This paper critically examines popular discourses of pedagogy circulating in adult education theory and practice: pedagogy as (heroic or nurturing) person, as prescriptive strategy, as political purpose, and as situated practices. I argue that problematic conceptions and desires can be identified across these discourses that lead to orientations of control and discipline, animated by moral essentialism, in the teaching-learning relation. In an effort to conceptualise more open, generative and compassionate orientations, two interconnected forms of pedagogical relations are explored: ethical and ecological. Ethical relations are examined as ongoing coping: appropriate responsiveness in the immediate, reminiscent of Levinas' "caring encounter." Ecological relations have to do with attunement to biological as well as social, political and cultural interconnectivity: the ongoing co-specification of elements improvised in complex systems. The concluding implications for educators encourage a movement to less grand and totalising, more local and contingent orientations--"poorer" pedagogies. The paper is theory driven, drawing from complexity theory and pedagogical writers aligned with local, ecological conceptions of teaching and learning. (Contains 3 notes.)