Investigating educational realities by referring to descriptive concepts and definitions and doing work on the empiricism of their shaping-ups in educational realities today seems to be a dominant mode of educational investigation. Moreover, representing research results in quantities, metrics and numbers is often seen as a major advantage in scientific research, and as guaranteeing such things as accountability. However, it is not proved that such research serves a further development of reflexivity in practical pedagogical fields (cp. Dzierzbicka 2006). For that reason, this symposium aims to focus attention on some of the things that are missing from those primarily descriptive and performative accounts of education.

This symposium considers how educational practices are ruled by materiality, processes and processing. It contends that concepts are not merely applied, but are formed out, developed and challenged in practice. By referring to the body concept one can grasp the epistemological dimensions of practices in order to work out central process criteria. After neglecting the body in sociological and pedagogical research, the last decades constantly brought body matters back in (Frank 1990, Kamper & Wulf 1982). From Polyani’s (1985) concerns about tacit dimensions of knowledge and Gibson’s () ecological approach to the human mind, there has been a tenacious tradition of research concerned with the role of the body in epistemic contexts. According to Ryle (1969) our concept of knowledge has to be completed by aspects of ‘knowing how’. Among other body concepts that are important is the broad concept of the “flesh” by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1986) which conceptualizes the body that matters, particularly because “flesh”, according to Bernhard Waldenfels (1987), is not only embedded in and ruled by but also causes structures and power. Understandings such as these have partly relied on neo-phenomenological concepts (Crossley 2001, Schmitz 2003 etc.) and they have been added to by sociological and feminist accounts of bodies and materalities. Nevertheless, it remains the case that body knowledge comprises a whole range of inexplicit dimensions that are crucial in shaping pedagogic processes and practices but that haven’t been investigated systematically to date as yet.

The task of the papers in this symposium is to begin to map out approaches to scientific knowledge referring to concepts on the body, and to consider what this focus on the body offers in terms of its epistemological potential for a research on educational realities. We aim to bring together methodological and empirical examples of state of the art research from general didactics, sport and body pedagogy, and arts education to explore what a focus on body matters can do to cast new light on educational realities and take forward educational research in new avenues.

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