this theory. The art of design from this theory largely becomes a matter of directing these two things in the individual and systems as a whole. To further explore these concepts, the video below provides an overview of Gibson’s Ecological Perception Theory.

Strengths and Limitations of the Theory

The main strength of the theory is that it opened ecology into learning. It took steps away from individualistic, passive, and static ideas of learning and brought in ideas of interaction and emergence. By focusing on context, affordances, and the dynamics of an environment, asking learners to actively engage and interact with the learning environment, this theory enriches our perspective of what learning is. Knowledge and skills are not passively acquired but actively emerge.

However, there are limitations. The strong emphasis and rigid view of direct perception have it struggling to explain and account for internal processes that clearly have the ability to be interpretive. The original framework sought to define and explain perception, which left it open to broader questions on cognition and the nature of thought, imagination, and visualization. There are answers for these, but many find them lacking. These limitations may be addressed with more modern theories on cognition and consciousness, such as Friston’s Active Inference and Hoffman’s Conscious Agent Theory. Both of these produce things like affordances and invariants and have a more complete explanation of the deeper problems not well addressed by Gibson’s EP.

Instructional Design Implications

This theory has not been used in instructional design as a field, but it has been widely used in sports education by coaches and instructors. The implications from the years of practical use and research are promising, and it is time these ideas be included in the broader educational landscape. At the core of this approach, we are called to modify the constraints of the learners’ environment (internal and external) to promote the emergence of the desired skills and draw away the idea that we can somehow transfer skills and knowledge directly.

The strategies in current use that can be applied to learning design are the constraint led approach (CLA) (Renshaw et al., 2011), differential learning (DL), and representative learning design (RLD) (Krause, 2019). These existing methods and frameworks can be adapted into a more academic setting with the help of some initial research and investigation. The main ideas are to manipulate constraints to allow skills and knowledge to emerge, vary tasks to create robust adaptability, and align to high degrees of representativeness of the goal behavior, not necessarily specificity.

Below are some practical examples demonstrating how Gibson’s theory could potentially be used in instruction design:

Conclusion

To summarize, Gibson’s theory of direct perception indicates that learning is an emergent feature from the interactions of an ecosystem. True understanding and knowledge are not passively received but need to be actively engaged with to be created in the individual and/or the system. These ideas ask us to approach learning actively, representative of the goal, and with the system as a whole in mind. In the broader application of the theory, it suggests we move away from meaningless metrics and conventional assessments towards a more nuanced and representative focus on the learner’s actual performance and progress. By incorporating these ideas into modern instructional design, we can better design training and learning environments that are more adaptive and effective, ultimately producing meaningful outcomes better suited to individual and group goals.

References

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.

Hoffman, D. D., & Prakash, C. (2014). Objects of consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 577.    https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00577

Krause, L. M. (2019). Exploring the influence of practice design on the development of tennis players [Doctoral dissertation], Victoria University. [Victoria University Institutional Repository].

Linson, A., Clark, A., Ramamoorthy, S., & Friston, K. (2018). The active inference approach to ecological perception: General information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2018.00021

Newen, A., de Bruin, L., & Gallagher, S. (Eds.). (2023). The Oxford handbook of 4E cognition. Oxford University Press.

Renshaw, Ian & Davids, Keith & Newcombe, Daniel & Roberts, Will. (2019). The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design. Routledge. 10.4324/9781315102351