Abstract

Context: References to education in the 21st century often follow popular framings of education focusing on “skilling” and self-regulated learning without reflecting education as a key concept in educational research. Inter- and transdisciplinary efforts at the seams of 4E cognition and educational research can offer mutual benefits and enhanced perspectives for conceptualizing and designing educational arrangements open to the future. Problem: Education and educational research are contested fields. Depending on disciplinary backgrounds and entanglements of educational research and policy, different operative fictions of, for example, optimization, emancipation, calculable output, or freedom of personality development play a role. I highlight some challenges and often neglected contexts at the crossroads of learning and education as Bildung. Method: I summarize some historical background regarding education, educationability (Bildsamkeit) and the relevance of educationalization formulas. Furthermore, I consider a number of issues related to learnification, literacification, datafication and the impact of the global education industry. A critical analysis shows that some challenges have been undervalued in the discourses at the crossroads of education and 4E cognition, so far. Results: As for the future of 4E cognition research, perspectives are not necessarily limited to quantitative measurement, calculability, formalization and computational models of cognition. Further clarification should include relations of measurable and non-measurable dimensions of education as well as humanist and post-humanist assumptions of learning subjects. Implications: Insights are beneficial for educational researchers and specialists from different disciplines who want to overcome reductionist or lopsided perspectives regarding the future of education. Constructivist content: 4E cognition considering extracranial processes is compatible with radical constructivism and relevant to educational research and pedagogical practice. However, considering the relevance of entanglements of micro-, meso - and macro-levels in education, the increasing impact of the global education industry and contemporary challenges of various critical ecologies, enhanced perspectives of constructivism that are informed by Siegfried J. Schmidt’s media-cultural constructivism and Kersten Reich’s interactive constructivism provide broader prospects for conceptualizing and designing education in the 21st century.