journal of pedagogy 1 2014

Contents

EDITORIAL

Zuzana Bánovčanová, Jan Slavík:

Body in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

ARTICLES

Eva Alerby, Erica Hagström, Susanne Westman:

The Embodied Classroom - A Phenomenological Discussion of the Body

and the Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Julien Laroche, Ilan Kaddouch:

Enacting Teaching and Learning in the Interaction Process:

«Keys» for Developing Skills in Piano Lessons Through

Four-hands Improvisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Ruyu Hung:

Toward an Affective Pedagogy of Human Rights Education… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Wolff-Michael Roth:

On the Pregnance of Bodily Movement and Geometrical Objects:

A Post-constructivist Account of the Origin of Mathematical Knowledge . . . . . 65

Donna Paoletti Phillips:

Embodied Civic Education: The Corporeality of a Civil Body Politic . . . . . . . . . 90

Malcolm Thorburn, Aaron Marshall:

Cultivating Lived-body Consciousness:

Enhancing Cognition and Emotion Through Outdoor Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

E D I T O R I A L

J O U R N A L O F P E D A G O G Y 1 / 2 0 1 4 5

Body in Education

“The body is both a problem and a challenge for educational thinking and

practice at the present time” (O΄Loughlin, 2006, p. 16)1.

For centuries society has engaged with the notion of elaborating on the

topic of the body and corporeality despite there being periods when the body

itself was taboo.

Philosophy, the source of other exact, natural and social sciences, has always posited questions about existence, the world, knowledge, and so forth. There is no doubting that a philosophical perspective on the body

and corporeality is the basis upon which research into the body and

corporeality is conducted in other sciences. The problematic of the body

has always been associated with the soul in philosophy, since most of the philosophy concerned with the body and the soul has been dualistic, notwithstanding the fact that the dualism of Plato and Aristotle cannot

be considered the same as other dualistic approaches to the body. At

one extreme we have Descartes’ Cartesianism where the body and cor-poreality are neglected in philosophy and at the other we have Merleau-

Ponty’s phenomenology where the body once again becomes important for perception, much like the way in which the body gains signiicance in the work of Foucault.

In evolutionary theory the body emerges through material self-organ-

ization, through various chemical and biological processes, which ulti-mately led to the ancient humans who gave rise to contemporary man.

This process and subsequent development can be seen in the physiologi-

cal and morphological changes occurring in the human body. The evolu-

tionary conception of the human body is reminiscent of Descartes’ con-

ception of the body as machine. The body is merely an object, the object of change, investigation and evolution. The body is matter or a machine

1 O΄Loughlin, M. (2006). Embodiment and Education: Exploring Creatural Existence. Dord-

recht, The Netherlands: Springer.

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J O U R N A L O F P E D A G O G Y 1 / 2 0 1 46

to be tinkered with and that can be investigated in natural science. Here

the body is seen as an image portraying changes and the evolution of life

on earth.

The body and corporeality is also a topic of interest to anthropology, a hu-

man science that must of course consider the body. However, when we speak generally of the body in anthropology, we see that in recent years an ethnological dimension has come to prevail, along with historical, so-

cio-anthropological and cultural anthropological dimensions. Anthropology

is a wide-ranging research area primarily because it investigates human

beings, culture and society. In this perspective, school is also seen as repre-

senting a particular kind of culture, as relecting a particular image of society in which our bodies interact. Here the body is also where self-expression occurs, be that in teachers, pupils, students or whoever. We can therefore also speak of an “anthropology of the school body”.

The theories for anthropological concepts of the body derive primarily

from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Merleau-Ponty considers perception to begin via the body, through and in the body. In this respect the article by Eva Alerby, Erica Hagström and Susanne Westman offers a new perspective on education in which school is seen as a space for education, a place for learning and where the body is situated. Corporeality is therefore

associated with spatiality aided by the concept of the living body and exist-ence in the world. The authors see school/the classroom as a place which

creates or restricts the potential to shape the lived body and the lived experience. They therefore come close to the theories of Michel Foucault in Dis-

cipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), where the location of the body in space is an important tool of the “power of the organization”, which in this case is the school as institution.

And so we ind ourselves gradually coming closer to our topic of the body and corporeality in education as identiied in the introductory quotation. Many of the articles in this single-issue edition deal with the body itself, which is both subject and object in education, and the means by which we gain experience of the world. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality is also of interest to the pedagogue. As soon as we come into contact with

other people, our bodies begin to interact as if continually seeking out and touching each other, triggering emotions. Julien Laroche and Ilan Kad-

douch describe speciic bodily interaction in their description of enacting the teaching and learning process, which embodies intersubjectivity and presents an interactive method for learning music. They analyze improvi-

sation sessions (free spontaneous four-hand improvisation in the context of the Kaddouch pedagogy), where students and teacher share time, space and an embodied experience. In this case the interaction process plays


Body in Education

7

a constitutive role for the collective dynamics that the partners (student

and teacher) embody. Not even in teaching and education is it possible to separate the person

into body and mind, the latter being closely linked to knowledge. Yet, where does cognition come from? This question is addressed by Ruyu Hung in her

article on human rights teaching and Wolff-Michael Roth in his article on the origins of mathematical knowledge. The body is where learning begins

and it is from the body that knowledge emerges. Roth rightly highlights the

key role the cognitive processes play in forming knowledge via kinesthesia.

He is concerned with the mathematical knowledge of Master’s students that stems from body movements. What we now know and will in the future know about the world always stems directly from our bodies, since it comes di-rectly from corporeality, and from the associated movements of the body and mind. Learning with the whole body and all the senses are themes which are

also to be found in Ruyu Hung’s article – learning about and also in human rights through the “stories in the lesh” that are embodied in human minds.

If we return once more to anthropology, then Mary Douglas also de-

serves mention. She sees the body as symbolizing the subject (the body

is representation) and, especially in Purity and Danger (1966) and Natu-

ral Symbols (1970), she argues that the human body is analogous to the social system. She uses many examples from cultural anthropology to demonstrate that the body is the bearer of meaning. In this respect Donna

Paoletti Phillips’ embodied civic education is similar. She uses the metaphor of society as a (human) body which makes it possible to understand social phenomena via physical experience. Her work highlights the key role meta-

phor plays in learning and teaching and thereby comes close to Lakoff and

Johnson’s (2003)2 theory of the conceptual metaphor and Fauconnier and

Turner’s (2002)3 conceptual blending theory.

The inal article, by Malcolm Thorburn and Aaron Marshall, is also de-

rived from the theory of Merleau-Ponty, counterbalanced with an ontologi-cal irst person and expressive experience perspective and underpinned by the philosophy of Tiberius. It stresses that physical experience can play an important role in cultivating stable values in outdoor learning, and that this theoretical and philosophical basis can be supplemented by educational

practice approaches.

The Body in Education is a topic that presents both a challenge and moti-

vation for the body to regain its signiicance, for the body to be brought back

2 Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. London: The University of

Chicago Press. 3 Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the

Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

E D I T O R I A L


into the school environment and into education. Although the articles in

this single-issue edition share a common theme, there is also great variety within them. They demonstrate that there is opportunity for new approach-

es to the body, as part of education, as something that we might refer to as the school body. The body will thus not only gain signiicance in biology and physical education lessons, it is also a tool and medium for teaching and learning, and it is prerequisite to thinking and acting within education (and elsewhere).

Zuzana Bánovčanová, Jan Slavík

A R T I C L E S

J O U R N A L O F P E D A G O G Y 1 / 2 0 1 4 1 1

DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0001 JoP 5 (1): 11 – 23

The embodied classroom - A phenomenological discussion of the body and the room

Eva Alerby, Erica Hagström, Susanne Westman

Abstract: A (Western) school is, among other things, a building with its own spatial formations and boundaries. In educational settings, the place for learning, as well as the human body in the place, is signiicant. In this paper, we explore the theory of the lived body as it was formulated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and argue why we

think this theory can be used fruitfully in educational research, and speciically in a study of learning places such as classrooms. We also discuss what a classroom is and can be drawing upon the work of Otto Friedrich Bollnow.

As humans, we access the world through our bodies and the knowledge we de-

velop is always embodied. The body and the world are two aspects of a reversibility, which Merleau-Ponty terms lesh. He also stresses that the body inhabits the world, and our corporeality can therefore be tied to the room—we are affected by and affect

the room in a mutual interplay.

In this paper, we develop this further and argue that teachers and students in-

habit the classroom. Corporeality is therefore closely connected to spatiality and is

understood as a prerequisite for being involved in relationships. We argue for the importance of exploring the notion of embodiment in educational settings with a spe-

cial focus on the embodied classroom using the phenomenology of the life-world.

Key words: lived body, embodiment, spatiality, classroom, life-world phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty, Bollnow

A R T I C L E S


Introduction

On a typical day in a typical school, teachers and students are involved in different kinds of learning activities as well as in experiencing social and emotional moods. They are talking, thinking, feeling, reading, hating, writing, dreaming, counting, loving, et cetera. This mix of activities and moods is inlu-

enced by many different things and in turn inluences many different things. In other words, there is a mutual interplay between human beings and the world.

A (Western) school is, among other things, a building with its own spatial formations and boundaries. Such a place for learning can thus create expec-

tations and opportunities, be inviting to certain activities, and be inspiring. It may also be the opposite and thereby constrain learning. In extent, the place can create or limit opportunities of the formation of the lived body and the lived

experience. In that way, the place deines learning and can, in a sense, be seen as a choreography of learning activities. Additionally, the learners inluence the place and the learning activities within the place through their embodied pres-

ence. The intertwined relationships within the place mutually affect each other.

In educational settings, the place for learning, as well as the human body in the place, is signiicant. Given this, we explore the theory of the lived body as it was formulated by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher in the ield of life-world phenomenology, and connect this theory with learning places—classrooms. On an ontological level, we also discuss what a class-

room is and can be, drawing upon the work of Otto Friedrich Bollnow. Our

overall aim is therefore to develop an understanding of the mutual interplay

between body and classroom.

Educational phenomenologists have explored the signiicance of the body in education. Dall’Alba and Barnacle (2007) argue that there is an inte-

grated account of knowing, acting, and being in which mind and body are intertwined, while Alerby (2009) explores learning as embodied experiences. Others (e.g., Alerby & Hörnqvist, 2005; Alerby et al., 2002; Bonnett, 2009, 2013; Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2005; Gruenevald, 2003) emphasise the signii-

cance of places for learning. In this paper, attention is drawn to the mutual interplay between the body and the classroom in education.

Notions of the body

Throughout history, the human body has been understood and dis-

cussed in different ways. Alerby (2009) explores how the human body was viewed in connection to education speciically in the 20th century and

asserts that, during the breakthrough of behaviourism in the beginning of the 20th century, learning among humans as well as animals was un-



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derstood and explained by the model of stimulus-response. This view of the body was based on a naturalistic theory of human behaviour which in

turn presumed a causal relationship between physical stimuli and physical

reactions. The human body as well as the mind were explained by physical characteristics and the human body was viewed as a machine.

The behaviouristic and naturalistic view was, however, abandoned in favour of a cognitive approach during the 1970s. This approach became

quickly dominant, especially in connection to education, and learning came to be explained by cognition. The strong emphasis on cognition resulted in a position that the students risked being viewed as purely cognitive. A prob-

lem with that view is that cognition often seemed to function without a body.

However, according to Alerby (2009), neither behaviourists nor cognitivists are able to provide a comprehensive exploration of the signiicance of the body in education. Instead, to ind a possible way to explore the human body and its signiicance in education, we turn to Merleau-Ponty.

Merleau-Ponty contributes to the ield of phenomenology with the development of the notions of the life-world and the theory of the lived body. The

notion of the life-world has, among others, been further developed by the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka (1998). The contemporary French philoso-

pher Renaud Barbaras (2004, 2006), has also developed phenomenological ontology in relation to Merleau-Ponty.

According to Merleau-Ponty, the lived body is both nature and culture, both

immanence and transcendence, both facticity and project. In accordance with

the phenomenological movement, he orients away from the dualistic dichoto-

mies of body and mind. Furthermore, he reaches beyond both and, towards

an intertwining which is more than merely the sum of its parts. For him, hu-

mans are intertwined with everything within the world: “the world is wholly

inside me and I am wholly outside myself” (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 408). Merleau-Ponty (2002) claims that the body is not thrown in-the-world, as

Heidegger terms it. The body is not in space, but of it, tied to a certain world through the lived body. We are in our body, and we cannot get out of it—the body is always with us. The lived body is situated in the lived time and the lived

space, and geometric space and chronological time are ways to try to imagine and master the life-world. Merleau-Ponty (2002) emphasises that the body in-habits the world: “I am not in space and time, nor do I conceive space and time; I belong to them, my body combines with them and includes them” (p. 162).1

1 In the original text the preposition à (au) together with both space (à l’espace) and time

(au temps), gives a feeling of how the space and time embrace the body, not just in the

world, but à the world: “je ne suis pas dans l’espace et dans le temps; je suis à l’espace et au temps, mon corps s’applique à eux et les embrasse” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, Phénoménologie De La Perception, p.164).

A R T I C L E S


Consequently, a person’s existence—the human body—provides the prerequisite for worldly experience.

As humans, we acquire different understandings of our body’s rela-

tion to the world. It is through the body we are in a living relation to

things, and by departing from our own life-world, we can expand the lived body by incorporating things. However, to really incorporate a thing into one’s own body, a habit must be formed. Merleau-Ponty (2002) writes: “The acquisition of a habit is indeed the grasping of a signiicance, but it is the motor grasping of a motor signiicance” (p. 165). Thereafter, he presents his well-known examples: the woman with the hat, knowing exactly the limits of her extended body including the hat, the driver of a car passing through a narrow opening, the blind man with his stick experiencing the world.

In connection to educational settings, Alerby (2009) explores another example of the human’s ability to expand her/his body by incorporating a thing—in this example, a pencil. The pencil constitutes an extension of the child’s body and thus makes it possible to write. But when a child holds a pencil for the irst time there is a distance between the pencil and the child before a habit has been formed and the pencil is incorporated and has be-

come one with the child’s lived body.Acquiring a habit means changing the world as we know it. It means

changing our existence, and through the perceptual habit we acquire the world. The phenomenon of habit as an acquisition of the world connects it, according to Merleau-Ponty (2002), with our notion of understanding and, of course, our body: “To understand is to experience the harmony between what we aim at and what is given, between the intention and the perfor-mance - and the body is our anchorage in a world” (p. 167).

To summarise, it is through our human experiences that learning is moulded, and these experiences are above all incorporated through the body. As a concept, ‘incorporate’ derives from the Latin word incorporo - i.e., ‘embody’- and corpus means just ‘body’ (Nationalencyklopedin, 1998). As an intransitive verb, incorporate means ‘to unite in or as one body’ (Merriam-Webster, 2013). As humans, we use our eyes to view the world, our ears to listen, our mouths to experience different kinds of taste, and our hands to grasp, touch, and feel things or other people, et cetera (Alerby, 2009). Thus, it is through our bodies that we experience the world. This in turn is prerequisite for learning, and it is through the body that we are in a living relation to things, such as a school building or a classroom.



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Notions of the classroom

A classroom in a school is often taken for granted; no one questions that a school building has classrooms. But taking something for granted

can be a reason to return to the thing itself—in this case, the classroom. Merleau-Ponty (1968) reminds us that we need to interrogate our presump-

tions through what he describes as hyper-relection, a critical self-relection that interrogates its own possibility. So how then can we think about and

experience a room? What can a classroom be? As a spatial formation, the room is the most general form in the world,

according to Bollnow (1994), and for him tightness and space stretch beyond the objective room. The formation of a room, e.g. a classroom, is experienced, interpreted, and used in different ways by different people. As humans, we need room; or in other words, we are always situated somewhere—in time and space. Given this, a human being is not only situated as an object in a place. The presence in a place is also followed by a certain attitude of mind.

We can distance ourselves from the place or establish ourselves in it, we can feel lost or safe, in harmony with the place or foreign to it (Bollnow, 1994). The place concerns us, since the place is our living space. The objective place, such as a classroom, is, therefore, closely connected to the lived room.

There are thus various ways to describe a room. A classroom, for example, can be viewed from many perspectives, perhaps the most prominent is that of its material qualities. However, to understand a room only by its mate-

rial qualities does not provide a comprehensive view. Furthermore, both functional and aesthetic qualities can be found as well. From a materialistic

point of view, a classroom can be understood as matter. A classroom has, e.g., a loor of linoleum, a ceiling of wooden boards, windows of glass, and furniture made of different materials. From an idealistic viewpoint, a class-

room can be understood as an idea—one can think about and imagine

a classroom. However, to understand a classroom as matter or idea, as well as them both together—both matter and idea—gives not a complete under-

standing of the room. Moreover, the room has a utility quality—a classroom can be used for something by someone. But the utility quality cannot be

reduced to the characteristics of matter or idea. Instead, it has to be re-

garded as a different kind of characteristic, which provides a further dimen-

sion of the classroom and furthermore demands a subject experiencing the room. Accordingly, it is not enough to describe the space as geometrical or physical; it must also be described through the human experience of space: ‘Space is not the setting (real or logical) in which things are arranged, but the means whereby the position of things becomes possible’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 284).

A R T I C L E S


How do the body and the classroom affect each other? How can we under-

stand and describe the relation between our corporeality and the learning

place in the form of a classroom?

