This paper takes as its starting point the view that bodies are vital players in the dynamics of knowledge-making. It argues that bodies matter in terms of how gender identities are formed, how power operates, and how pedagogies are enacted. It draws on theorisations of ‘vital matter’ (Bennett, 2010), on the concept of classroom space as a ‘practiced place’ (Massey, 2005), and on work on ‘material moments’ (Taylor, 2013) to consider what a focus on bodies can add to educational analyses. Bodies in classroom spaces are the material locus for pedagogic processes and practices. Pedagogy involves bodily relations, negotiations, engagements, disengagements, and practices of power. In the daily reality of the classroom, these processes and practices occur at speed, and are subject to moment-by-moment changes. The relation of bodies is inventive, dynamic and productive. Bodies are at the heart of pedagogy, and contribute to knowledge-making in dynamically productive ways. And yet, bodies often go unnoticed in performative educational contexts where the emphasis is on outcomes, skills and cognitive attributes. This ‘industrial’ model of education sees bodies as a ‘thing’ in the input-output chain. Asking, instead, ‘what can bodies do?’ changes the focus. In this presentation I use a range of empirical examples – of sitting, standing, and walking – to illuminate what bodies can do as vital players within innovative knowledge-making practices. I use the concepts of ‘assemblage’ (Deleuze and Guarrati, 1987), ‘mosaic’ (Bennett, 2010) and ‘choreographing’ (Hirst and Cooper, 2008) to explore bodies as constraining and enabling, bodies in numbers as producers of affects and atmospheres, and the differences that different bodies make to what goes on in a classroom. Taking this approach requires a close methodological focus on micro-instances of practices. Doing so, helps reveal that a close focus on body matters provides new insights into pedagogic processes and knowledge-making practices, and helps raise new questions about the educative power of bodies.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke University Press. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.
 Hirst, E., and Cooper, M. (2008). ‘Keeping Them in Line: Choreographing Classroom Spaces.’ Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. 14 (5–6): 431–445.
 Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: Sage.
 Taylor, C. A. (2013) ‘Objects, bodies and space: gender and embodied practices of mattering in the classroom’. Gender and Education, 25 (60): 688-703.