Cognitive understanding is a functional coordination pattern, just like swimming

Many researchers have been intrigued by how children develop cognitive understanding. Using tasks involving, for instance, balance scales, floating and sinking, mathematical equivalence, or air pressure, researchers have investigated how children talk, move, write or draw when they go from less to more advanced explanations for how a task works. Researchers’ ideas about cognitive understanding are predominantly based on information processing models. In this Opinion paper, I will provide an alternative account of cognitive understanding, based on a complex systems, coordination dynamics and affordances perspective.