The mutual interplay between body and room

Within the phenomenology of the life-world, things are always things for someone. The room, for example, requires someone experiencing the room. Langeveld (1983) argues that a physical room, such as a classroom, is per-ceived in very different ways depending on whether one is a child or an adult, a student or a teacher, and depending on what role one has in this context. How the place is used is, however, not only constituted by spatial formation and special disposition, but also depends on how size, distance, social con-

text, colors, atmospheres et cetera, in the place are experienced. For example, during an ordinary school day, the classroom is illed by the bodies of both teachers and students, and used by them for different learning activities. They experience the room with its possibilities and limitations in different ways due to their position or inluence. The teacher might feel the burden of managing to see and support all the students that sit on their chairs behind

their desks. New or nervous students may enter the room feeling small in relation to the powerful room, its bare walls, and high ceilings, while expect-ant and curious students may experience the room as the place where their dreams may be fulilled. As such, the room also conveys an atmosphere. Those who inhabit the room inscribe the atmosphere with emotions, affects, expectations, and presumptions through their explicit and implicit activities.

Let us return to the physical and concrete matters and materials in the

room that speak to the inhabitants. As pointed out, our human actions, as well as our human bodies, are tied together with the formation of the place in a mutual interplay. For example, in a school, each one of all the details—stairs, chairs, schoolyards, rulers, scissors, crayons, and so on—inluence how teachers and students think, feel, act, and move. At the same time, teach-

ers and students inluence and affect the materials within the intertwined re-

lationship. Merleau-Ponty suggests that: ‘Between the exploration and what it will teach me, between my movements and what I touch, there must exist some relationship by principle, some kinship ... the initiation to and the open-

ing upon a tactile world’ (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, p. 133). In connection with education, this line of reasoning means that we are already situated in a place, which also makes learning situated through our embodiment.

In a traditional (Western) classroom, time, space, body, and relations have often been—and still are—strictly regulated, and education, teaching, and learning, are often strictly controlled within the physical room. The natu-



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ralistic and behaviouristic viewpoints, explored above, produced echoes in the classrooms inluencing how education should be organised, and even how school desks should be designed and placed in the room. The design of

school desks, as well as how they were placed in the classroom, was a way to control the bodies of the students in order to discipline them, maintain or-derliness, and facilitate learning. However, the school desks were designed from a typical type of child’s body, where the chair was attached to the table without the ability to adjust relative to the actual body of each child.

According to the Swedish regulation plan for school buildings and the de-

sign of the classrooms for 1865, the government speciied exactly how desks should be placed in the classroom in order to decrease the risk of students

physically touching each other—a way to control the bodies of the students.

Even though this is not the case in Swedish schools of today, we can raise the question of how the classroom and its furniture are organised. To what

extent are the students’ bodies bound to the room? To what extent can the students move their bodies in the room?

There are thus always aspects of power in the interplay between body and

room. As Merleau-Ponty (1964, 1982, 2000) points out, relations of power are apparent in situations and places where control of human beings is prio-

ritised, when mutual relationships are put aside, and people are objectiied in the gaze of the other. In those situations, actions and expressions are not ‘taken up or understood, but observed as if they were an insect’s…the objectiication of each by the other’s gaze is felt unbearable only because it takes the place of possible communication’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p.420).

As we mentioned above, the room offers in a sense, a choreographic set-ting, calling upon the teachers and the students to respond. The four walls limit and shelter them, the chair and the computer form the body by the desk, the desks invite students to activities with hands, and their position renders some things visible, audible, and tangible rather than others. The teachers and students are bound to the place, the room, not just physically (though they are able to leave the room), not just mentally (since they can think about other things), but also beyond this through being in and using the room. The body and the room interplay, but in different ways depending on the room. Regardless of which room, however, it inluences the body, and vice versa.

The teacher, as well as the physical room, can in most cases only con-

trol the physical presence of the students, not where they mentally are. In a classroom, the windows, e.g., serve both as a dividing line between inner and outer space, and as a way of making the classroom ininite as the ho-

rizon of the room extends outward. Even if the students bodily are in the classroom, they can look out of the windows and mentally lee the class-

A R T I C L E S


room, especially if the teacher does not manage to engage the students. If the student is ‘using’ the window to mentally lee the room, one could state that the window competes with the teacher. One way to avoid that is to cover

the window with blinds. But still, shadows beyond the blinds can invite the student even more into a world of imagination (Alerby, 2004). On the other hand, the horizon stretching to the ininite does not necessarily have to be regarded as a mental escape from the learning situation, but can be a way to relect and consider what has just been said or done.

Another kind of classroom is a learning place beyond the four walls of the

physical room. Such a learning place can, for example, be an outdoor set-ting. Still, lessons taking place outdoors are not free from boundaries, due to the organisation of these lessons. Even though the boundaries are not

physical walls, they are constituted by for example dimensions of power and rules. The teacher can, for example, frame this spatial place by setting up mental and physical boundaries that both regulate and secure the student.

For example, the students are not allowed to leave the place and just stroll around as they like—a kind of mental boundary in order to secure the safety

of the student, but also to maintain order. The environment in itself can also serve as a kind of shelter. In this way, we could say that the shelter provides a sense of belonging, an existential territory and a lived place (Alerby, Hert-ting & Westman, 2012).

The absence of physical boundaries in the form of walls can facilitate

viewing the horizon. In that way, the boundaries of the learning place be-

come ininite. Having the possibility of shifting horizons is signiicant for learning, whether through the classroom window or outside in the nature. Such openings should not be regarded as a threat or as competitor to the

teacher and the learning situation, but as stimulating and creative possibili-ties for learning.

Another dimension of the body and the room is how the body moves with-

in the room. According to Merleau-Ponty (2002):

a movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its ‘world’, and to move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently of any representation. (p. 160-161).

When entering a classroom in a typical school, we can fairly quickly, and without any major problems, enter the room. Through our experience, we do not have to measure the opening of the classroom door in order to estab-

lish whether it is large enough to get through. Nor do we have to control the



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space between the desks placed in the room in order to move between them.

Instead, this is done relatively automatically and unconsciously. We avoid the corners of the desks and negotiate a turn around some bookshelves

without any major concern for accessibility. Therefore, we can say that when we enter the room, in this case a classroom, we dress ourselves in the room (Vilanen & Alerby, 2013).

Consequently, the students, the teacher, the classroom, the desks, the school equipment, the assignment become an entanglement of their bod-

ies and the world, what Merleau-Ponty expresses as the ‘lesh of the world’ (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, p. 248). In his last uninished work, The Vis-ible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty develops the theory of the lived body

to embrace a chiasmic understanding and further introduces the notion

of ‘lesh’ (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968). Merleau-Ponty argues that differ-ent relationships encroach upon each other in a cross-over, a chiasm (Mer-leau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968). The chiasm is thus presented as an ambiguity without opposites. Westman and Alerby (2012) discuss chiasm in terms of temporality in education, and since time and space are closely related di-mensions of human beings’ lived experience, we ind it a relevant concept for spatiality as well.

One important chiasm is the intertwined relationship between the body

and the world. Merleau-Ponty argues that these reversible phenomena, de-

spite their respective differences, mutually affect each other. He describes it himself as ‘a presence to the world through the body and to the body through the world, being lesh’ (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, p. 239). The lesh is not a substance as matter or idea. Nor is it a representation for a mind. It is rather an element—comparable to wind and water—as a general thing, or as Merleau-Ponty terms it: “an “element” of Being” (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, p. 139).

The lesh can be compared to a hinge, separating and interlocking at the same time. Or as the translator of The Visible and the Invisible, Alphonso Lingis puts it: ‘The lesh is the body inasmuch as it is the visible seer, the audi-ble hearer, the tangible touch - the sensitive sensible’ (Lingis in Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, liv.). The lesh is further described as the coiling of the visible upon the seeing body, the audible upon the hearing body, and the tangible upon the touching body. However, Merleau-Ponty mentions lesh in a very concrete, vulnerable way, in another passage: “Yes or no: do we have a body- that is, not a permanent object of thought, but a lesh that suffers when it is wounded, hands that touch?” (Merleau-Ponty & Lefort, 1968, p. 137).

Westman and Alerby (2012) discuss how the intertwined relationships that students can be involved in within a learning event at a speciic place function as dynamic and multidimensional educational relationships.

A R T I C L E S


Within this perspective there are no dualisms between, for ex-

ample, the individual and social, body and mind, human and nature. When it comes to education those intertwined relation-

ships function as educational relationships, thereby a chiasmic be(com)ing may also be seen as a way of understanding learn-

ing. In other words, this ongoing process of be(com)ing works through temporal ambiguities and intertwined relationships, and through the lesh—the body of the world—grasped by affec-

tive tones (Westman & Alerby, 2012, p. 9).

Accordingly, as humans mutually inluence and interplay with each other and everything within their life-world, the place with its materials, matters, peoples, and atmosphere is signiicant for how we perceive and experience, act and move, as well as for what kind of relationships we have the opportunity to be involved in. As such, this interplay also affects stu-

dents’ learning.

Some concluding remarks - the embodied classroom

School is a place where people arrive, meet, work, and leave. This place is in most countries, at least Western ones, an architectonically formed build-

ing with many different dimensions. For example, it is made by humans for humans. The formation of a classroom is experienced, interpreted, and used in different ways by different people, and a classroom gets its signii-

cance irst when teachers and students experience it, e.g., by looking at it, being in it, and using it. Research has, however, shown that the formation of buildings, and by extension, the formation of classrooms, inluences us as human beings (see, e.g., de Jong, 1995; Eriksen, 1996; Skantze, 1989; Stahle, 1999). We, therefore, must recall that humans are not only inluenced by the room, but also inluence it (Alerby & Hörnqvist, 2005; Alerby et al., 2002).

In accordance with Merleau-Ponty and Bollnow, we have also emphasised that there is a mutual interplay between human beings and the room under-

stood as a lived room. The room, such as a classroom, is neither only mental nor purely material, but the concrete experienced reality in all its complex-

ity. The place inluences the body as much as the body inluences the place. Merleau-Ponty (2002) emphasises that humans inhabit space. Thus we can say that students and teachers inhabit, or embody, the room—the class-

room is becoming embodied.

To conclude, life-world ontology includes a pluralistic and integrative view of reality. World and life affect each other mutually in the sense that



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life is always worldly and the world is always lived. In this way, life and world are integrated into an intertwining that cannot be separated. As

Merleau-Ponty (2002) says: ‘the world is not what I think but what I live through’ (p xviii).

By highlighting humans’ embodied connectedness to the place as a lived place, and developing an understanding of the mutual interplay between body and room, we call for a rethinking of the relationship between body and room as signiicant in educational settings.

It is, therefore, our hope that the life-world approach, with its openness and humbleness, can be used as a fruitful way to theoretically conceptual-ise and empirically study different dimensions of learning places, but also the human corporeality within the place. This, in turn, is crucial in order to grasp all the various aspects of human relations to learning places.

References

Alerby, E. (2004). Windows of the school. Some notes on the signiicance of the source of daylight in school. Paper presented at NERA’s Congress, Reykjavik, Iceland, March 11-13.Alerby, E. (2009). Knowledge as a ‘body run’. Learning of writing as embodied ex-

perience in accordance with Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the lived body. Indo-Paciic Journal of Phenomenology, 9 (1), 1-8.Alerby, E., Bengtsson, J., Hörnqvist, M-L., & Kroksmark, T. (2002). Relections on the signiication of space in school from a life-world approach. EERA conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 11–14 2002.Alerby, E., Hertting, K. & Westman, S. (2012) Beyond the boundaries of the class-room: rethinking places for learning. Paper presented at 42nd Annual Conference of

the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Inc. 7-10 Dec. 2012.

Alerby, E., & Hörnqvist, M-L. (2005). Relections from a school on a school. Relective Practice, 6 (2), 315-321.Barbaras, R. (2004). The being of the phenomenon: Merleau-Ponty’s ontology. Bloomin-

gton, IN: Indiana University Press. Barbaras, R. (2006). Desire and distance: introduction to a phenomenology of percep-tion. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Bollnow, O.F. (1994). Vara-i-rum och ha-rum. [Mensch und Raum] Nordisk Arkitek-turforskning, 7 (1), 111-119. Bonnett, M. (2009). Education and selfhood: A phenomenological investigation. Jour-nal of Philosophy of Education, 43 (3), 357-370.Bonnett, M. (2013). Sustainable development, environmental education, and the sig-

niicance of being in place. Curriculum Journal, 24 (2), 250-271.Dall’Alba, G., & Barnacle, R. (2005). Embodied knowing in online environments. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37 (5), 719-744.Dall’Alba, G., & Barnacle, R. (2007). An ontological turn for higher education. Stud-ies in Higher Education, 32 (6), 679-691.

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de Jong, M. (1997). Spatial structure and use of school buildings. Evolving Environ-mental Ideals. Changing Ways of Life, Values and Design Practices. Book of proceed-

ings, Stockholm, July 30–August 3, 1996.Eriksen, A. (1996). Skolen som et lærested og et værested. [School as a learning place and a being place. Dafolo Forlag.

Gruenevald, D.A. (2003). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious aducation. American Educational Research Journal, 40 (3), 619-654.Langeveld, M.J. (1983). The stillness of the secret place. Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 1(1), 11-17. Merriam-Webster (2013). An Encyklopedia Britannica Company. Retrieved, Septem-

ber, 5, 2013 from: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incorporateMerleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primacy of perception. Chicago: Northwestern Univer-sityPress.

Merleau-Ponty, M., & Lefort, C. (1968). The visible and the invisible: Followed by working notes [Visible et l’invisible.]. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1982). Sense and non-sense. Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2000). Humanism and terror: The communist problem. New Brun-

swick, N.J.: Transaction.Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception [Phénoménologie de la per-ception]. London; New York: Routledge.Nationalencyklopedin (1998). Multimedia 2.0 for PC. Höganäs: Bokförlaget Bra Böck-

er AB.

Patočka, J. (1998). Body, community, language, world. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court. Westman, S., & Alerby, E. (2012). Rethinking temporality in education drawing upon the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze: A chiasmic be(com)ing. Childhood & Philosophy, 8 (16), 355-377.Villanen, H., & Alerby, E. (2013). The sense of place – voices from a schoolyard. Edu-cation in the North, 20, 26-38.Skantze, A. (1989). Vad betyder skolhuset? Skolans fysiska miljö ur elevernas pers-pektiv studerad i relation till barns och ungdomars utvecklingsuppgifter. [What is the signiicance of the school building: The physical environment of the school seen from a pupil perspective and studied in relation to their developmental tasks] Stockholm:

Pedagogiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet.Stahle, O. (1999). Förordet i: Arkitektur och skola: om att planera skolhus. [Preface in: Architecture and school. How to design school buildings]. Stockholm: Stiftelsen ARKUS.

Authors:

Eva Alerby, ProfessorLuleå University of Technology Department of Art, Communication and Education Campus Luleå971 87 Luleå Sweden e-mail: [email protected]



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Erica Hagström, Ph.D. StudentLuleå University of Technology Department of Art, Communication and Education Campus Luleå971 87 Luleå Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

Susanne Westman, Senior LecturerLuleå University of Technology Department of Art, Communication and Education Campus Luleå971 87 Luleå Sweden e-mail: [email protected]


DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0002 JoP 5 (1): 24 – 47

Enacting teaching and learning in the interaction process: “Keys” for developing skills in piano lessons through four-hand improvisations

Julien Laroche, Ilan Kaddouch

Abstract: Embodied mind theories underline the role of the body in the act of know-

ing. According to the enactive approach, we learn to perceive and to know through our bodily interactions with the world (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991). However, such an approach remains incomplete as long as sociality is not taken into account (Froese

& Di Paolo, 2009). Recently, an inter-enactive approach has accordingly been proposed. Social interactions are seen as processes of coordinated sense-making that emerge from

the dynamics of the inter-action process itself (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). As learning mainly takes place in intersubjective contexts (e.g. as an effect of teaching), this approach is relevant to the issue of pedagogy. Teaching settings are a special case though: cognitive

interactions are reciprocal but asymmetrically guided by the teacher. In this paper, the question of the relations between body and education is thus addressed from the point of

view of the inter-enactive approach. To this end, we irst sketch out the phenomenological and theoretical contours of embodied intersubjectivity and intersubjective embodiment.

Then, we present an interactive pedagogical method for musical learning (free spontaneous four-hand improvisations in the context of the Kaddouch pedagogy) and discuss it using illustrative case studies. The teacher’s role appears to operate directly within the dynamics of the interaction process, a source of knowing and skill enaction for the learner.

Keywords: enaction, interaction, coordination, teaching, learning


Enacting teaching and learning in the interaction process: “Keys” for developing skills in piano ...

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Introduction

Etymologically, pedagogy means “guiding a child” and broadly refers to the methods used in education. It therefore implies a “complementary

pair” (Kelso & Engström, 2006): teaching~learning1. Indeed, teaching would not be complete without subsequent learning, and one would not speak of pedagogy where learning happens without teaching. While “teacher” and “learner” are socially prescribed roles, for actual teaching and learning to occur, these potential roles have to be enacted, that is, actively actualized through complementary actions. Education is thus an inherently intersub-

jective process. We will accordingly consider a pedagogical situation involv-

ing a teacher and a learner as an archetypal and relevant starting point from

which to discuss the fundamental processes involved in education.

Teaching generally aims at changing learners’ cognition in the broad sense of the term (referring to both “know-how” and “know-that” capacities). For this purpose, teachers have to igure out what learners already know, and what they do not (what they still ignore or cannot do), both before and after learning takes place (in order to evaluate its effectiveness; Kostrubiec, Zanone, Fuchs & Kelso, 2012). Education therefore implies communicative processes about learners’ cognition (i.e. their interrogation by the teacher and their expression by learners themselves) and mutual understanding. Thus, teaching involves some knowledge of how to communicate in order to guide learners towards learning. Education consequently involves cognition

about communication on top of communication about cognition.

