In this paper, we bring John Dewey’s philosophy to the heartland of empirical educational research. While emphasizing the primacy of social practice in Dewey’s philosophy, we will focus on embodied learning in the tradition of body pedagogics (Shilling 2017, 2018). In so doing, we seek to overcome the false cultural dichotomy between the liberal arts such as philosophy and the sciences, including empirical educational research, famously depicted by C P. Snow (1959/1913) as the two cultures, and hopefully help to secure embodied meaning as an important research object for future educational research

The paper is an unpublished extension of recently published work. We will limit ourselves to presenting the philosophical work done in order to create our analytical model, Situated Artistic Relation (SAR), that allows us to empirically study artistic expression and aesthetic appreciation. Drawing on Dewey’s robust contextualism, the SAR model facilitates in situ analysis and explanation of a learner’s sociolinguistic, embodied, and artistic-aesthetic practice such that the researcher can reasonably infer learning directly from the learner’s palpably observable actions (Authors 2018).

We use instances from the compulsory subject Sloyd (handicraft-oriented education). Dewey advocated education through occupations (MW 9: 319) and for this reason perceived the embodied learning practices of sloyd as among those forms of education that provide a robust learning environment (see Correspondence, Number: 00953 Date: 1904.02.06). Artists are commonly incapable of stating the conditions for producing their artistic artefacts because as Dewey indicates, they temporarily “suspend cognitive reference” (LW 1: 221). Nevertheless, the emergence of such artefacts depends on the use of intelligence including logical inquiry. Here, such intelligence involves emotional, intellectual and practical functions. Dewey’s definition of these functions is “The emotional phase binds parts together into a single whole; ‘intellectual’ simply names the fact that the experience has meaning; ‘practical’ indicates that the organism is interacting with events and objects which surround it” (LW 10: 61). The emotional phase, i.e. the presence of qualities of sensation and feelings that arise in transactions with the physical and the cultural world, marks the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and comprise the ultimate context of inquiry for the artist. According to Dewey, “The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it” (LW 10: 21). The intellectual aspect relies on the fact that artistic expression is not merely intuitive or improvised; rather, it is the result of sustained expressive work with the “data” actively taken from qualities of sensation and used as means (media) in inference and inquiry. “Only where material is employed as media,” Dewey concludes, “is there expression and art” (LW 10: 69). Originating from this philosophical orientation it becomes important in our analysis of learning to identify artistic expressions and connected aesthetic consummatory feelings along with the imaginative grasping for the possible in the actual. Following Dewey in his primacy of social practice, we study meaning as a method of action, a way of using things as means to shared consummation.

Three basic features of artistic expression are of importance to an SAR analysis. Expressed as research questions they are: Firstly, what expressions of an anticipatory personal vision (an ideal end-in-view) of the completed artefact can we observe in the sculptural process? Secondly, in what ways are the material worked with engaged as the media of expression? How are communications about qualities of sensation made with reference to the characteristic qualities of the material?

Audio-video material derived from a 5-year project named Teaching and Learning Practical Embodied Knowledge supply the data for the SAR analyses. Through video data collections of teacher-student narratives in conjunction with in situ observations of practice, dialogical vignettes and critical moments of the Sloyd teaching have been depicted. The use of different camera equipment and recording angles has allowed a close-up and detailed view on student-teacher-body-material-tools transactions. Thereby our analysis captures multimodal aspects of classroom communication including not only words, but also bodily gestures, posture, gaze, social interaction, visual cueing, and the organization of classroom space. Against this background the SAR model is used to analyse Sloyd as an embodied production practice enabling explorations of learning as it goes from an instrumental learning of a body technique (see Mauss 1973, Crossley 2004) to an artistic expression through a body technique. The aim of the SAR-model is to construct knowledge regarding students learning to express themselves while working with physical material. “S” refers to that the learning is situated, “A” that it has artistic-aesthetic meaning, and “R” that it is relational and that feelings joins habits as important ways of embodying relations to physical material. The SAR-model uses two analytical concepts, SAR-variable and SAR-indicator, in order to describe such artistic processes. SAR-variables are identified by analysing participant practical stated conditions and SAR-indicators by analysing the consummatory outcomes of the practical stated conditions. Applying the SAR model on Sloyd education it is possible to discern interactional details about two activities that pupils need to learn: 1) Staging a specific environment out of the material circumstances, that is, to put certain variables (physical and cultural objects and events in the world), and relations between them, in focus for the activity; 2) Coordinate the staged environment in relation to a purpose (i.e., intent, intentional objects, ends-in-view), including personal self-expression, and to perform bodily movements based on that coordination. The first relates to learning the practical and technical aspects of the work with the wooden sculpture and the second relates to self-expression through the material producing the sculpture. It is in order to depict important participant actions in such emergence the SAR-model uses the concepts of variables and indicators. Based on this analysis the researched questions above regarding personal vision, media of expression and communications about qualities of sensation are dealt with by reasonably infer learning directly from the learner’s palpably observable actions.

The proposal is uniquely interdisciplinary in that it draws on the methods, ideas, and insights of a liberal arts discipline (i.e., Deweyan philosophy) to develop a model of empirical analysis. The SAR model allows us make well-warranted empirical claims regarding learning from direct observations of overt action. However, following Dewey, we realize that even the best warranted theories, the most refined methods, and competently collected data sets remain forever falsifiable. Our paper provides previously unpublished empirical illustrations of how teacher and students create practically stated conditions (SAR-variables) of consummatory outcomes (SAR-indicators) and thereby arrives at specific cultural and idiosyncratic expressions in Sloyd education. Teacher and students’ coordination of variables and indicators develops as shared methods of consummations and the SAR model report on important means and experiences connected to artistic expressions through the very qualitative media in which they work. Our analysis reveals that although artists may temporarily suspend cognitive reference, communication connected to self-expression and qualities of sensation also involves a practical and technical vocabulary. On the other hand, teacher and student will never grasp the full meaning of for example a sculpture if all they comprehend are its references and stateable meanings. If we are to believe Dewey: “Science is an art, that art is practice, and that the only distinction worth drawing is not between practice and theory, but between those modes of practice that are not intelligent, not inherently and immediately enjoyable, and those which are full of enjoyed meanings” (LW 1: 268). To gain a deeper understanding about how we can offer students more freedom to create and express themselves it is important to develop analytical tools capable of capturing processes when learning activities goes from instrumental learning of a body technique to an artistic expression through a body technique.

Citations of the works of Dewey are to the critical edition, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882- 1953 published by Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. Volume and page numbers follow the initials of the series. For instance, MW 9: 1. Abbreviations for the volumes used are: MW The Middle Works (1899-1924) LW The Later Works (1925-1953) Authors (2018) Crossley, N. (2004). The circuit trainer’s habitus: Reflexive body techniques and the sociality of the workout. Body & society, 10(1), 37-69. Dewey, John. The Correspondence of John Dewey. 1871-1918. Larry Hickman (Ed.). Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University, 1997. Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the Body. Economy and society, 2(1), 70-88. Shilling, C. (2018). Embodying culture: Body pedagogics, situated encounters and empirical research. The Sociological Review, 66(1), 75-90. Shilling, C. (2017). Body pedagogics: Embodiment, cognition and cultural transmission. Sociology, 51(6), 1205-1221. Snow, C. P. (1959/2013). The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. CT, USA. Marino Publishing. Original Cambridge University Press, 1959.