Educational context is a privileged environment for interpersonal communication, change and human development. Surrounding the concepts of immediacy and presence, this study explores the body as an element of affective, psychological and physical mediation in the pedagogical relationship. With this study we intend to present an “insider’s perspective” on this matter, aiming to contribute to a breakthrough in the understanding of nonverbal behavior in the pedagogical relationship. Ultimately, the idealistic goal is to back up the holistic essence of Education and to help rescue the meaning of being a teacher.
In the current socio-political sphere, school is often seen from an outcome point of view and not so much from the experience and relational processes, which actually lead to the development of the student as a social, psychological and human being. When school is seen as a cultural, spiritual and organizational entity the issue of the holistic training of the individual and the need to reflect on communication is highlighted. Understanding about pedagogic interaction is still scarce and the focus on teacher has been mainly based on the knowledge of a particular theme, with insufficient attention paid to the issue of pedagogical communication (Stonkuvienè, 2010). In 1995, Jovaisa (in Stonkuvienè, 2010) published a study that highlights the optimization of communication in education as a key factor for the development of many dimensions of the human being.
Interaction is a reciprocal reaction by which the behavior of a participant influences the behavior of another. In the context of teaching, the teacher's action affects the student and the opposite is also true. Furthermore, this interaction is not an abstraction; it is an action that is realized in the encounter between teacher and student, so it is important to ensure physical and spiritual conditions favorable to pedagogy, circumstances facilitated by dialogue, by communication (Postic, 2008; Stonkuvienè, 2010). Thus, communication is a multimodal phenomenon, expressed by the entire body, through two-way channels that complement themselves in a face-to-face interaction: verbal (digital communication) and nonverbal (analogue communication). Watzlawick et al. (1921) stated that all communication has content and connection, aspects secured by digital communication and analogue communication, respectively. Therefore, nonverbal communication has the purpose of transmitting indicial information about the issuer and its situation and also has the function of managing the interaction. Nonverbal codes allow us to define the kind of relationship that we want to have with others, controls participation shifts, among other elements of the interaction, thus passing information on the relationship (Fiske, 2005; Watzlwick et al., 1921).
Despite the evidence that emotion is, culturally and cognitively, a driving force of human action, research in education has delegated emotion to a second plan favoring an overvaluation of reason or rationality in formal learning situations (Titsworth, 2010). It should be noted that learning in an emotional scheme is so important that by contributing to the motivation of the student is also a catalyst of cognitive learning (Postic, 2008; Allen et al, 2006; Goodboy, 2009). Damásio (2012, p.58) writes that “the background emotions diagnosis depends on subtle manifestations such as the profile of the movements of the limbs or the entire body - the strength of these movements, their precision, frequency and amplitude - as well as facial expressions. With regard to language, what counts most for background emotions aren’t words themselves or their meaning, but the music of the voice, the cadences of speech, prosody”. These background emotions refer to the energy and enthusiasm that each one of us has and transmits in different degrees. The reading of these background emotions is made in the body of the other.