In this paper, we address the question of the relations between cognition and communication in teaching~learning processes. To coherently provide for both a theoretical framework and educational methodologies, this en-

deavor is co-conducted by a researcher (from the cognitive sciences) and a pedagogue (of musical education). In the irst part, we outline the theory, particularly by referring to recent propositions formulated in the enactive

approach to the study of the embodied mind (Varela, Thompson & Rosch, 1991) and by dynamic approaches to the study of behavior (Kelso, 1995), both of which are contrasted with the more classical but criticized positions

with which we open the article, and in keeping with observations from de-

velopmental and social psychology, which we present afterwards. Taking into account the embodiment of cognition and communication leads us to

1 The tilde (~) sign, or squiggle character, is a reference to Kelso and Engström (2006). It designates the “complementary aspects of complementary pairs” of concepts (p. 7). In other words, it denotes the incompleteness of each concept of the pair when it is consi-dered in isolation of its complementary aspect and thereby points out the dynamical

nature of their relations.

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reine our view of these terms and their relations. Studying interactive pro-

cesses seems to be especially important if we are to understand how the

inherent intersubjectivity of pedagogical situations contributes to learning.

In the second part, we illustrate this view using Kaddouch’s pedagogy for learning music (Kaddouch & Miravète, 2012), and inally we discuss some case-studies. By focusing on teaching~learning coupled processes, we hope that a generalizable framework will emerge and inspire both practitioners

and researchers in their endeavor to understand and improve education.

Theoretical contours

Classical Psychology of Cognition and Communication

Traditionally cognition refers to a general explanatory scheme: perception –> cognition –> action (Hurley, 1998). Cognition primarily consists in the formation of internal mental representations about the external world, in order to act adaptively in that world (Varela, 1988). These “mental states” serve as an interface between the separate aspects of perception (the input

of information lowing from the world that has to be cognized) and action (the adaptive behavior driven according to such cognitive representations). In this perspective, the most important processes occur “in the head” of the individual cognizer, whereas explicit behaviors are solely peripheral applica-

tions of mental representations.

This view is found in the classical model of communication by Shannon

and Weaver (1948): information lows from one emitter to a receiver via a me-

dium. Individual actions are thought separately, successively: each partner takes turn in perceiving the message emitted by the other, understands it, and “inter”-acts accordingly. Understanding the other thus involves iden-

tifying the mental states that caused the emitted message or behavior. In

other words, as pointed out by De Jaegher (2006), understanding each other and participating in social interactions would be a matter of individual men-

tal processes: the social situation itself should not bring much to it, and the role of the body seems peripheral, non-constitutive of the processes at work (at best, the body conveys tangible information that manifests its hidden mental causes).

The classical approach to human understanding has received a lot of criti-

cism (Varela, 1988), as has its inherent perspective on mutual understand-

ing (De Jaegher, 2006). We briely identify three inter-related phenomeno-

logical axis of criticism which address the issues of corporality, temporality and sociality in intersubjective understanding.



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Criticism of Classical Approaches

In the classical perspective, understanding an other is mediated by mental representations formed in the individual mind, while the body solely conveys meaningless visual information that serves as raw input for higher-level cog-

nition (Gallagher, 2008). However, our habitual experience of understanding an other is im-mediate: we directly perceive the expressivity of his body, with no separation of the expressed and the expression (Merleau-Ponty 1945), that is, of mind and behavior. The meaning of behaviors seems transparent, rather than opaque and hidden in an abstract mind (De Jaegher, 2006). We can then speak of “body-reading” (Gallagher, 2001) rather than “mind-reading” (Baron-Cohen, 1994).

Giving a central role to the mental mind and a peripheral one to the body

prompts us to see the individual cognizer as a static and passive observer.

However, we are actively engaged in the dynamics of the situations we live through. These situations have a temporality that matters (it is not enough

to do the right thing, it has to be done at the right time), especially in social interactions where timing constraints are very tight and make sense (Ni-jholt et. al., 2008). Social interactions then are dynamical continuous lows rather than successions of mental states (De Jaegher, 2006).

More over, the active role of the body modiies the very situation that would have had to be observed in the irst place: we do not just act in the world, we interact with the world, in a timely fashion. In other words, rather than being a detached observer of an external world, the cognizer is pragmatically in-

volved in his own world. During encounters with others, we thus participate in the social interaction itself. As pointed out by De Jaegher (2006), we are connected both to the social situation (in which we feel immersed) and to the other (with whom we feel a sense of “being together”). It is dificult to explain such experiences from the detached vantage point from which connexion with the external world is mediated by internal representations.

Overall, a simple succession of individual mental states cannot account for our lived experience of social situations in which mutual understanding is pragmatic and concrete rather than abstract. The background of mutual

understanding seems to involve more fundamental capacities. What shape does this background take when it is observed in early infancy, when behav-

ior cannot rely on highly-elaborated abstract cognition?

Early Intersubjectivity

Parents educate their children in order to guide them in a shared world

of human understanding. In fact, newborns already seem intrinsically motivated to maintain sym-pathetic relations with adults, and capacities

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to participate in interactions develop very early (Trevarthen, 2011). Such “primary intersubjectivity” capacities imply both the display of subjecti-

vity (by expressing the intentionally directed nature of one’s own behavior through the coordination of gestures) and the adaptation of this kind of subjectivity to another (Trevarthen, 1979). This allows the experiences ex-

pressive actions carry to be shared. These capacities are not mere imitative

responses or reactions: babies’ communicative acts invite adults to share the coordination of their behavior with them (Trevarthen, 2011). Indeed, Murray and Trevarthen (1985) showed that children actively participate in communicative interactions. They compared mutual interactions (mediated

by TV monitors) between two-month-old infants and their mothers and the interactions of these children with a (non-responsive) recording of the same interactional sequences. Though the babies observed the exact same be-

havior of the mother in both situations, they reacted very differently to the recording, showing anger and frustration and losing interest in the interac-

tion process. What babies seem to be aware of is the lack of contingency between what they do and what their mother does. Therefore, interactivity itself plays a role in their experience. The lack of opportunity to contribute to the regulation of the unfolding interaction frustrates them. On the other

hand, through their active contribution to the communicative processes, their coordinated activity becomes part of the interpersonal contingencies, which they can therefore actively experience in an un-mediated but direct and pragmatic manner.

Synchrony between mother and infant is in fact important in the lat-

ter’s development (Feldman, 2007) and this kind of temporal coordination is very ine-grained. For instance, movements of new-borns synchronize with the speech of adults (Condon & Sander, 1974). Early synchronous coordi-nation generally has a rhythmical nature (Trevarthen, 1999; Gratier, 2008): interactions are structured around implicit and shared “pulses” and exhibit coherent temporal organization on several time-scales, forming phrases and narrative episodes (Malloch, 1999). The stability of the pulsatile, rhythmical recurrences provides an attentional framework for the anticipation and coor-

dination of activities (Large & Jones, 1999; Gratier & Apter-Danon, 2009). Early interactions are not metronomically regular though: timing deviations

are observed (Gratier, 2003). These subtle variations are functional: they are expressive and stimulating, as they “vitalize” the contour of lived experienc-

es whose meaning can then be shared with subtlety (Gratier & Apter-Danon, 2009; Stern, 1985). This lexibility produces surprises in the anticipated unfolding of the interaction, thus sustaining attention by actively engaging both mother and child in the communicative processes. In this regard, moderate contingencies (rather than either rigidly regular or random ones) lead



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to positive outcomes in cognitive and affective development (Jaffe, Bebee, Feldstein et al., 2001; Hane, Feldstein & Dernetz, 2003).

Overall, early processes of meaning sharing involve tight behavioral co-

ordination. Furthermore, such fundamental capacities are at work in adult interactions as well, as observed in many experiments and conversation analysis (e.g., Condon & Ongston, 1971; Bernieri & Rosenthal, 1991; for reviews, see Richardson, Dale & Shockley, 2008; Shockley, Richardson & Dale, 2009; or Dale, Fusaroli, Duran & Richardson, 2014). In short, mutual understanding during social interactions does not seem to primarily involve

successive individual mental states, but implies simultaneous and collec-

tive embodied dynamics. To further understand this kind of phenomenon, we turn to the enactive approach, as it constitutes a paradigmatic shift from classical representationalism (Varela, 1988), illuminates the embodied na-

ture of human cognition (Varela et al., 1991) and accounts for cognitive behaviors in their intersubjective contexts of emergence (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007).

The Enactive Approach

Instead of positing an objective informational world and wondering how

it could be represented within the mind, the enactive approach addresses cognition from the point of view of the reality of the organism itself (Varela

et al. 1991). Here, the mind is embodied in the sense that cognition is both a living (biological) and a lived (experiential) phenomenon.

Living is deined by its own organization: a closed network of inter-relat-ed processes whose interdependence gives rise to a coherent unit (Varela, 1979). In turn, a system like this sustains itself by constraining the very op-

erations from which it emerges. By doing so, the living unit produces its own id-entity (Varela, 1997) and therefore deines its own norms, that is, the con-

ditions under which its organization is maintained. The organization of the

living is thus auto-nomous (self-laws; Varela, 1979). As it is self-producing, the living system distinguishes itself from the environment: it deines what it is not and thereby constitutes its own world from its own perspective.

This perspective has intrinsic values: the kind of relations the living sys-

tem can have with its environment while being autonomous. It then exists and lives in the relational domain of its coupling with the world, the latter becoming valued by and meaningful to the living system (Varela, 1997). When such an entity modulates its coupling autonomously (by modifying its environment or by regulating its internal organization and activity so as to

change the value of this coupling), we can speak of the interactive autonomy of an adaptive agent (Barandiaran, Di Paolo & Rohde, 2009). Cognition is

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consequently deined as a sense-making activity that consists in enacting a signiicant world through autonomous interactions with the environment (Di Paolo, 2010). Behavior thus expresses the coupled relation of the agent with its world: it expresses the meaning this agent “imbues” its own world with (McGann, 2010). Therefore, behavior and meaning are relational phe-

nomena: they are situated in the coupling of an agent with its world (but not

solely in the former, nor in the latter). Phenomenologically, the lived world of an organism is imprinted by its own

embodied structure (Maturana & Varela, 1987), that is, both by what it can sense and what it can do. Indeed, as motility shapes the part of the environ-

ment that can be sensed (e.g., turning your head displays renewed visual sensations; see Merleau-Ponty, 1945), sensori-motor coupling pragmatically connects us with the world it gives rise to (i.e. instead of to the world, by me-

diating mental or neural representations for instance). In other words, the lived world emerges in the relational perspective of the agent–world coupling. Skillful mastery of this meaningful coupling thus shapes our lived experiences (Thompson, 2005). In this context, the body can be experienced either as a living or as a lived phenomenon (following the distinction made by Hus-

serl, 1952). The living body is the image or view one can have of it through observation, while the lived body is the point of this view, the uniied meeting of sensation and action affordances, the null-point from which we can prag-

matically relate to the world (Lenay, 2010; Thompson, 2007). We do not see the place or point from which we see: the lived body is transparent in experi-ences (otherwise it would obstrue those very experiences; Lenay, 2010). It is not absent though, as it anchors and contributes invisibly but constructively to such experiences, like the look that is involved in what is seen: the lived body is thus pre-relective (it is not a thematized object of consciousness; Thompson, 2007). Without this bodily self-consciousness, we could not have personal experiences at all (i.e. that implicit feeling of being present in a world we experience ourselves). As a consequence, whatever is transparently part of our action~perception loops participates in our relational and pragmatic con-

nexion with the world: it is therefore in-corporated in the lived body (like the

glasses through which we see but that we forget are on our nose, or the cane of a blind man who “senses” the ground through it; see Merleau-Ponty, 1945, or Heidegger, 1927). What are the consequences of such an embodiment in intersubjective contexts, and what role does it play in mutual understanding?

The Enactive Approach to the Study of Intersubjectivity

During social encounters, the lived body partly becomes a living body for an other (Lenay, 2010). Indeed, Lenay points that although part of our



3 1

expressivity is invisible to ourselves (e.g., the look and facial expressions that we do not see), they are visible to the other. Our expressive activity can then affect and change the other who perceives us. Through the reci-

procity of such action~perception effects, we become linked to the activity of each other, like when we both pull a rope in different directions. The other thus becomes part of our pragmatic experience and vice-versa: by interacting, we mutually incorporate each other’s perspective in our lived experiences (Fuchs & De Jaegher, 2009, following Merleau-Ponty, 1945). If sense-making emerges from the embodied activity of the subject, and if the sensori-motor dynamics of encountering subjects become coupled, then we participate in the sense-making of each other (De Jaegher, 2006), a process that De Jaegher calls “participatory sense-making”. In other words, mutual understanding can emerge from interactive and reciprocal modulations of

individual sense-making (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). Interaction is thus the locus of emergence and transformation of meaning (De Jaegher, 2006): it is where sense can be shared and can become common.

The meeting of embodied perspectives opens up a new phenomenologi-

cal and cognitive domain that is speciic to intersubjective encounters (i.e. it is irreducible to the individual participants and their internal processes; De Jagher & Di Paolo, 2007). This domain is constituted by the dynamics of the inter-active process itself. Indeed, on the one hand, the other escapes us constantly as we change him (Lenay, Stewart, Rohde & Amar, 2011), while on the other hand, as the other we changed changes us in return, we come to change ourselves during interactions and thereby constantly

escape ourselves too (Lenay, 2010). The interaction process as a whole then escapes us. It can thus become dynamically autonomous and obtain a “life

of its own” (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). By acquiring a certain stability (Froese & Di Paolo, 2008; Laroche, 2013), the interaction process takes the shape of an attractor which coordinates individual activities (Auvray, Lenay & Stewart, 2009; Laroche, 2013) and can therefore modulate indi-vidual sense-making. In this way, relational dynamics that exist between subjects attract their respective internal dynamics towards behavioral terri-

tories that are not available to them when they are isolated (Froese & Fuchs, 2012). Interaction processes can thus transform and enhance the behavio-

ral repertoire of the individual subjects (and thus their means of meaning; De Jaegher, 2006). Furthermore, as we are collectively affected and shaped by interactional processes, not only do we incorporate each other’s perspec-

tive, but we also transparently incorporate the dynamics of the interaction process itself (De Jaegher, 2009). In other words, we embody such collective dynamics (Rhode, Leany, Stewart, et al., 2012): they orient our explicit bodily activity and modulate our lived experience. By eficiently transforming

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our point of view, interactivity thus gives access to new shared meanings that emerge intersubjectively (De Jaegher, 2006). In short, the interaction process can trans-form individual sense-making, giving rise to a domain of com-prehension that is not available to the isolated subject (De Jaegher, Di Paolo & Gallagher, 2010). Overall, not only does the coordination of behav-

ior maintain social interactions (Kendon, 1970), but interactions also entail coordination (De Jaegher, 2006; Laroche, 2013).

Obviously, the mere presence of interaction processes does not guarantee our perfect coordination. If so, we would become locked into each other (De Jaegher, 2006) and we would no longer be able to have personal perspec-

tives. That would prevent new meanings from emerging, and encounters would become worthless at some point. However, because our embodiment constitutes a point of view, our encounters tend to be incomplete: we es-

cape each other constantly (Lenay, 2010). The resulting autonomy of the interaction process thus does not absorb the autonomy of the participating

individuals (Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2007). As a consequence, interactive co-

ordination is a perfectly imperfect process, and can thus suffer coordination breakdowns (De Jaegher, 2006). As De Jaegher points, such breakdowns are important, as they maintain the personal, involved and participative engagement of the autonomous subjects, so that the process of interaction can be repaired. Here again, the interaction process is the locus of mean-

ing emergence, transformation and sharing. Thus, both (individual and col-lective) autonomous levels regulate each other interactively. The quality of social experiences lived from a irst-person perspective therefore depends on the upstream emergence of the very intersubjective character of such

experiences. In other words, intersubjective dynamics precede their indi-vidual appropriation or recognition (see Lenay & Stewart, 2012). To make sense of, to, and with the other, we thus have to enact and regulate skillfully the relational dynamics that emerge from the in-between of our interac-

tions (McGann & De Jaegher, 2009). In asymmetrical situations such as teacher~learner relations, the role of one person is to coordinate the other, while the learner should supposedly coordinate to the teacher (borrowing

the distinction between coordination “to” and “with” from De Jaegher, 2006). Mutual understanding is then still at play in education, as what has to be modulated in order to guide and transform the learner’s sense-making ac-

tivities is the relational dynamics, and interacting is the most fundamental way of doing this.

How can we properly study the way meaningful behaviors are coordi-

nated in the course of interactions? As activities are rhythmically structured

(Morowitz, 1979; Kelso, 1981), the effect of mutual coupling should lead to emergent interactional rhythm (De Jaegher, 2006), thus entailing the kind



3 3

of ine-grained temporal coordination that is at the core of social interac-

tions (see “early intersubjectivity”). In this regard, dynamic systems theories provide formal tools and concepts that naturally it phenomenological de-

scriptions (Varela, 1996; Froese & Fuchs, 2012; Froese & Gallagher, 2012).

Coordination Dynamics and Learning

Coordinative phenomena are actually ubiquitous in nature (from heart

cells and insects, to atoms and pendulum; see Strogatz, 2003) and follow similar dynamic laws on multiple scales of observation (e.g., intrapersonal coordination, coordination with environmental features or between-persons coordination; see Kelso, 2009). Such phenomena have thus become a topic of study on their own, referred to as “coordination dynamics”, the science of patterns formation, persistence and dismantlement (Kelso & Engström, 2006). Here, temporality (dynamic laws of change) is taken into account, as well as the articulations between the individual level of component pro-

cesses and the collective level at which they co-ordinate (Kelso, Dumas & Tognoli, 2012). The following two paragraphs quickly summarize the work of Kelso and his colleagues (e.g., Kelso, 2005, 2009; Kelso & Engström, 2006).

