Ecological know-how is acquired through a combination of learned academic knowledge, objectifiable information shared among peers, and personal knowledge derived from continuous, pragmatic and sensitive observation of reality. The direct, simultaneous and reflective experience, which becomes a psycho-corporeal memory, of human interactions with nature is recognized as being educational.

The concept of ecological know-how was developed in the 1990s in the sciences of education and training by, for and with the non-human environment. It sheds light on an unthought-of aspect of education: eco-formed knowledge that is constructed with the elements of nature (matter, energy, topography, animals, plants, minerals, etc.). Ecological know-how means recognizing these elements too as educators. This requires acquiring and practicing an attentive relationship with them, through sensitive listening and awareness of their own rhythms. It is thus a matter of developing a working attitude based on observation of the evolution of the six vital senses throughout life (kinesthesia, sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste).

Ecological know-how requires practitioners to constantly adjust their thinking and actions to the foreseen and unforeseen aspects of the complex materiality of their environment. This know-how makes it possible doing with the risks and uncertainties of reality. In agriculture, the training for ecological know-how requires us to extricate ourselves from a logic of rational and normative mastery of the environment in order to enable us to develop the most circumstantial gesture possible in immediate action.

This approach sees ecological know-how as circulating and resulting from the intersection of the four main forms of lifelong learning: education by the environment, self-education, education through peers, and academic education.

The recognition of ecological know-how is associated with a form of agroecology that draws its foundations from a paradigm shift: the acceptance of the complexity of reality and a new conception of one’s relationship with the world.