Session Information
27 SES 04, Embodiement, Power Relations and Feedbacks in Teaching and Learning Subjects
Paper Session
Contribution
In recent years scholars interested in teaching and learning in social studies in schools have showed how learning in social studies classrooms can be understood through instruction, dialogue, cognition, reflection, concepts, thinking, writing, reading and awareness (cf. Bickmore & Parker, 2014; Brooks, 2011; Hess; 2002; Journell, Walker Beeson & Ayers, 2015; King, 2009; Nokes, 2014; Savenije, van Boxtel & Grever, 2014). Despite these important contributions, learning risks being limited to explorations of cognitive, verbal and/or written aspects of the educational situation.
Learning is, however, very much also embodied, including the embodied interactions with the environment (cf. Shilling, 2000, Zembylas 2007), and research also reveals that secondary social studies is facing a crisis since a majority of students still are made to memorize and reproduce socioscientific knowledge instead of being prepared to use knowledge meaningfully and participating in public discussions (Sandahl 2015; Ljunggren et al. 2015; King 2009). Social studies have accordingly, as many other school subjects, often been handled as dis-embodied (Almqvist & Quennerstedt, 2015; Evans, Davies & Rich 2009), and this gives us a quite limited view of the learning going on in classrooms. The consequences of this gap in research as well as practice are that we miss out on important aspects of what Armour et al. (2015) argues to be “the dazzling complexity of the learning process” (p. 11).
In this presentation we aim to ‘transgress’ the separation of mind and body and explore embodied aspects of learning in the social studies classroom. With a point of departure in John Dewey’s transactional view of learning and Sharon Todd’s discussion on the liminality of pedagogical relationships, the ambition with the papers is not to explore ‘The Learning’ going on, or what every student learn in the explored situations. Instead, we argue that students always enter pedagogical encounters as some-body, and that it correspondingly is fruitful to explore students’ embodied engagements as an important but often overlooked aspect of the social studies classroom. The risk that remains is otherwise that social studies is treated as dis-embodied and that we as a consequence do not fully understand or embrace the potential of social studies.
Hence, the purpose of the study is to explore embodied engagements in a social sciences classroom. The focus in the study is on expected and potential pedagogical encounters and how students’ actions obtain a certain function in the classroom. As a conclusion we will discuss the results of our analysis in terms of the liminality of pedagogical encounters in classroom practice.
Our intent in this study is not to resolve tensions produced by the
ontological divide between representational and non-representational approaches
or the epistemological separation of mind and body. Instead, by turning to
pragmatism and Dewey’s transactional perspective, we intend to approach social
studies as embodied rather than dis-embodied.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Almqvist, J. & Quennerstedt, M. (2015). Is there (any)body in science education? Interchange. A Quarterly review of Education, 46(4), pp 439-453. Armour, K. Quennerstedt, M. Chambers, F & Makopoulou, K. (2015). What is ‘effective’ CPD for contemporary physical education teachers? A Deweyan framework. Sport, Education and Society, DOI:10.1080/13573322.2015.1083000. Biesta, G.J.J. & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement. Working paper 5, Exeter: The Learning Lives project. Estola, E. & Elbaz-Luwisch, F. (2003). Teaching bodies at work. Journal of Curriculum Stuides, 35(6), pp. 697–719. Evans, J., Davies, B. & Rich, E. (2009). The body made flesh: embodied learning and the corporeal device. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(4), 391-406. Garrison, Jim (2015). Dewey’s Aesthetics of Body-Mind Functioning. Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy. Alfonsina Scarinzi (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer. Hess, D. E. (2002). Discussing Controversial Public Issues in Secondary Social Studies Classrooms: Learning from Skilled Teachers. Theory & Research in Social Education, 30(1), 10-41. Hudson, B. (2015). The epistemology and methodology of curriculum: didactics. In The SAGE handbook of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, edited by Wyse, Dominic, Hayward, Louise and Pandya, Jessica (eds.) Sage. Journell, W, Walker Beeson, M. & Ayers, C. A. (2015). Learning to Think Politically: Toward More Complete Disciplinary Knowledge in Civics and Government Courses. Theory & Research in Social Education, 43(1), pp. 28-67. King, J. T. (2009). Teaching and Learning about Controversial Issues: Lessons from Northern Ireland, Theory & Research in Social Education, 37(2), pp. 215-246. Klette, K. (2007). Trends in Research on Teaching and Learning in Schools: didactics meets classroom studies. European Educational Research Journal (online), 6(2), pp. 147-161. Quennerstedt, M., Öhman, J. & Öhman, M. (2011) Investigating learning in physical education – a transactional approach. Sport, Education and Society, 16:2, 159-177. Savenije, G. M., van Boxtel C. & Grever, M. (2014). Learning about Sensitive History: “Heritage” of Slavery as a Resource. Theory & Research in Social Education, 42(4), pp. 516-547. Schilling, C. (2000). The Body. In G. Browning, A. Halcli, & F. Webster (Eds.), Understanding contemporary society: Theories of the present. (pp. 415-432). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Todd, S. (2014). Between Body and Spirit: The Liminality of Pedagogical Relationships. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48(2), pp. 231-245. Zembylas, M. (2007). The specters of bodies and affects in the classroom: a rhizo‐ethological approach, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 15(1), pp.19-35.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.