Broadly, mutual adjustments between the operations of components (e.g., neurons, limbs or persons) result from their reciprocal interactions, giv-

ing rise to synergistic behaviors (Bernstein, 1967). Thus, the variability of component processes provides them with a tendency to co-operate, which accounts for coherent pattern formation. In turn, such synergies constrain operations at the component level, accounting for the persistence of coor-dinated patterns of behavior. In this context, stability is observed at the re-

lational level of organization (i.e. how component processes relate to each

other) and can be captured by collective variables that measure their co-

herence. Stable relations among components thereby constitute attractors

for the system which then “prefer” to adopt such patterns, accounting for behavioral regular recurrences. However, components retain a tendency for autonomy by expressing their own dynamics. This provokes luctuations in the system which are “functional” in the sense that they “test” the stability of

patterns by destabilizing them. This provides lexibility and opportunities for change when patterns do not it the situation so that a new one can emerge. In this regard, both exogenous factors (task instructions, environmental con-

ditions) and endogenous factors (motivation, intention) can act as control parameters, that is, quantities whose changes can lead to pattern reorgani-zation, accounting for both pattern dismantlement and behavioral adaptive switching. Such changes at the level of the coordinated system as a whole are

often abrupt transitions, taking the form of a leap in the eye of the beholder.

A R T I C L E S


Patterns of behavior thus emerge from the background of co-existing ten-

dencies (autonomy~cooperation tendencies and the potentially stable rela-

tions between components in the current situation). The shape of this back-

ground is therefore a dynamical landscape made of basins of attraction and

repelling patterns that orientate behavior as mountains guide waterways.

Such “intrinsic dynamics” form a kind of pre-existing repertoire of spon-

taneous tendencies which relects our individual history: this is what we bring with us into interactions, and such dynamics constrain and shape the patterns that can be learnt or stabilized (Kostrubiec, Zanone, Fuchs & Kelso, 2012). Learning thus takes place in the context of such a background and consists in the modiication of such intrinsic dynamics. Learning then depends on the relation between new information or to-be-learnt patterns

and pre-existing intrinsic dynamics. Therefore, teaching~learning processes imply the guidance of such relations. One of the teacher’s roles consists in setting the conditions that are involved in the organization and sha-

ping of the learner’s dynamics, by encouraging reorganization through task constraints and other control parameters. As we have seen, interacting is indeed a powerful way to modulate such behavioral organization, as demonstrated in numerous social interaction experiments (see Oullier & Kelso, 2009, for a review).

The Kaddouch pedagogy: Teaching music through improvisation

To illustrate how the above presented concepts can be applied in par-

ticular educational situations, we will now turn to the Kaddouch musical pedagogy (Kaddouch & Miravète, 2012), as its practice and the observations it leads to tend to echo our theoretical background. Here, we focus on the use of improvisation for learning the piano. We describe the method and the concepts that have emerged from the practice, and then interpret them in the light of our theoretical sketches. We then present and discuss case-studies that are both idiosyncratic and representative of the observations

that can be made during such lessons. Our analysis relies on recordings of

the improvisation sessions and their analysis by the teacher, without preju-

dicing and modifying the habitual reality of these sessions (see Kaddouch & Laroche, 2014, for a more musicologically oriented analysis). Accordingly, these analyses are qualitative and clinical: they represent a irst step in the merging of enactive and dynamicist perspectives on the one hand, and the Kaddouch pedagogy on the other. These observations will lead to further

empirical research to be addressed in the future.



3 5

Method

Improvisation is an important tool in the Kaddouch pedagogy. Here, we will focus on free spontaneous (i.e. without explicit instruction) four-hand piano improvisations: a child learner sits on the right (playing medium and

high notes) while the teacher sits on the left (playing the medium and low-end notes on the piano). In this context, teacher and learner experience the same situation: both of them do not know what the other will do or play.

This situation is thus problematic and unprecedented for both of them

(Kaddouch & Miravète, 2012). Indeed, as the outcomes of the unfolding im-

provisation cannot be known in advance, the problem of creating and playing communicatively does not allow for the solution to be identiied before the actual situation occurs. Although such problems are shared, they are also asymmetrical. Indeed, the pedagogical, musical and instrumental expertise of the teacher provides him with the means and tools to help the learner to solve

these unprecedented problems with him. The practice of such pedagogical

situations and observations has given rise to several concepts: spontaneous

achievement zones, phase of synchrony, phase of diachrony, core tastes and lightning learning. We deine them by underlining their relations to the above theoretical propositions. We then illustrate them “in acts” using case-studies.

Concepts

During improvisation, learners exhibit clear individual preferences for certain patterns that they tend to adopt on a regular basis, and they do so without constraints or explicit instructions. Though these patterns can take various shapes (e.g. by using different notes, intervals or kinds of ges-

tures), they seem to derive from common frameworks that are embodied with ease and which we call “spontaneous achievement zones”. Notions like motor command or abstract programs deined in advance of the situations to which the behavior should it barely capture this kind of phenomenon. Instead, the phenomenology of preferred behavioral patterns seems to be better captured by the ideas of attracting tendencies and intrinsic dynamics

that shape the background from which behaviors can emerge. In dynamicist

language, spontaneously achieved patterns should be stable solutions for these intrinsic dynamics. One of the teacher’s roles then is to probe and identify these zones by interacting through improvisation, and to set up the conditions which favor the emergence and unfolding of such patterns.

To provide such a favorable context, a central technique consists in mi-metic or complementary responses. Such imitations or complementary ac-

tions lead to “phases of synchrony”, during which learner and teacher are

A R T I C L E S


“together” in the interaction: they share the “same time” and resonate in

each other’s movements. The functional role of the phases of synchrony is to validate the patterns proposed by the partner, entailing the sharing of experience and meaning. Synchrony also offers an anchor for the learner to further stabilize his movements, so he can become freer to explore new possibilities of behavioral expression.

However, if they stay locked in synchrony, the partners would stop bring-

ing anything new and relevant into the situation: meaning would no longer

be negotiated and shared. In other words, the partners would stop com-

municating and cease to be personally engaged in their encounter. In order

for new meanings to emerge, the situation has to be kept problematical and unprecedented, and this is the role of the teacher. For that purpose, he can use “blocking actions”, that is, patterns that do not it those the learner currently adopts. It entails a “phase of diachrony”, during which partners are no longer together (i.e. they do not embody the same unfolding

temporal organization). Coordination breakdowns such as these mean that a new meaningful solution has to be worked out in the course of interac-

tion. Therefore, phases of diachrony consecutive to blocking actions are an opportunity to make new propositions that could repair the interactional

failure. This makes the lexible engagement of the learner a necessary condi-tion for the communication to go on and to keep making sense. He now has

to reorganize his own gestures so they it the intersubjective situation again. It is thus an opportunity for change so new ways of uncovering problemati-

cal and unprecedented situations can be learnt, and this happens in the dynamics of interaction.

As a result, the blocking technique provides a means of achieving behav-

ioral patterns that are out of the “comfort zone” of the learner’s spontaneous achievements. The learner might therefore do things he could not do by him-

self. By extension, he might be able to accomplish desired behaviors. This leads us to the notion of “core tastes”, which broadly refers to the desires of a person about the way he would like his lived experience to be. Distin-

guishing between core tastes and behaviors that belong to the spontaneous

achievement zone is made possible by interacting and is a pedagogical end

in itself: the role of the teacher is to help the learner not to stereotype his

spontaneous achievement zones, as they could mask the expression of core tastes.

By enabling the emergence of patterns of expression that are different from those that the learners already knows and spontaneously adopts, such a pedagogical tool can help learning and the acquisition of new “means of

meaning”. In this context, instead of being long and painstaking, learn-

ing new techniques often has a “lightning” quality: it happens suddenly,



3 7

similarly to phase transitions observed in dynamic systems where behavior

switches from one pattern to another. Let us now present and discuss three

case-studies that illustrate these concepts.

Case studies

Albane

Albane (names have been changed) is a 7 year-old-girl who has been learn-

ing piano in this pedagogical setting for two years. She enjoys improvising, and requests it each lesson.

In this session, Albane begins with a gesture she performs easily at a tem-

po she’s comfortable with. The rhythmical pattern belongs in her spon-

taneous achievement zones: its stability seems to relect an attraction to intrinsic dynamics, a necessary condition for her to begin improvisation. The teacher validates her choice by imitating her gestures and speed, as if they made sense to him too. They thus enter a phase of synchrony. The co-

ordination of their actions provides an anchor for Albane’s movements to be further stabilized. Indeed, she can now rely both on the consistency of the teacher’s gestures and on the stabilizing effects of the interaction process itself in order to off-load her coordinative efforts (Laroche, 2013).

The teacher then proposes a different harmonic and rhythmical pattern, a blocking action that entails a phase of diachrony. As a consequence, Al-bane makes rhythmical and melodic mistakes: because it has been destabi-

lized, her gestural pattern luctuates. Note that this is a consequence of the instability of the interaction process itself: the teacher’s and learner’s musi-cal patterns no longer it together. The learner’s playing is thus no longer relevant to the intersubjective context. The coordinative attraction of the interaction process makes it dificult for her to maintain her initial pattern with ease (despite it belonging to her spontaneous achievement zone!). Her mistakes are indeed a sign of communication and underline both the ap-

pealing effect of the interaction process and her temptation to regulate it, by seeking to reorganize her gestures so as to it the newly established musical context. Albane ends up with a brand new pattern that is coherent in the shared context. A new phase of synchrony has emerged and she explores it through numerous variations. At this phase transition (from diachrony to

synchrony), the attractor that exerted inluences on her behavior seems to migrate from an intrinsic dynamic landscape towards collective dynamics.

The new phase of synchrony is thus richer than the previous one: it has

been achieved through mutual propositions and regulated adjustments, plus it allows for both pattern stability and lexible variations. The meaning

A R T I C L E S


of this phase is intersubjectively situated, as isolated partners would not and could not have reached and shaped it in this way. This co-enactment

seems meaningful in itself for the social embodied experience of the learner, as Albane starts dancing on her seat, which relects a deep resonance be-

tween her and the inter-actively created music.

After this, the teacher starts a transition towards the irst musical theme. Albane switches immediately to her initial pattern, relecting its stability and the appeal of her own intrinsic dynamics which her behavior seems to

be “pulled towards”. However, this phenomenon is transitory as she quickly adopts a new kind of pattern: a new rhythm, a new speed, and new gestures. This pattern does not emerge from scratch, though: it is an extension of the proposition that the teacher had previously made. Through cooperative in-

teractions, her embodied perspective has been adaptively transformed and she can now escape the routine of her spontaneous achievement zones by

reorganizing her expressive gestures.Later on, an even subtler kind of synchrony phase can be observed.

Through a succession of mutually agreed validating and blocking actions, Albane and the teacher enter a phase of synchrony that is situated at

a higher-order temporal level: they play with the structure of the interac-

tion process itself. This shows that Albane is sensitive to and aware of the

relational dynamics of the interactive situations. She is able to appropriate

the dynamics she helps regulate explicitly, up to the point that she can liter-ally thematize them with her teacher. For his part, through his mastery of the interactive dynamics, the teacher can guide them in order to extend the space of possible behaviors for the learner. By exploring further behavioral regions, the learner can escape the attractors that trap his behavior and can thus express his core tastes. In the case of Albane, her expressive dance on her seat signals to us that she takes pleasure in creating new meaning-

ful patterns in resonance with the teacher. More generally, she seems to deeply enjoy playing with the interaction dynamical principles themselves.

The learner can thus realize herself through the interaction process, with guidance from the teacher but also through her own contribution. It seems

that it is in the inter-actively shared contexts that signiicant meanings can be brought forth and can realize the core tastes of the learner. It also seems

that such core tastes make sense when they are experienced with another person.

In this context, learning can have a lightning quality, in the sense that the invention and appropriation of new techniques occur at speed during

the course of improvisation. To grasp this lightning dimension, one should consider how dificult it would be to teach these techniques verbally, ex-

plaining how, why and especially when these patterns would have to be



3 9

used, as the improvisation situations are unprecedented (i.e. one cannot know in advance how they will unfold). The acquisition of new patterns can take such an abrupt shape because it emerges from an interactive situa-

tion that makes the behavioral reorganization necessary. The intersubjec-

tive dimension of the pedagogical situation can therefore be constitutive of

the acquisition of a skill or technical knowledge. The learner does not need

to “possess” fully the ability to command such patterns in advance of the

particular situation for these patterns to be coordinated. Instead, the learn-

er can rely on the constraints of the interaction process itself to modulate

her own behavioral organization in relation to this interactive context. The learner could be pulled towards relational coherence and stability, and that makes her wish to acquire new skills and new means of communicating and

sustaining the interaction. In a nutshell, skill acquisition is embodied in the collective dynamics of the interaction that attract behaviors. Of course, this is not enough to guarantee the long-term stability of the new behavioral pat-

tern (Kostrubiec et al., 2012). However, by means of recurrent interactions, patterns could be stabilized and form longer term stable cultural patterns

(Maturana & Varela, 1987; Gratier & Magnier, 2012).

Hermann

Hermann is a nine-year-old who has been learning piano via this teaching

method for two years. He does not improvise much and does not request it, but seems to enjoy it when it is suggested he try it.

Like Albane, Hermann begins with a pattern that seems to refer to an attractor of its intrinsic dynamics (a three-note downward melodic march). This introductory pattern is so stable that we are inclined to think that he

had practiced it before the session. The teacher validates Hermann’s choice by providing harmonic support. When he inishes his march, Herman re-

peats the same process again. He then adopts a searching~awaiting stance. This means he plays simple patterns that enable novelty to emerge. Both

partners’ propositions and the pattern that they collectively shape may pro-

vide clues as to how to sustain the communication process with the crea-

tion of new information to be shared. It is a way of endeavoring to enter into

diachrony with himself (with what has spontaneously been done so far), as if trying to escape its own intrinsic attractors.

The teacher then hammers chords and gradually slows down the tempo.

Hermann quickly imitates him, thereby showing an interest in escaping from his appealing behaviors. This sudden adaptation shows that he was

waiting for this possibility, but was unable to fulill this desire by himself. Here, the role of the teacher is to set up interactional conditions so that the

A R T I C L E S


learner can create new patterns of expression. Hermann then masters the new pattern and inishes the improvisation in perfect synchrony with the teacher, using a melodic development similar to the initial stable patterns.

The teacher asks Hermann for another improvisation, which he starts with the very same pattern again, despite repeated and explicit instructions to “do a new one”. When one is locked in such a hyper-stable system of gestures, it is very dificult to escape and produce something new: each moment is over-determined by the past structure of the repetitive pattern. This lack of

lexibility prevents the emergence of new shared and co-constructed forms. The teacher then makes suggestions by means of intense blocking actions, in order to sustain a high-level of arousal and attentive awareness of the

unfolding situation. By playing something totally different, the teacher desta-

bilizes coordination with the learner: everything he now plays sounds wrong

in the intersubjective context. This way, Hermann can actively experience the dysfunctioning of his inescapable musical system. In short, to help and guide the search for novelty, the teacher destabilizes the learner’s patterns by destabilizing their relation. The reorganization of the learner’s pattern can now be catalyzed by an appealing stable pattern existing at the collective level of description. Various propositions are thus made by the teacher, until there is an abrupt (lightning) transition towards synchrony, thanks to a change in Hermann’s pattern of behavior, as if he was awaiting this moment. Freed from its own attractors, he then invents a radically new rhythmic style, chang-

ing his gestures and his whole-body movements. As with Albane, the escape from spontaneous achievement zones seems to fulill core tastes, as Hermann now improvises by deploying numerous variations of his new pattern until

the end of the interaction. However, the harmonic scale and the speed of his gestures does not change, and the melodic form he employs is close to his initial pattern: his tendency to express its own intrinsic dynamics is still vivid in the cooperative process. However, he is now exploring a reined and richer version of its intrinsic appealing tendencies. Using interactional techniques, the teacher opens up a range of possibilities that are continually formed in

the background of the learner’s dynamic signature. His individuality persists through his transformed manner of being himself and expressing that being. The individuation process entailed by this learning emerges in self-differenti-

ation through interactivity. The afforded novelty now makes sense in a mutu-

ally, interactively constructed and shared manner.

Tim

Tim is a 7 year-old-boy who has been learning the piano in this school

for three years. He improvises frequently, irst with the teacher and then



4 1

at home until the improvisation becomes a composition. He associates his

improvisations with the metaphors and narrative situations he depicts by

telling stories while varying his gestures in terms of type, speed or ampli-tude.

Once again, the learner begins with patterns that are representative of his individual technique, which he most generally bases on regularly repeated intervals. The teacher validates the propositions by joining his pulsation

and speed. After this phase of synchrony, he blocks Tim’s pattern, entail-ing a perturbation in the coordination of his limbs. Tim then lets one of

his hands lead the other in a desynchronized fashion, and explores inter-limb patterns until something stable pops out: a syncopated pattern (i.e.

alternating hands). He plays this pattern accelerating and decelerating as if he was experimenting and probing his own ability to stabilize it, which is mimetically validated by the teacher. Afterwards, Tim comes back to his previous rhythmical pattern. As he has acquired good mastery of the musi-

cal communicative processes over the years, Tim is now able to lead most of the improvisation until the end, while quickly adapting to the variation the teacher proposes. Despite the numerous variations he uses, Tim plays at a relatively stable tempo from beginning to end, relecting a tendency to be attracted towards this particular range (he uses this tempo in other im-

provisations as well).As exempliied when he lost between-hands synchrony, Tim has general

dificulties in coordinating his own movements as well as his expressive actions to those of others (one might say that intrapersonal and interper-

sonal diachrony co-exist here). His spontaneous achievement zone should thus consist of small movements, with ever-changing patterns composed of scattered notes. However, he adopts a very percussive kind of gesture, with broad movements, when seeking to play synchronous notes by playing in-

tervals or bimanual chords. These patterns differ drastically from what we

would expect of his apparent intrinsic dynamics. It seems as if he is trying to overcome his coordination issues by constantly looking for synchrony, both at the individual and the collective level. His search for synchronization ac-

tually seems to constitute his core taste. The stabilization of his technique is

thus an achievement zone that is not spontaneous, but has been facilitated through the interaction process, where the role of the teacher is to favor the emergence of such synchronous activities. Here, teaching is enacted in the interaction process (the teacher actively discovers Tim’s issues by interact-ing with him) and so is learning (Tim overcomes his dificulties through improvised interaction).

