Abstract

This paper explores how pedagogical beliefs are challenged in everyday encounters, particularly when someone in an educational relationship acts unexpectedly. Following Donna Haraway’s notion of tentacular thinking (2016), I examine my relationship with Lyra, a reactive dog, as a site where prior experiences, emotions, and social expectations intertwine. The analysis sits at the intersection of social interactionism, posthumanist theory, and post-critical educational research, and incorporates Johan Asplund’s (1987a, b) idea of social responsivity as an elementary form of social life, Haraway’s (2003, 2008) concept of otherness-in-connection, and B. F. Skinner’s (1953) account of operant conditioning. These perspectives provide a lens for understanding how convictions are tested in emotionally charged encounters, and how traditional logics of discipline may resurface, unsettling relational ethics that aim to supplant them. The paper offers insights relevant for teaching, parenting, and multispecies companionships. Where much educational research emphasizes how external demands affect teachers, this study shifts focus to the educator’s ethical commitments and how these may take shape in practice. It suggests that connection in educational relationships is not forged through control or aversive methods, but through sustained presence and mutual attunement. In this way, the study highlights social responsivity as educationally fragile but vital, and as a dynamic that reshapes the educational partners over time.