Abstract:

This paper examines the holistic approach as a theoretical and epistemological framework for analyzing educational processes in early childhood, as an alternative to reductionist and segmented models. Within this perspective, experience is conceived as an integrated and multi-level system in which perceptual, motor, affective, and cognitive dimensions co-emerge within dynamic subject–environment relations.

In continuity with the ecology of perception and with phenomenological and enactive approaches, educational experience is interpreted as an embodied and situated process in which meaning emerges through interaction. The natural environment is understood as a holistic experiential field, characterized by complexity and variability, capable of supporting perceptual integration and situated learning.

Within this framework, implicit and tacit learning processes are considered structural components of education: a significant portion of educational transformation develops through processes of experiential sedimentation that are not fully conscious. Attention is therefore redefined as an ecological and distributed function, that is, as a global mode of relating to experience that mediates between implicit immersion and further elaboration.

From a pedagogical perspective, this entails a shift from content transmission to the design of experiential conditions, with particular reference to temporal continuity, the management of environmental complexity, and the role of the educator as a regulator and facilitator of processes.

Finally, the paper proposes a reconsideration of sensory education as a transversal and foundational dimension of learning processes, consistent with a conception of learning as an embodied, relational, and situated phenomenon.

Keywords:

Holistic approach, early childhood education, situated learning, embodied cognition, implicit learning.