A R T I C L E S


Conclusion

In this paper, we have provided a perspective (based on inter-enactive and coordination dynamics approaches) for understanding teaching~learning processes. Mutual understanding, which is both a means and an end in education, is rooted in embodied collective dynamics, where the interaction process plays a constitutive role (De Jaegher et al., 2010). By appropriating and regulating the dynamics of interaction, one can modulate individual sense-making and therefore guide learning processes. In other words, the teaching~learning relation can be enacted in and through the dynamics of interaction.

The use of spontaneous improvisations in the Kaddouch pedagogy pro-

vides an illustrative example. As teacher and learner face problematic and unprecedented situations, the role of the teacher has to be enacted, actively brought forth in the interaction, through mastery of the unfolding collective dynamics that the partners embody. Learning is also enacted in these kinds

of processes, both by regulating the relational dynamics and by being at-tracted by them.

Here, the main and complementary pedagogical techniques we called syn-

chrony and diachrony can only be deined from a relational point of view and constitute means of enacting teaching~learning in the interaction process. By enacting phases of synchrony, the partners can be together: they can share the time and contours of their meaningful embodied experiences. It is also a means of stabilizing the relation, and thus the movements of the learner who can explore further behavioral possibilities. By destabilizing the relational dynamics so as to create a phase of diachrony, the teacher pro-

vides an opportunity for both the general learning of behavioral lexibility and the acquisition of new speciic patterns of expression. Here again, the interaction process and its guidance by the teacher constitute collective dy-

namics that attract learners’ behavioral patterns. On the other hand, the learner’s motivation to communicate makes his own reorganization neces-

sary so that coherence can be maintained at the intersubjective level. That

way, new co-enacted meaning can emerge in the interaction. What is learnt is a dynamical mastery of the unfolding interactive situations, by actively participating in their organization.

The interaction process is thus potentially transformative, giving access to behavioral regions that are not available outside the interaction process:

embodied collective dynamics and their regulation can thus facilitate the

lightning acquisition of new skills. Of course, the analysis presented re-

mains clinical, and coordinated learning through interaction and its stabil-ity have to be tested empirically with appropriate quantitative (dynamical)



4 3

tools, an avenue for our future work. Note, however, that by interactively probing the stability of the learners’ patterns, the teacher here enacts in real situations the kind of experiments employed in laboratories to study pat-terns of dynamic learning (Kostrubiec et al., 2012).

In this regard, in our case-studies, the intrinsic dynamics of spontaneous achievement zones are enactively uncovered by the teacher in the interac-

tion process, and so are core tastes. In fact, it is the distinction between the two that both teacher and learner enact interactively. Indeed, it appears that intrinsic preferences differ from core tastes and desires, though the later exploit the former by extending the phase space of potential behaviors. Fur-thermore, though “core tastes” seems to be a very individualistic notion, not only these core tastes emerge in the teacher~learner interactive processes (e.g. Hermann’s escapement from his own routine thanks to the interaction process), but the meanings they constitute are generally also about inter-subjectivity itself (e.g., the search for Tim’s synchrony, Albane dancing on her seat when resonating with the co-created music or her playful appro-

priation of the structure and principles of interaction). Here, individuation processes unfold in the same way shared meanings emerge: by the coordi-

native and self-differentiating transformative effects of inter-enaction.

Overall, intersubjective embodiment (i.e. the co-constitution of the inter-leaving of living bodies and their interlived experiences), by means of mutual (though asymmetrically guided, learner-centered) regulations of relational dynamics, allows for teaching and learning to be co-enacted in the interac-

tion process itself. We hope that the above presented view and its applica-

tion can provide insights for the discussion, design and improvement of broader and more diverse educational settings.

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4 7

Authors:

Julien Laroche, Ph.D.Akoustic Arts 48, rue rené Clair75018 ParisFranceemail: [email protected]

Ilan KaddouchAkoustic Arts 48, rue rené Clair75018 ParisFranceemail: [email protected]


DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0003 JoP 5 (1): 48 – 64

Toward an affective pedagogy of human rights education1

Ruyu Hung

Abstract: This paper explores the notion of Affective Pedagogy of Human Rights Education (APHRE) on a theoretical level and suggests a concept of curricular frame-

work. APHRE highlights the signiicance of affectivity and body in the process of learning, factors usually neglected in the mainstream intellectualistic approach to learning, especially in areas under the Confucian tradition. The paper’s irst section explores the thinking of three philosophers - Rorty, Merleau-Ponty, and Beards-

ley - who serve as sources for APHRE. The second section explains how their con-

cepts contribute to APHRE’s development. In the third section, a practical curricular framework is presented. Finally, the paper discusses implementing the framework and concludes by recognizing APHRE as a pedagogic approach for crossing borders

among nationalities, cultures, and languages.

Keywords: human rights education, affective pedagogy, affective pedagogy of hu-

man rights education (APHRE), Beardsley, Merleau-Ponty, Rorty

Introduction

Human rights education is acknowledged as one of the most important

issues since World War II. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was promulgated in 1948, no countries fully satisfy human rights, and human rights problems or abuses are increasing at local, na-

tional, and international levels. The escalation of violations and conlicts demonstrates the urgency of enhancing human rights education.

1 Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the support of the National Science Council (NSC) Taiwan. NSC 98-2410-H-415-001-MY2, NSC102-2410-H-415-013.


Toward an affective pedagogy of human rights education

4 9

Less than a decade ago, Taiwan oficially approved human rights educa-

tion as part of the national curriculum (Hung, 2010a; 2012). In 1997, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education (MOE) appointed a committee to develop new curriculum guidelines to replace previous ones. After years of research

and planning, the new national curriculum was implemented in 2001. Hu-

man rights education is not listed as a core subject, but as an important issue taught in a cross-disciplinary way. And for many instructors, human rights education is dificult to teach because their programs did not provide training or human rights-related courses. Indeed, Taiwan has undergone the longest period of martial law of any location, dating from 1947 to 1989. Accompanying the imposition of martial law were curfews; the suspension of civil law, civil rights, and habeas corpus; and the application or extension of military law and military justice to civilians. Thus, past teacher-education programs had only empty space where human rights should have been. In

other words, Taiwan’s background conveys the great importance of equip-

ping pre-service and in-service teachers with appropriate knowledge and

skills in human rights pedagogy.

This paper aims to theorize the Affective Pedagogy of Human Rights

Education (or APHRE) which emphasizes affectivity, feelings, bodily percep-

tion, and aesthetic experience. Based on the notion of APHRE, a concept of curricular framework will be constructed on a theoretical level. This paper

focuses on the conceptual clariication and the achievement of the funda-

mental ideas, which will be the foundation for future empirical study. In addition, this paper will explore how the theory of APHRE is practiced in Tai-wan. There are two reasons for proposing the affective pedagogic approach.

First, in Taiwan, the main learning approach depends heavily on acquiring knowledge and information. Especially under the tradition of Chinese cre-

dentialism, the Taiwanese schooling system tends to instill information and memorization of knowledge, resulting in an unduly rationalistic approach to learning (Kwok, 2004; Hung, 2010a, 2012). In other words, this exces-

sively rationalistic approach becomes rote learning and impoverishes the

meaning of education. Hence a non-rationalistic, non-intellectual learning approach is crucial for gaining rich, deep meaning during the process of learning about and for human rights.

In this paper, non-intellectual approach is understood in terms of affectiv-ity. The intellectual approach emphasizes the abstract mental faculty, but affective pedagogy values affectivity, sensitivity, emotion, sentiment, and perception in learning. Peter Lang (1998) provided a very good working dei-

nition of “affective education”:

A R T I C L E S


By “affective education” is meant that part of the educational

process that concerns itself with attitudes, feelings, beliefs and emotions of students. …. Related to this view of the affective

dimension of education are two further points: that it often in-

volves both the provision of support and guidance for students

and that the affective and cognitive dimensions of education are

interrelated. Students’ feelings about themselves as learners and about their academic subjects can be at least as inluential as their actual ability. (Lang, 1998, p. 5)

Attitudes, feelings, beliefs, and emotions are central to human rights edu-

cation. Lang’s deinition of affective education has inspired me to develop an affective approach to human rights learning: students’ feelings and under-standing could be evoked not only through acquiring human rights related

knowledge, but also through seeing the sorrowful faces of those whose rights have been violated, listening to their sobbing, touching their trembling bod-

ies. Such scenes and voices should be valued as important sources.

This is related to my second reason for proposing affective human rights

education: Some things involved in human rights stories may be unspeak-

able and ineffable. Helping students have sympathy with and compassion

for others is key in learning about human rights. Human rights education

aims not only to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of hu-

man rights theory, but also to arouse sympathy and compassion for those who are abused, those whose rights are violated. Being sympathetic and compassionate necessitates arousing the sensitive, sentimental, and affec-

tive dimensions of human lives. The language of poetry, music, painting, cinematography, and the ine arts, better conveys the emotions and feel-ings than reasoning or persuasion. Artistic works and aesthetic experiences play a crucial role in learning about and for human rights. Philosophers

Richard Rorty, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Monroe Beardsley, who have made outstanding contributions in the understanding of sentiment, bodily perception, and affectivity, are inspirational in the formation of an affective pedagogy of human rights education (APHRE).

Philosophy of APHRE

This section explores the theoretical assumptions underpinning affective teaching and learning based on the thinking of three philosophers - Richard

Rorty, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Monroe Beardsley.



5 1

Rorty and Sentiment

What Rorty’s philosophy brings to human rights education is the replace-

ment of rationality by sentiment. As one of the most inluential contemporary thinkers, Rorty rejects the Platonian-Kantian tradition that irmly believes in objective truth beyond this world. Rorty’s well known thought is termed neo-pragmatism, which incorporates contingency, anti-representationism, and anti-foundationism. His works range over an unusually broad terrain.

Among these, one concept is most helpful for forming APHRE: sentiment—a powerful tool for rejecting the rationalist view of human rights.

According to Rorty (1993), to justify human rights, traditional rationalist philosophers appeal to universal humanity and transcendental morality. Yet in Rorty’s view, there is no such thing as ahistorical, transcultural, and certain truth. All the so-called truths, mistaken for deinite, absolute, and everlasting truth, are indeed shaped in culture and described through language—another cultural production. Culture and language are time-bound and space-bound

and thus are relative and contingent legacies of human civilizations, rather than certain a priori realities. As Rorty (1989, p. 5) states, “Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.” Rorty (1993) further points out that mainstream human rights claims are based on the universal morality of the Enlightenment, which indeed results in discrimination and violation of human rights. En-

lightenment morality assumes metanarratives about humanity. Rationality, especially, is seen as an inevitable characteristic. “Rationality” is the dis-

tinguishing feature that “human beings differ from other kinds of animals

[there]by having human dignity…” (Rorty, 1993, p. 118). Rationality is used as the criterion not only for distinguishing humans from nonhumans, but also for differentiating humans with “full” rationality from those with “in-

complete” or “immature” rationality, historically for instance, colored peo-

ple, females, pagans, children, and so on (Rorty, 1993, pp. 124-125). In Rorty’s mind, the most important basis for establishing a human rights culture is abandoning the Enlightenment’s foundational presuppositions of humanity through rationality.

Rejecting Enlightenment morality and rationality as the justiication for human rights, Rorty (1993) proposes “sentiment” as the substitute. Rorty points out that

to rely on the suggestions of sentiment rather than on the com-

mands of reason is to think of powerful people gradually ceasing

A R T I C L E S


to oppress others, or ceasing to countenance the oppression of others… (1993, p. 130)

In other words, the progress of sentiment, related to decreasing viola-

tions and abuses of human rights, establishes a peace culture or a Rortian human rights culture. Drawing on Eduardo Rabossi, human rights culture depicts “a new, welcome fact of the post-Holocaust world…. [Philosophers] should stop trying to get behind or beneath this fact, stop trying to de-

tect and defend its so-called ‘philosophical presuppositions’” (Rorty, 1993, pp. 115-116).

Rorty (1997) points out a common sense contrast between the concepts of “justice” and “loyalty.” Justice consists of Kantian rational morality, but Rorty defends loyalty as sentimental morality. Justice and loyalty are taken (or mistaken) as emerging from different sources: rationality and sentiment, but this is a foundationalist misconception. The traditional view usually

teaches us that conlicts are caused by irrationality, that is, irrational sub-

jects are blindly and uncritically loyal to their faith. They should be blamed

for conlicts and be “corrected.” Such correction is to do justice. However, in Rorty’s view, there is no real distinction between rationa-

lity and sentiment. “Doing justice” is the pretext of violations and abuses of rights of those who are labeled “irrational” or “uncivilized” by their oppo-

nents. Conlicts are actually a struggle, not between justice and loyalty, but between conlicting loyalties of different groups. Therefore, differentiating between justice and loyalty is unnecessary. Both seeking justice and inspir-

ing loyalty are important to all groups. Recognition of sentiment could cause

people in conlict to reconsider each other as “reasonable” and as “people like us” (Rorty, 1997, pp. 145-146). Reconsidering enemies as “people like us,” who are both rational and sentimental, is more promising for attaining universal human rights.

In brief, Rorty argues that rationality often results in violation, rather than promotion, of human rights because rationality has often been used as a criterion to discriminate between superiority and inferiority or humanity

and non-humanity. Implicit in rationality is the assumption that “superior”

humans are entitled to control, master, exploit, and even enslave the “in-

ferior peoples,” seen as non-human. This insight illuminates, for instance, the relatively recent abuse of immigrant workers in Taiwan. In human rights

discourses, replacing rationality with sentiment could help to reconceive relationships among different people and open a new, promising space for inclusion of differences.

What needs articulation next is how sentiment plays a role in learning about and for human rights. This leads to the need for a working deinition



5 3

of “sentiment.” The “liberal ironist” proposed in Rorty’s well-known work Contingency, Irony and Solidarity might be helpful: the liberal ironist makes

efforts to self-create in the private sphere and build solidarity in the public

domain. According to Rorty (1989), the liberal, following Judith Shklar, is deined as the person who thinks that cruelty is the worst thing we do; the ironist is one “who faces up to the contingency of his or her own most cen-

tral beliefs and desires” (p. xv). In sum, liberal ironists are

people who include among these ungroundable desires their

own hope that suffering will be diminished, that humiliation of human beings by other human beings may cease. (Rorty, 1989, p. xv).

“Sentiment” and “liberal ironist” are concepts that outline APHRE’s goal: human rights education sensitizes learners to the cruelty and suffering of

human beings, and it should inspire learners to commit to diminishing con-

duct that causes others harm and suffering. Central to human rights educa-

tion are sympathy and compassion for those who are hurt. Fostering learn-

ers’ sentiments, sensitivity, and compassion is central to APHRE. In the next section, I discuss how Merleau-Ponty’s thought illuminates

the role of the body as enacted in the learning process.

Merleau-Ponty and the Body

Greatly inspired by phenomenology’s founder of Edmund Husserl, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed the phenomenologi-

cal philosophy of perception or body. Phenomenology is deined as the study of essence: the essence of perception or the essence of conscious-

ness. Phenomenology studies experience as it is lived: “[P]henomenology is … also a philosophy which puts essence back into existence, and does not expect to arrive at an understanding of man and the world from any starting point other than of their ‘facticity’” (Merelau-Ponty, 1962, p. vii). A method of philosophical research, phenomenology describes lived expe-

riences and critiques basing philosophy only on concepts and idealities.

The phenomenological understanding of human beings cannot be sepa-

rated from people, but must be among people within the life-world; in other words, human beings must be treated and understood as living subjects rather than as abstract things.

Merleau-Ponty’s particular contribution is that phenomenology describes existence in all its forms, even beyond the traditional dichotomy—em-

piricism or intellectualism (Bannan, 1967, Merleau-Ponty, 1962; 1964).

A R T I C L E S


Merleau-Ponty argues that the perceiving mind is an incarnated mind since

the mind is rooted in the body and its world. Neither mechanism nor ration-

alism can provide a full explanation of human existence. Human existence, in his view, is an uninished, living process anchored upon the body within the world. As he states,

Every Incarnate subject is like an open notebook in which we do

not yet know what will be written. Or it is like a new language; we do not know what works it will accomplish but only that, once it has appeared, it cannot fail to say little or much, to have a history and a meaning. (1964, p. 6)

It is the perceptual and perceptible body that connects the individual and

the world in dynamic interactions. The body is the source of inner experi-ence through which individuals analogically understand and interpret other

people (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). As Merleau-Ponty says, “[Inner experience] teaches me the signiicance and intention of perceived gestures. … The ac-

tions of others are … always understood through my own; the ‘one’ or the ‘we’ through the ‘I’” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 348). The living body makes possible the non-verbal understanding of others’ feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Therefore, the body plays a very important role for APHRE in un-

derstanding others’ sufferings and pain. The living body is full of pedagogical meanings because it is the ground for

me to learn about and to have a world. The body “is our point of view on the

world, the place where the spirit takes on a certain physical and historical situation” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 5). The body lives ineffable meanings

through gestures, facial expressions, movements, and the senses. The body reserves abundant meanings within. Thus, the body is the place where learning starts, where meaning blossoms. The experience gained through the sensory ield of body is pedagogic and educational. Regarding learning about and for human rights, the human body senses and perceives others’ emotions and feelings by their facial expressions, gestures, positions, pos-

tures, sounds, and smells. Thus sensory experiences should weigh more heavily in the learning process, but currently, traditional classroom learning relies heavily on the intellect.

