EMI-EDU: reframing learning and education through energy, mass and information

Abstract

Building on the EMI framework that conceptualises consciousness, cognition, and behaviour as emergent phenomena arising from dynamic interactions among energy, mass, and information, this article extends the model into the educational domain by reframing learning as a resonance-based process within complex adaptive systems. While the initial formulation of EMI provided a scale-free biophysical account of mental phenomena, here we argue that neuroplasticity, evolutionary entropy, resonance and informational coherence constitute foundational principles for describing how minds learn, teach, and transform within relational and institutional environments. The proposed EMI-EDU perspective redefines the classroom as a dissipative field in which teachers and students operate as dynamic attractors, shaping shared cognitive and affective landscapes through synchronization, resonance, and phase transitions. Education is thus understood not as the linear transmission of content but as a systemic modulation of energetic-informational flows that stabilise new configurations of identity, competence, and relational agency. By integrating insights from neuroscience, physics, and pedagogy, EMI-EDU advances a pedagogy of resonance, plasticity, and systemic inclusion, offering a transdisciplinary framework capable of grounding inclusive practices in a scientifically coherent theory of mind and learning.