In order to awaken and sensitize learners’ bodies, teachers should employ various materials and tools to evoke and optimize sensory responses. Max van Manen (1990) has suggested several methods of investigating lived expe-

rience, including description in protocol writing, personal life stories through interviews, experiential anecdotes through observation, biographies, diaries, journals, and objects of art (visual, tactile, auditory, and kinetic). Brought



5 5

into the classroom, these methods broaden and multiply students’ experi-ences. As for human rights education, fables, stories, diaries, illustrations, art works, video clips, and other materials containing written texts, images, or music can bring learning and teaching to life. Through such sensory ma-

terials, more and deeper feelings such as love, grief, fear, hope, or loss can be felt, grasped, and developed.

As mentioned, experiences of suffering, grief, loss, sorrow, or pain, especially those caused by violations or abuses, always have qualities dificult to express fully in words. However, the totality of artistic works, whether text or image, can portray and convey the unspeakable meanings and emotions. If lear-

ners are encouraged to dedicate their perceptions, senses, and whole bodies to sensory materials, they can gain richer, deeper meanings and feelings.

Beardsley and Aesthetic Experience

The third theoretical source of APHRE comes from Monroe Beards-

ley’s philosophy of aesthetics. His contribution is different from that of Rorty and Merleau-Ponty, whose thinking justiies sentiment and perception as goals of learning about and for human rights. Beardsley provides criteria for

evaluating whether learners have genuine aesthetic experiences and whether the materials sensitize and sentimentalize learners to a satisfac-

tory degree.

Although many thinkers, for instance Osborne (1970) and Stolnitz (1969), discussed aesthetic experience, Beardsley’s view is generally considered the epitome of aesthetic philosophy and theory of aesthetic experience. Thus, I adopt his views to help develop APHRE’s fundamental outline. According to Beardsley, aesthetic experience stands out from other everyday experience because of its completeness and coherence. More speciically, he proposed ive criteria of aesthetic experience useful for theorizing APHRE. According to Beardsley, an aesthetic experience must meet the irst requirement and at least three of the others. The ive criteria are as follows:

1) Object directness. A willingly accepted guidance over the succession of one’s mental states by phenomenally objective properties (qualities and relations) of a perceptual or intentional ield on which attention is ixed with a feeling that things are working or have worked themselves out it-tingly.

2) Felt freedom. A sense of release from the dominance of some anteced-

ent concerns about past and future, a relaxation and sense of harmony with what is presented or semantically invoked by it or implicitly prom-

ised by it, so that what comes has the air of having been freely chosen.

A R T I C L E S


3) Detached affect. A sense that the objects on which interest is concen-

trated are set a little at a distance emotionally—a certain detachment of

affect, so that even when we are confronted with dark and terrible things, and feel them sharply, they do not oppress but make us aware of our power to rise above them.

4) Active discovery. A sense of actively exercising constructive powers of the mind, of being challenged by a variety of potentially conlicting stimuli to try to make them cohere; a keyed-up state amounting to exhilaration in seeing connections between percepts and between meaning, a sense (which may be illusionary) of intelligibility.5) Wholeness. A sense of integration as a person, of being restored to wholeness from distracting and disruptive inluences (but by inclusive synthesis as well as by exclusion), and a corresponding contentment, even through disturbing feeling, that involves self-acceptance and self-expansion. (Beardsley, 1991)

I propose and incorporate Beardsley’s ive criteria of aesthetic experience into learning about human rights, as shown in Table 1:

Table 1

Criteria of aesthetic experience of learning about human rights

CRITERIA DEFINITION

OBJECT DIRECTEDNESS Learners’ attention is fully occupied by the intentional objects such as sculptures, paintings, etc.

FELT FREEDOM Learners are free from bonds and concern about reality.

DETACHED AFFECTThe subject matter is kept at a distance and is thus

harmless and yet still emotionally affective to learners.

ACTIVE DISCOVERY Learners actively grasp objects in the environment

cognitively and perceptively.

WHOLENESS Learners gain a sense of personal integration and

self-expansion.

How can these criteria be adapted to APHRE? Take the Holocaust as an

example that demonstrates extreme cruelty and mass violence. Learning about the Holocaust is a part of learning about the universal history of

humankind, which “can engage students in a critical relection about the shared heritage of humanity, the roots of genocide, and the necessity to nurture peace and human rights to prevent such atrocities in the future”

(UNESCO, 2013). APHRE can appropriate multimedia to introduce this immense tragedy

to learners via different senses. Holocaust history can be taught not only



5 7

through texts, including novels, but also through non-verbal media, such as photos and representational sketches or other artwork, and through multi-media such as documentaries, ictionalized ilms, and ilmed in-

terviews with survivors. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Wash-

ington, D.C. has taken these theories on teaching human rights into ac-

count by presenting such exhibits as boxcars in which prisoners were transported and great piles of shoes and shorn hair taken from the con-

demned. Thus are real events based on real experience told in an em-

bodied way that can arouse much affectivity and understanding in the

learner’s mind. However, the process of learning about human violence must be care-

fully designed to prevent harm to young children. For young learners, such a subject and its harrowing images can be overwhelming and traumatic.

In fact, the Memorial Museum shields certain photographic exhibits from young children’s view. But important here is that APHRE can be of help in the classroom. Artwork, such as poetry, music, and novels, witness testi-monies, and personal stories create a pedagogical distance between learners and subject, inviting learners to meditate and relect upon the subjects from within a safe space, away from the shock and harm that could be caused by very realistic historical imagery.

Curricular framework based on APHRE

Based on the previous exploration, I suggest a curricular framework for APHRE, explained below. Of course, this framework is not designed to re-

place the established curriculum guidelines of human rights education, but rather to complement them Three parts comprise the framework: aims and

values, resources and means of the learning process, and criteria for evalu-

ation—as displayed in Table 2.

A R T I C L E S


Table 2

Curricular framework of APHRE

AIMSLEARNING THROUGH SENSES CRITERIA OF EVAUATION

The curriculum

should enable

learners to

Become more

sensitive, mind-

ful, attentive and responsive;Demonstrate

sensitivity and

responsiveness

to others’ feelings and sufferings;Demonstrate re-

sponsiveness and

responsibility to

reduce others’ suf-ferings;Put creative modes

of thinking into

practice to reduce

cruelty, injustice, or misery.

The curriculum

should enable learn-

ers to skillfully and

carefully

Listen

Observe

Smell

Taste

Touch

Feel

Respond

Create

The curriculum should enable learn-

ers to have experiences of the following characteristics:

Object directedness. The subject mat-

ter of the teaching plan enables learn-

ers to be concentrated and immersed to

a high extent. Felt freedom. The learning materials

enable learners to be free from concerns

and free to act.

Detached affect. The learning materials

present the quasi-reality or virtual re-

ality that inspires the learners to have

strong sympathy and empathy with

the subjects of the materials, but with a clear distinction between reality and

the objects of learning.

Active discovery. The learning materials

enable learners to construct meaning

actively, responsively, and responsibly.Wholeness. The learning activities en-

able learners to relect upon and inte-

grate themselves into a more coherent, consistent, and responsible personal-ity, to feel themselves part of a larger organism, e.g., family, community, so-

ciety, and cosmos.

The irst column of Table 2 recommends ive aims of APHRE, drawn from Rorty’s views, to enable learners to be sensitive, mindful, attentive, and re-

sponsive to cruelty in the world. These aims imply the inal goal (or hope) that learners become active and committed agents for human rights. APHRE

aims to prepare learners to be sensitive to the world’s sufferings and cruelty so that they respect the dignity and voluntarily protect and promote the hu-

man rights of all people.

The second column of Table 2 shows the role that sense perception, inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, plays in the learning process. The sensitiza-

tion of learners consists of awakening their bodily experiences, which origi-nate in the multifarious operation of the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The integration of different forms of activities and multimedia into

curriculum enriches this learning process. For example, teachers can intro-

duce art and literary works (e.g., music, novels, ilms, dramas, dances) to



5 9

learners, invite witnesses or survivors into the classroom, arrange a ield trip to visit historical locations or museums dedicated to human rights. Some

suggest that text is more appropriate than imagery since the latter may be horriic. In my view, imagery can provide greater pedagogical effect and value on the condition that it is “poeticized” or “artistically processed,” not present-ed baldly as imagery of sheer horror. This is the very point of accommodation

in Rorty, Merleau-Ponty, and Beardsley’s views adapted to APHRE: human rights education should awaken feeling, emotion, and compassion deep in the mind without causing fear and harm. APHRE aims to enable learners to

pay attention to every part of the learning process, to be mindful and care-

ful about every bit of the experience. Then they will be able to relect on and respond to their perceptions, grasping the meaning in depth.

In the light of Beardsley’s notion of aesthetic experience, the third column presents criteria that can be used on two interrelated aspects of the learn-

ing process. On the one hand, they can be used for evaluating whether the lesson plans or the materials imply signiicant aesthetic meanings for learn-

ers. On the other hand, they help teachers to decide whether the learners’ experiences are aesthetically rich.

Overall, Table 2 presents an outline of the APHRE curriculum framework that can be used for designing lesson plans and developing assessment tools

such as questionnaires and checklists. The curriculum framework bridges

the distance between theory and practice—for instance, designing lessons and assessment methods. According to Table 2, signiicant questions helpful for educators to observe learners’ concrete learning can be posed: Do learners gain implicit knowledge about human rights? Are learners sensitive enough

to the emotions conveyed by the objects or materials? Do the materials enab-

le learners to experience the emotions of suffering people in a more effec-

tive way than more traditional materials? Do learners voluntarily help others

who are suffering? These questions are underpinned by the core concern of

affectivity in the process of learning, and of course, more questions can be developed through Table 2. However, the questions above exemplify points of developing checklists, lesson plans, and assessment tools. Next, this paper discusses the principles of implementing APHRE in real world contexts.

Principles for implementing APHRE: The Taiwanese context as an example

The discussion above presents the APHRE curricular framework regardless

of any particular context. This section proposes principles for implementing the APHRE curricular framework in the Taiwanese context, and there are some obstacles to human rights education in Taiwan: First, in spite of Taiwan

A R T I C L E S


being long governed by the military regime and many Taiwanese civilians be-

ing victims of human rights abuses and violations, lifting the martial law and the current implementation of representative democracy has given people the

misconception that human rights problems no longer exist, at least, the state commits no serious violations. Many victims’ stories have thus been forgotten, buried in history; many survivors choose silence because of psychological fear caused by the past “white terror.” Many Taiwanese youth, in fact, are ignorant of the past, for instance curfews and the white terror. Second, with the growth of the global market, people’s attention remains focused on economics. As de-

fenders of the “Asian view” of human rights claim, social and economic rights take precedence over civil and political rights (Li, 2001). Third, the strong tendency of credentialism and examination-driven education in Taiwan takes up most of the space and time in school curricula. Teachers do not include

general or local knowledge about human rights, especially the history of hu-

man rights movement on the island. This subject is considered inappropriate

for examination because it is politically sensitive. Indeed, this could be seen as a fourth obstacle: In order to avoid trouble, most educational practitioners leave local human rights issues alone while international or global human

rights issues more frequency appear in schools. In my view, this is an educa-

tional weakness because it alienates students from lived experience and the life-world. Such avoidance, and thus misunderstanding, hinders the estab-

lishment of a human rights culture in Taiwan (and in other societies as well). Obviously, a need exists worldwide to enhance human rights education. And even then, APHRE cannot quickly achieve a strong foundation for learning about human rights, but at least it may play a part in relating human rights issues to individual life experiences.

Now, let me explain three basic principles for practicing APHRE. First, the features of locality consisting of spatiality and temporality should be

included in lesson plans. Traditional events, local, regional, and national histories, folk stories, cultural practices, and geographical characteristics should be taken into consideration. Taiwan’s diversity ranges widely across the spheres of ethnicity, culture, language, politics, economics, and society. Many distinctive issues in relation to human rights are notably educational.

With regard to history and politics, Taiwan has undergone the rule of the Spain and the Dutch in the 17th century, the Qing Dynasty from 1683 to 1895, Japanese military colonialism from 1895 to 1945, and a republican government including a period of martial law from 1945 to the present.

Under these very different regimes were many issues in relation to, e.g., indigenous rights, poverty, women’s rights, workers’ rights, colonialism, freedom of expression, terrorism, and security—all excellent sources for learning about human rights. More speciically, Taiwan was under martial



6 1

law for more than thirty-eight years, as mentioned in the introduction. The imposition of martial law violated human rights by suspending and limiting

civilians’ freedom in many aspects of their lives. Therefore, taking all these facts into account, the history of the human rights movement in Taiwan is a valuable resource for teaching human rights.

Secondly, “stories in the lesh” are better sources than abstract, ahistori-cal objects such as oficial documents, declarations, conventions, treaties, laws, and technical terms. By “stories in the lesh,” I mean stories with genuine plots, individual characteristics, and temporal and spatial contexts in place of statistics, ahistorical ideas, and doctrines. The experiences of victims, survivors, and their relatives tell stories in the lesh that are power-ful and signiicant for deepening understanding of human rights, developing attitudes and behavior respectful of human rights, and preparing skills to uphold and protect human rights. These kinds of stories and voices should

be heard in schools in order to build human rights culture. The telling of

stories becomes a certain kind of “re-description”—to use Rorty’s term—that helps people expand and sharpen their imaginations (Hung, 2012c). A single story might depict a very small bit of experience from the victim, survivor, or relative, yet this story in the lesh—even brief and seemingly trivial—can be related to learners’ real lives, conveying meaning to them in a profound way, and resulting in long-term, deep inluence on their future lives. Of course, oficial documents are important resources in human rights education, but what I intend to stress is that abstract objects make “thinner” sense for

learners than stories with personal characteristics and contextuality. Third, subjects and materials should go beyond verbally mediated works.

Sculptures, paintings, music, photos, novels, poetry, picture books, dramas, ilms, and so on deserve a prominent place in the curriculum. Artworks con-

cerning local historical features should be prioritized over those concerning

people or issues in other regions. For example, the stories of white terrorism in Taiwan’s history should be chosen over those on Nazi terrorism. As with the documents mentioned above, however, the foreign materials should be included. But even so, I want to stress that domestic should not be replaced by foreign materials if curriculum space is limited. Let me illustrate with

another example. Many people in Taiwan and around the world are very familiar with the Tienanmen Square Protests (or the June Fourth Protests) in China in 1989, but very rarely do people know about the April Sixth Pro-

tests—a series of protests and governmental oppressions in Taiwan in 1949.

These triggered a half-century of white terrorism and high-pressure control

of teacher education. The testimonies, autobiographies, and photographs of survivors, their relatives, and witnesses are barely mentioned at all levels of Taiwan’s curriculum. These sources should be made visible.

A R T I C L E S


Concluding remarks: APHRE crossing borders

So far, I have proposed the APHRE to approach a concept of curricular framework on a theoretical level. The practical effect of the APHRE will be

investigated in the next stage of the future empirical study. The main con-

tribution of the present exploration lies in the conceptual clariication and the achievement of the fundamental ideas. The development of APHRE aims

to improve human rights education by linking learners’ bodily, affective, and perceptual experience with human rights events and stories. This embodied approach to learning is likely to raise learners’ sensitivity to human rights issues. In contrast, the mainstream learning approach is prone to be intel-lectual, rational, and cognitive, thus reducing human rights education to acquisition of facts. Especially in Taiwan, rote learning and the mere memo-

rization of information usually drives pedagogy (Hung, 2010b). With this con-

cern in mind, I suggest highlighting the affective dimension in human rights pedagogy. Drawing on the thinking of Rorty, Merleau-Ponty, and Beardsley, APHRE values works of art, stories, and memories connected to personal experiences that engage learners in truly historical experience and yet keep them at a safe, poetic distance. The fundamental curricular framework of APHRE takes care of needed affective knowledge, neglected by mainstream intellectual views, at least partially because it is dificult to assess with pa-

per-pencil examinations. APHRE also provides a foundation for developing practical teaching plans and checklists for teachers to observe and to assess

both learners’ experiences and the effectiveness of teaching objects. As the creator of the APHRE framework, I sincerely hope it enables edu-

cational practitioners to teach human rights education by arousing learners’ sentiments, sensitivity, feelings, compassion, and sympathy for the suffering. I further hope that it inspires learners to engage in actions against human

rights violations and abuses. Although I stress education in local issues, cer-tainly the affective approach can break through borders, be they cultural, regional, national, or linguistic. I remember attending a conference in Am-

sterdam, in 2006. Despite the short stay, I visited the Anne Frank Museum, where I was viscerally struck by her family’s hiding place. The photos, the tex-

ture of the architecture and the walls, the feeling of my steps on the loor, the smell of the air, and the sound of distant bells—all these impressions struck every pore of my skin, telling the story of Anne and her family—and the other victims—so vividly. Just a half-day visit gives visitors unforgettable memories and plants a seed for the protection of human rights in their hearts.

As a inal demonstration of putting the APHRE into practice, I present, in part, a poem by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “I Am Explaining a Few Things”:



6 3

Treacherous

generals:

see my dead house,look at broken Spain:

from every house burning metal lowsinstead of lowers,from every socket of Spain

Spain emerges

and from every dead child a rile with eyes,and from every crime bullets are born

which will one day indthe bull’s eye of your hearts.And you’ll ask: why doesn’t his poetryspeak of dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

The blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood

In the streets!

These sounds and scenes, colors and smells vividly depict ruins and corps-

es that burden the reader’s feelings with the weight of human lives. For teach-

ers and students, reading such a poem has the potential of making visible how people suffer from war and how important it is to protect integral human

lives from the abuses of war. At the moment of reading, insight regarding human rights dawns through the affective body. There are ininite materials and resources for teachers to adapt in human rights classrooms. I propose

APHRE to emphasize that teaching human rights is not only about enriching

the mind and the intellect, but also about touching the soul and heart.

References

Bannan, J. F. (1967). The philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Beardsley, M. C. (1991). Aesthetic experience. In R. A. Smith, & A. Simpson (Eds.) Aesthetics and arts education (pp. 72-84). Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois. Hung, R. (2010a). Learning nature: How the understanding of nature enriches educa-tion and life? Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing LLC. Hung, R. (2010b). In search of affective citizenship: From the pragmatist-phenome-

nological perspective. Policy Futures in Education, 8 (5), 488-499.

A R T I C L E S


Hung, R. (2010c). A critical exploration of the post-metaphysical citizenship and its implications for civic education: From the perspective of Rorty. Contemporary Educa-tional Research Quarterly, 18 (2), 1-28. (In Chinese).Hung, R. (2012). A lifeworld critique of ‘nature’ in the Taiwanese curriculum: A per-spective derived from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Educational Philosophy and Theo-ry, 44 (10), pp. 1121-1132. Kwok, P. (2004). Examination-oriented knowledge and value transformation in East Asian cram schools. Asia Paciic Education Review 5 (1), 64-75. Lang, P. (1998). Towards an understanding of effective education in a European con-

text. In P. Lang, Y. Katz, & I. Menezes (Eds.) Affective education: a comparative view

(pp. 3-18), London: Cassell. Li, X. (2001). “Asian values” and the universality of human rights. In P. Hayden (ed.) The philosophy of human rights (pp. 397-408). St. Paul, MN.: Paragon House. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primary of perception. Evanston: Northwestern Uni-versity Press.

Osborne, H. (1970). The art of appreciation. New York: Oxford University Press.Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Rorty, R. (1993). Human rights, rationality, and sentimentality. In S. Shute, & S. Hurley (Eds.) On human rights: The Oxford amnesty lectures 1993. (pp. 111-134). New York: BasicBooks.Rorty, R. (1997). Justice as a larger loyalty, Ethical Perspectives 4 (2), pp. 139-152.Stolnitz, J. (1969). The aesthetic attitude. In J. Hospers (Ed.) Introductory readings in aesthetics (pp. 17-27). New York: Free Press. United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2013). Why learn about the holocaust in schools? Retrieve June 28, 2013, from UNESCO website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/resources/online-materials/single-view/news/why_learn_about_the_holocaust_in_schools/

Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany: The State University of New York.

Author:

Ruyu Hung, Ph.D., ProfessorNational Chiayi UniversityTeachers CollegeDepartment of Education85 WenlongMingshong, Chiayi60004Taiwanemail: [email protected]


DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0004 JoP 5 (1): 65 – 89

On the pregnance of bodily movement and geometrical objects: A post-constructivist account of the origin of mathematical knowledge

Wolff-Michael Roth

Abstract: Traditional (e.g., constructivist) accounts of knowledge ground its origin in the intentional construction on the part of the learner. Such accounts are blind to

the fact that learners, by the fact that they do not know the knowledge to be learned, cannot orient toward it as an object to be constructed. In this study, I provide a phe-

nomenological account of the naissance (birth) of knowledge, two words that both have their etymological origin in the same, homonymic Proto-Indo-European syllable ̂en-, ̂enә-, ̂nē-, ̂nō-. Accordingly, the things of the world and the bodily move-

ments they shape, following Merleau-Ponty (1964), are pregnant with new knowledge

that cannot foresee itself, and that no existing knowledge can anticipate. I draw on a study of learning in a second-grade mathematics classroom, where children (6–7 years) learned geometry by classifying and modeling 3-dimensional objects. The data clearly show that the children did not foresee, and therefore did not intentionally construct, the knowledge that emerged from the movements of their hands, arms, and bodies that comply with the forms of things. Implications are drawn for class-

room instruction.

Keywords: pregnance, naissance, knowledge, cognition, movement

A R T I C L E S


Critiquing the “little man that is in man,”—perception as knowledge of an object-inding again man inally face to face with the world itself, inding again the pre-intentional present, - is to ind again this vision of origins, that which sees itself in us. (Merleau- -Ponty, 1964, p. 258, original emphasis, underline added).

In many theoretical approaches—including constructivist, enactivist, and embodiment theories—relations are postulated between the body and knowled-

ge. In this introductory quotation, Merleau-Ponty notes the requirement to critique the (constructivist) idea of the homunculus in all of us who con-

structs the knowledge as relective subject, who applies schemas (concepts) to the world it perceives. What is required instead is an understanding of hu-

man knowledge as arising from the confrontation of persons with the world in

a pre-intentional present, pre-intentional because what we will have learned lies by deinition outside our previous knowledge and therefore cannot be in-

tended. Studies associating themselves with the constructivist, embodiment, or enactivist approaches emphasize sensorimotor activities. However, the emphasis on the “motor” aspects of human behavior misses precisely what

is most important about movement: kinesthesia. Thus, “to arrive at verita-

ble understandings of kinesthesia and the fundamental concepts generated

in and through movement, embodiers need to wean themselves away from sensory-motor talk” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2010, p. 221). Instead, what needs to be done is describing and working on the basis of sensory-kinetic experiences. Researchers need to think in terms of movement itself instead of

schemas and other transcendental (abstract and abstracted) forms that somehow need to be embodied (put back into a body) and enacted. Move-

ment, on the other hand, and the associate feeling of movement, kinesthesia, essentially implies the body and, on evolutionary grounds, is a condition of

life and cognition (Leont’ev, 1959). Thus, it makes little sense to talk about movement in the absence of bodies. Living consciousness, and therefore cog-

nition (knowing and learning) essentially derive from kinesthesia, “our tac-

tile-kinesthetic . . . consciously felt moving bodies” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2010, p. 227) rather than from purely motor aspects or motor aspects associated with sensations. Instead of a “motorology,” we need to pay attention to the “living and lived-through dynamics as it unfolds and of that living and lived-

through dynamics as a kinetic melody” (p. 230). Therefore, it is not so much the physical body that needs to be theorized to understand cognition—know-

ing, learning, education—but movement and kinesthesia. This would then allow us to distinguish (a) robots that learn bottom up from interacting with their physical and “social” environment, but do not have kinesthetic forms of experience from (b) animate beings that are and feel alive (Ingold, 2011).


On the pregnance of bodily movement and geometrical objects: A post-constructivist ...

6 7

Other recent work on cognition and learning, such as the work on the situated, embodied, and enacted nature of cognition places, also an empha-

sis on the body (e.g., Roth & Jornet, 2013). In the present study, no recourse is sought to embodiment, enaction, or schemas that are central features in recent discourses that seek to integrate cognition and animate bodies. I de-

velop instead a phenomenological account that is fundamentally grounded

in movement, the associated feeling thereof (kinesthesia), and the sensation that arises from tact and the contact of the moving body with the surround-

ing world at its sensory periphery. That is, although the proposed conceptu-

alization of learning is grounded in bodily movement, it distinguishes itself from other theories because it explains those aspects of knowing that the embodiment and enactivist approaches presuppose.

In the chosen approach to education and learning, experience in and with the world begins with and precedes intentional orientation towards ready-

made objects. The structure of this article follows this temporal relation of

and between experiences and events and the knowledge thereof. Thus, I be-

gin with the empirical description and then proceed to an unfolding, deepen-

ing analysis of what we can see and learn from the episode presented.

On the birth of knowledge

Introduction

The dominant educational ideology conceives of learning in terms of the

intentional construction of knowledge. Several studies showed, however, that the source of thinking, knowing, and learning is pre-relective, which gives an essentially passive dimension to learning (Husserl, 1973; Petitmengin, 2007). Empirical work, too, provides evidence that learners, precisely because they cannot see beforehand the knowledge that will have been learned at the end

of or following some task: That which will have been learned is unseen and

therefore unforeseen prior to and during the learning episode (Roth, 2012; Roth & Radford, 2011). In fact, the terms knowledge (as cognition) and nais-sance (birth) have the same origin. Both derive from the homonymic syllable ̂en-, ̂enә-, ̂nē-, ̂nō-. One of the two homonyms has the signiication of “to bear,” “to generate,” and makes it into Latin as nātu, and, from there, via the French, develops into the modern words naissance, naissant, née, nascence, and nascent. In another line of linguistic evolution, the same aspect of the root develops into the birth-related words genesis and generate. The second

part of the homonym has the signiication of “to know,” “to recognize.” In fact, both verbs—“to know” and “to recognize”—and the nouns and adjectives built

on these, directly derive from the root. The verb “to can” (and its equivalent verbs in numerous Germanic languages) as well as the adjective/noun “gnos-

A R T I C L E S


tic” (relating to knowledge) have the same origin. That is, there is an historical association of knowledge, on the one hand, and naissance (birth), on the oth-

er hand. Knowledge is birth: It comes forth from the pregnance of movement.

The difference between knowledge and naissance is undecidable. Knowledge

is born in movement, because knowledge, unlike what Piaget and all sort of other constructivists think, is not somehow abstracted from movement but is born in an excess of movement pregnant with the new. That is, “in the thinking of the body, the body forces thinking always farther, always too far .

. . This is why it makes no sense to talk about body and thinking apart from

each other” (Nancy, 2000, p. 34). In English, the term reconnaissance, a term born from the same Proto-Indo-European root, refers to an advance into a ter-rain to discover its nature prior to making the real advance: it is a movement

ahead of itself. In reconnaissance, as in Melissa’s movements described in the following empirical case, knowledge is born in a movement of transcendence, when aspects of movement come to stand out and against itself in awareness.

A deterritorialization of the movement takes place, from doing work to sym-

bolizing the work and its results. Just as in any birth, that which is born, here knowledge, cannot anticipate itself; coming among its own, knowledge will not have foreseen itself. In the following, a case study is provided of how the new and unforeseen arises in and from movement.

An Empirical Case

The empirical materials that follow were collected in the course of a spe-

cially designed unit on three-dimensional geometry for second-grade stu-

dents (e.g., Roth & Thom, 2009b). The study results show that through this curriculum the children came to work at developmental levels with respect

to three-dimensional geometrical objects beyond the levels that the relevant

theoretical models by van Hiele and Piaget attributed to that age (Roth & Thom, 2009a). The unit, which stretched over a three-week, 5-days-per-week, 70-minute-per-day period includes tasks in the course of which chil-dren explore and talk about three-dimensional objects in small-group and whole-class conigurations. For example, in the irst lesson, the children were asked to sort, one object at a time, mystery objects and, in so doing, to build a category system (Roth & Thom, 2009b). In the lesson from which the data presented here derive, the students were asked to gather in groups of three and to build plasticine models of a mystery object hidden in a shoebox and accessible only to tactual experience by entering a hand through a nar-row hole in one of the walls covered by a curtain. One of the cameras used in

the research project followed the group including Sylvia, Jane, and Melissa. The following description centers on Melissa.



6 9

The video shows that Melissa, after having her hand in the shoebox for 12 seconds (Figure 1), laughs, as if some idea had come to hear; and she then begins to work her mass of plasticine. The latter slowly takes what we recog-

nize to be cubiform shape. About 2:30 minutes later, Melissa says to Jane, “You know what is, I think it is a cube.” Jane exhibits a questioning facial expression and Sylvia, while having her hand inside the shoebox, responds while shaking her head: “It’s not a cube.” About 15 seconds later, Melissa turns towards Jane and, saying “I checked the sides like this,” moves her cubiform model exposing one face, holding the thumb and index inger of the left hand in a caliper coniguration to it, then continuing to rotate the cube to expose the next side, again holding the caliper coniguration to it (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Artistic rendering of the instant when Melissa initially enters her

right hand into the shoebox where there is a mystery object.

Figure 2: Melissa moves the cube to expose one face orthogonal to the irst, in each case holding the thumb and middle inger of the right hand in a cali-per coniguration.

Another 90 seconds later, Melissa holds up the plasticine model that she has continued to fashion towards the research assistant shooting the video

and says, “I think it is a cube.” The research assistant asks, “Why do you think it is a cube?” As before, Melissa brings the right hand into a cali-per coniguration holding it across one face of the cube (Figure 3a), then, turning the cube to expose a second face orthogonal to the irst one, she

A R T I C L E S


holds the same, unchanged caliper coniguration to it (Figure 3b). She turns the cube again, exposing a face orthogonal to the second one (Figure 3c), and inishes exposing the irst face while holding the caliper coniguration against it (Figure 3d).

Figure 3: “Because it is the same . . . because it is the same . . . shape.”

Following this second articulation of the object, having gone through an-

other episode of entering and presumably exploring the mystery object (we do not know what the movements actually are), Melissa goes through the same kind of movements again about 2 minutes later. She turns the cube

while holding the ixed caliper coniguration to the different sides of the cube. The research assistant asks, “What does it have to have to be a cube?” Melissa responds, while moving the cube and holding a caliper conigura-

tion to the different face pairs, “It has to have the same . . . sides” (Figure 4). Following exchanges with her peers, who assert that they do not think that it is a cube and describe to/instruct Melissa what and how to do feel that

the mystery object has the shape of a (lat) rectangular prism. For example, Sylvia repeatedly conigures her two hands in a praying position, which we can see as descriptions of/instructions for sensing the latness of the mys-

tery object. However, Melissa appears in a position not unlike the infant, whose “actual transfer of sense from the visual body of another to its own

tactile-kinesthetic body is unexplicated” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2010, p. 230). Our account therefore will have to provide an explication of the conditions under which Sylvia’s descriptions can make any sense to Melissa.

Figure 4: “It has to have the same . . . sides.” Melissa applies the caliper con-

iguration to a face and then turns the cube to apply the same coniguration a face orthogonal to the former.



7 1

The research assistant subsequently asks Melissa, “Why do you think it is the same?” Melissa’s hand moves through a variety of conigurations as if she were moving about the different faces of a cube and says, “I feel all around it and it is the same” (Figure 5).

Figure 5: “I feel all around it and it is the same.”

Eventually the teacher arrives at the table (9:50 minutes into the task). At that time, Melissa goes through the same movements again, turning the cube in and with her left hand to expose different faces, and holding a caliper coniguration across pairs of sides, saying that it has to be the same. The teacher, however, who has grouped the Sylvia’s and Jane’s models separate from that Melissa has shaped, suggests that the three need to come to agree on one solution to the task: There is only one mystery object and, therefore, there can be only one type of model. After repeatedly rearticulating her asser-

tion about the cubiform nature of the mystery object, Jane eventually takes Melissa’s model in her left hand, moves and touches it while having her right hand in the shoebox. Jane asserts that that the mystery object is not a cube, and, as Sylvia before, invites Melissa to do a comparison using her model.

Melissa takes Jane’s model in her left hand and enters her right hand into the shoebox (Figure 6a). We can see the left hand moving: rotating/touching the model with one of the large square faces pointing upward. Jane, with an open palm, touches the exposed face and suggests, “Feel this part” (Figure 6e). Jane suggests turning the model on the other side. We again observe movements, which hold and turn over the model, followed by a touching movement (Figure 6i). As a result of the next movement, the model comes to stand on one of its narrow faces (Figure 6j), followed be a series of move-

ments that rotate and feel the object (Figures 6j–n). Melissa then directs her gaze—which up to this point was oriented toward Jane’s model in front of her—into the air, puckers her lips, and begins to grin in an apparent expres-

sion of surprise; in continuing the movement, she returns the model to Jane and then immediately begins to reshape her cubical model, which eventually takes on a rectangular prismic form.

A R T I C L E S


Figure 6: Melissa moves the object and feels it while her right hand is in-

side the shoebox: a–e. On one of the lat sides, she feels and turns the ob-

ject four times. f–i. Turning it over, she feels the other lat side. j–n. Putting it on the narrow sides, she feels and turns Sylvia’s model six times.

From the instant when Melissa irst put her hand into the shoebox to the second idealization of the nature of the mystery object, exactly 15:00 minutes had passed, during which Melissa had reached a total of 8 times into the box for a total of 3:10 minutes. In this episode, a new form essentially arises twice—irst the “cube” then rectangular sold—from, and is wedded to, the movements of the left arm, hand, and ingers, which, presumably, parallel the movements of the right hand and ingers. The shape that emerges has its origin in proprioception, the kinaesthetic experience, and the associated sensory experience deriving from the meeting with the material object.

Recon/Naissance: From first movements to symbolic gestures

In the preceding case study, the rectangular prismic form emerged in, through, and indissociably from the movements of the hands, inside and outside the box. It is indissociable from the movements, because any de-

notation of the form by means of one or the other sign (e.g., word, model, symbolic gesture) is grounded in the preceding experience. The associated movements, when mobilized again outside the box to show what she has done (Figure 5) and why it is a cube (Figures 2–4), reproduce a kinaesthetic experience. But such movement does not require cogitation and awareness. Rather, just as we walk without having to think how and where to place our feet, the memory of the movement is sedimented in the movement, which can be reproduced at any one point in time and, thereby, lead to the same kinaesthetic experience: alone, in the absence of the object, to the sensa-

tions in the presence of the object. In fact, the naissance of form (i.e., idea,



7 3

knowledge) occurs twice in the episode: irst, when the cubical form emerges from the movements in the initial encounter and, second, when the rectan-

gular prism form emerges during the eighth comparative exploration of the mystery object together with Jane’s model. As the following analyses show, this is not embodied experience; it is the experience of a body in movement (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011). Everything we see in Melissa is movement, from the irst demonstration of how she knows that the mystery object is a cube to the exposition of how she had previously investigated the mystery object (Figures 2–5), to the repeated exploration of the mystery object in the right hand and the comparison objects in the left hand (Figure 6). Over 200 years ago, another phenomenological philosopher had already noted the role of the sense of effort to learning, a sense that is source of the subject itself because of the distinction between the subject of the free effort and the

term that immediately resists with its own inertia (Maine de Biran, 1859a). Here, I develop a phenomenological account of learning, which takes into account the empirically demonstrated fact that without bodily movement no

knowledge is observed (e.g., Hein & Held, 1963). Knowledge is born (née) in movement.

In classical epistemologies and associated constructivist research pro-

jects, such as those of Piaget, objects are given as such. That is, children and other learners, such as those we followed in this project, are assumed to be interacting instantaneously with objects as wholes (e.g., “cube” or “rec-

tangular prism”). However, in the episode, Melissa could not have interacted with the “mystery object” as one thing, but rather, as shown in her hand movements (Figure 5), there has been a sequence of movements turning (about) the object. At best, there are the experiences of a series of facets.

These experiences have integral and irreducible kinesthetic and sensory di-mensions. The video shows how Melissa, with a facial expression of con-

centrated and focused activity, apparently moves about in the box. Then, suddenly, she breaks into a smile. She withdraws her hand and, eventually, tells Jane with accompanying hand movements why the mystery object has to be a cube (Figure 2). The same is observable in the symbolic constitution

of the object through the hand movements in the presence of the cubiform

model. Finally, the new form emerges from unfolding movements that follow each other rather than being present and presented instantly. At the heart

of our coming to know an object, there is therefore a sequential set of move-

ments that come to be coordinated to make the object as such. What is com-

ing to be known exists in and arises from the series of movements. Knowing the object means knowing how a facet changes into another facet. Thus, for example, the rectangular prism—recognized as such at the moment marked by surprise—emerges from a sequence in which irst one of the large faces,

A R T I C L E S


then its opposite, then the sequence of narrow faces come to be in contact with the ingers. The speciic form arises from and is constituted by knowing what happens when the object is turned and followed along, turned and fol-lowed along, turned and followed along. That is, when Melissa explains why

the mystery object is a cube, she expresses it in a sequence of movements

rather than in the geometer’s abstract properties (e.g., “6 equal squared faces” or “an object with O

h, *432, or achiral octahedral symmetry”); but

without such experiences, none of the formal, abstract properties would make sense.

The foregoing actually is reminiscent of the celebrated but in education

little attended-to analysis of the experience of a cube (Merleau-Ponty, 1945), only recently conirmed as correct by neuroscientists (Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Gallese, 1997). Accordingly, we never experience a cube as such, that is, a cube as geometry theorizes it but rather experience it under a given horizon and in the form of a particular perspective (e.g., a hand holding a caliper coniguration to a side [Figures 2–5], or the ingers or palm press-

ing down on the exposed face of a rectangular prism [Figures 6e, f, i]).When Melissa irst puts her right hand in the shoebox, she does not and

cannot know what the mystery object is. In moving about, the hand eventu-

ally comes into contact with a mass different from and detached from the

shoebox. But this mass does not and cannot appear as a completed form—contradicting Piaget who asserted that we can perceive whole forms. To have

any hope of inding out what kind of object is in the box, Melissa’s hand needs to move over, about, and around it. There are two experiences that arise for her (hand): those deriving from the auto-affection of the animate body (i.e., kinesthesia) and the sensory ones deriving from the contact with the material world. Only the latter had been associated with knowledge, made thematic as epistemic movements. Whatever the form that eventually

emerges, it is the result of a series of movements, of movements connected by movements - which may be of the object turned about itself or of a sta-

tionary object with the hand moving about it. Before she senses the mystery

object for a irst time, Melissa’s hands cannot enact the symbolizing move-

ments that we subsequently see (Figures 2–5).1 The required sensation of

movement, kinesthesia, comes from the irst execution of the movement - i.e., reconnaissance - to be subsequently recognized in its reproduction, rather than having its origin in the brain. We may think of this as a series of innervations; and this series constitutes something like a kinetic melody

1 As relatively recent neurophysiological research has shown, recognition of movements and symbolic movements are possible only when there are neurons that mirror those

responsible for the movement (Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Gallese, & Fogassi, 1996).



7 5

(Sheets-Johnstone, 2009). Once triggered, the movement as a whole unfolds without requiring any further outside control.2 This is why the movement

can be executed again on the basis of what the organs “know” themselves, and even the knowledge that the present movement is the same as a prece-

ding one is based on the kinesthetic sense. Conscious will does not deter-

mine the movement of an organ: Consciousness intervenes to get the move-

ment going and recognizes subsequently, in the effect of the movement, whether the intended and the actual movements have been the same.

As a consequence of the movements, something whole comes to establish itself, an idea, which goes beyond (i.e., transcends) the actual kinesthetic and sense experience - like the experiences of the blind men in the well-known story from the Indian subcontinent who touch an elephant, even though in the case of each it is a different whole. The fact that Melissa does

not anticipate either the cubiform or the rectangular prismic experience can be seen from the facial expressions, which, in each case, express that some-

thing unforeseen has been arriving. The intentional orientation towards the

mystery object as an object of a speciic type- in Melissa’s case, a cube - cannot but exist after its initial constitution. It is the result of a series of

movements and the associated kinaesthetic and tactile experiences. And all the signs available on the videotape speak for a passive rather than an

active constitution: the irst as the second idea come to Melissa rather than

being the result of a construction - consistent with the way in which (novel) insights arise in problem solving (Petitmengin, 2006). In that movement of an idea that emerges to become itself - a movement we may term ideation

- a new quality to the subsequent movements related to the mystery object

comes about. The new can come about because “the intention in effect never

limits itself to vision of that which is seen by it” (Henry, 2000, p. 53). This leads to the fact that “that which is seen, to the contrary, is of such a na-

ture that one has to discern in it that which is really seen, given in itself, ‘in person,’ and that which is but ‘emptily aimed at [visé à vide]’” (Henry, 2000, p. 53). At the instant Melissa aims at the mystery object “knowing” that it is a cube, only one of its sides at a time is self-evidently given, “whereas the others are aimed at without really being given” (p. 53).

Recent work in anthropology has suggested the differentiation between

transitive and intransitive action (Ingold, 2011). In transitive action, there are starting points (intentions, goals) and endpoints (outcomes), like the bridgeheads that connect the two sides of a river. Intransitive action, how-

ever, is transversal to the irst, occurs in any case and despite intentions

2 This is also a reason for the observed gap between explicit, mental plans and situated actions (e.g., Suchman, 2007).

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- it corresponds to the transversal lines of light [lignes de fuites] (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). These lines of light are but another way of naming the deterritorialization of movement. Intransitive action, lines of light, or de-

territorialization is generative, but in the sense of proliferation and excess, where the new cannot ever be anticipated based on what is known before.

When Melissa moves her hand through a series of positions, symboli-cally indicating what she has done (Figure 5), the kinaesthetic experience is reproduced but the sensation of the mystery object is absent. On the other

hand, the symbolic movements in the presence of the cubiform model not only reproduces kinaesthetic experience but also the sensory experience that goes with the contact. There is therefore an abstraction in the sense

that the object no longer is present but the movement still underlies the

symbolic form produced in and through the gesture. That is, the hand move-

ment makes the object present again, perceptually to the eye, in its absence: it represents the object independent of the place in the shoebox where it was originally found and felt. We therefore do not need to speak of the enactment of a schema or the embodiment of the cube and rectangular prism because

the movement itself constitutes the original and originary memory of the as-

sociated forms.3 Arising out of the contact with the world, the movement has become independent of it, constituting its own memory, and, thus, exists abstracted from the situation. Melissa can show what she has done later in

a whole-class session, away from the particular object and in a different part of the classroom. She might even return home after school and go through

the same movements again to show to her parents what she has done on

that day in the mathematics classroom.

There is a problem when we theorize thinking and learning through the

processes Piaget and constructivists following him propose. Thinking learn-

ing through assimilation and accommodation actually destroys the internal

structure of the object for the experiencing subject (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). Thus, a cube never is perceived in terms of its geometrical qualities, six

equal square faces, eight vertices, twelve edges, 90 degree angles, and so on. Thus, “the cube with six equal faces is only the limit idea by means of which I express the carnal presence of the cube, which is there, under my eyes, in my hands, in its evidentiary presence” (p. 236–237). I never perceive the cube or its projections but always the concrete properties of the thing. More

importantly, when I hold the cube in my hand, turn and feel it, “I do not con-struct the idea of the geometrical that gives reason to the perspectives, but

3 If schemas existed, high-performance athletes could articulate, by the very nature of schemas as something transcendental, the difference between their movements and those of another athlete coming in second. But athletes or scientists studying them

cannot articulate in just what the difference exists.



7 7

the cube is there before me and discloses itself through them” (p. 237). I do not have to objectify and look at my experience from the outside to discover the cube behind, so to speak, the one-sided appearances in which it is given to me at the moment to reveal its real, objective form: “the new appearance already has entered in the composition with the lived movement and offered

itself as the appearance of a cube” (p. 237). Essential to Melissa’s passive constitution of the rectangular solid, to how she knows and knows about these objects, is knowing-what-happens-if the object is turned, or if I move around it. As we can see in the data (Figures 2–4), when the cube is turned, the same, unchanged caliper coniguration also describes the subsequent face that is at a 90° angle with the previous one. That is, in the unchanging caliper coniguration that goes together with the turning of the cube exists the anticipation that the length of the face that will come up will not be dif-

ferent. In her movements, Melissa never represents a cube but always what

is or will be experienced with or following the movement. We do not need to think of the cube in abstract and abstracted terms but simply in terms of

a continuity of movements - here of the left hand rotating the cube around

axes that are 90° angles with respect to each other - and the continuity of observation (sensation), here, the constancy of the extensional aspects of the exposed faces. The movement of turning the object or turning around it is associated with correlated kinaesthetic and sensory experiences, and these are what knowing the object bottoms out to.

Constructivists tend to suggest that learning arises from the interpreta-

tion of objects and events (in the transitive sense of the verb “to interpret”). But when we move, there is a sense that arises from the movement itself without interpretation (Roth, 2012); we might say as the intransitive part of movement. Intentional (transitive) movements are associated with particular kinesthetic sensations that allow the reproduction and recognition of that

movement. “In the effort, as we perceive and reproduce it at any instant, there is no excitation, no foreign stimulant, and yet the organ is put into play” (Maine de Biran, 1859a, p. 211). Instead, “the contraction effectu-

ated without any cause other than that proper force that feels or perceives

itself immediately in its exercise, and without that any sign can represent it in imagination or to a sense foreign to its own” (p. 211). Maine de Brian describes, thereby, the origin of symbolic movements (gestures): they arise from the irst experience of kinesthesis in (unintended) movements of the body often arising from work or exploration of the material world. Once it also has symbolic character, the (gestural) movement can be associated with other symbolic forms useful in the same setting (e.g., Roth & Lawless, 2002). When a hand adapts itself to a form by shaping itself around it—such as Melissa’s hand in the black box that follows the surface of the mystery

A R T I C L E S


object—there is a (mingled) double sensation arising from kinesthesis and sensation. Recognition arises from this, when sensation and kinesthesis of a subsequent exploration of the mystery object come to be recognized as having occurred before. There is an initially spontaneous movement, giving rise to kinesthesis and sensation, before there can be a capacity to make the movement present again symbolically, that is, in the absence of the object.

Initially, therefore, there cannot be for Melissa an object independent from the movements of her hand and ingers; in fact, the movements of the hand (ingers) are tied to the material (form), which provokes particular ki-netic forms as the ingers follow the surface and contours. That is, whatever form emerges - the irst instance of which Melissa announces in her smile followed by the verbal articulation of “I think it’s a cube” - is the result of the material form giving shape to the grasping hand and to its movement trajec-

tory. The trajectory constitutes a particular kinetic form, a kinetic melody, which will come to be a characteristic facet of the ideal geometrical form that

will be associated with the movement. The actually cognized form is the re-

sult of a sequence of movements, characterized by typical kinaesthetic and sensory experience. Even if the form comes to be denoted as a “cube” or, subsequently, as “rectangular prism,” having arisen from the movement, is essentially grounded in this movement. Movement means kinaesthetic expe-

rience, a sense of the effort, and sensation that comes from the contact with the world. This is why “the geometer . . . by ascending to the irst element of objective knowledge, does not yet seize this element, completely abstract as it is, other then in its sensible form” (Maine de Biran, 1859a, p. 102). As experimental research shows, it is through tact and in the contact it implies that we come to have a world rather than through vision alone (Held & Hein, 1963). Thus, touch truly is the geometrical sense (Maine de Biran, 1859b): any idea, any schema, and any ideal notion of geometry arises from, and therefore is grounded in and wedded to movement. There is no grounding

problem because geometry - as subjective knowledge or objective science—

does not exist without movement.4 What researchers refer to as ungrounded or abstract does not deserve inclusion in the category of knowledge. Only

tact “can give a basis to the originary synthetic observations of the geome-

ter (Maine de Biran, 1859b, p. 146). That is, even if a person were to en-

counter a synthetic description irst, it can make sense only when there are antecedent sensual (tactual) experiences; even if a teacher provides some descriptions and instructions for exploring some unknown object, the sense

4 In the cognitive sciences, the “grounding problem” refers to the disconnect between symbolic knowledge (metaphysical world, ideas, concepts) and knowing one’s way around the world (physical world, ground).



7 9

of these always follows the actual experience of moving about/around the object. This is why recent scholars suggest that we do not follow instructions

but ind the relevance of instructions (symbolic descriptions, plans) in situated action (e.g. Suchman, 2007).

In the episode, we twice observe the arrival of something new and unfore-

seen, announced as such by the learner herself. Her movements and the object encountered are pregnant in the sense that something new can come

forth. Pregnance means transcendence, so that in contact with the world, new things emerge in excess of what could have been anticipated: “We assist in this event by means of which something is a thing. . . . We assist, there-

fore, at the coming of the positive: this rather than another thing” (Merleau-

Ponty, 1964, p. 256). In empirical pregnance, our knowing-how concerning, and knowing-about, a thing is of a kind of “which we can have an idea of only through our carnal participation in its sense, only by espousing by our body its manner of ‘signifying’” (p. 258). As a consequence, “the emergence of the Gestalt that surges from the polymorphism situates us completely

outside the philosophy of the subject and the object” (p. 257), that is, com-

pletely outside constructivist epistemology. This requires us, therefore, to move towards a post-constructivist account of learning—such as the one

proposed here.

When Melissa begins moving her right hand over the mystery object she does not require a representation. In fact, in the same way that military pa-

trols move about a ield in an act of reconnaissance, Melissa is on a recon-

naissance mission where the mystery object gives itself because Melissa, not knowing it, cannot intentionally orient towards and construct it. She cannot have a representation of the object until after some future instant

when, in the absence of the object, she can make it present again. This is what she does in her explanations to Jane and the research assistant (Figures 2–5). If anything, such movements generate representation (Held

& Hein, 1963) - as we know especially from recent work on mirror neu-

rons (Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2006). These neurons, which are ac-

tive when the neuron associated with movement is active, are required for recognizing the same movement in the behaviour of another. Thus, move-

ments can be repeated without representation; and, when these move-

ments were associated with touching some object, they lead to the recog-

nition of form and all the affective experiences associated with their irst occurrence (Henry, 2000). This may be the reason why Sylvia’s gesture of the hands held as if praying do not resonate with Melissa. It is only after

kinesthetic and sensory experiences such as in Figures 6e, 6f, and 6i that the shape of the gesture and the shape of the mystery object come to be

sensed and make sense. This possibility gives rise to repetition of purely

A R T I C L E S


symbolic forms. Thus, in Figure 5, the movements - which initially had ergotic (work) and epistemic function and which are associated with kin-

aesthesia and sensations - now also have symbolic function. They do not

require representation but, following a trigger, unfold as a whole, like a ki-netic melody without separate, symbolic mental representation (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011). To develop anything such as knowledge that transcends the movements of the body, the latter have to exist in repeatable form and prior to any schemas that are said to underlie them. To have a schematic

representation of a movement, the movement has to exist as such and prior to the fact that it can be present again.

In the episode, we see something new appear from the movements of Melissa’s hand. This is possible because an experience is open towards its end and, therefore, multiplicious, even though it may initially appear unitary: there is always another way in which something can appear, always a new form of experience (Romano, 1998), always a new way of understanding something mathematically (Roth, 2013). It is this multi-plicious nature of things that constitutes pregnance. Multiplicity itself

is rhizomatic, exuberant, always already outside of any box that might be used in the attempt to contain it (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). In ab-

stract ideas, such as the one denoted by “the cube,” the multiplicity of experience - movements and their associated kinaesthesia and sensa-

tions - “is sacriiced to unity” (Maine de Biran, 1859b, p. 173). So the movements, such as the ones Melissa has effectuated in the shoebox, are fecund, giving rise to new ways of experiencing and, ultimately, to new ideations resulting in new forms of ideas. Merleau-Ponty (1964) charg-

es that psychologists forget this productivity and fecundity that comes

with and from pregnancy, a power of the bursting forth of the new. The notion of pregnancy as productivity not only of new orders but also of

new perceptions lies “completely outside of Piaget’s alternatives” (p. 259). There is Urstiftung [original and originary constitution], in the sense of Husserl, “rather than simple subsumption” (p. 259) to existing or accom-

modated schemas. From the perspective of the learner, there is transcend-

ence rather than immediate recognition of an a priori concept. This tran-

scendence is equivalent to the deterritorialization of the original, exploring movements into movements away from the objects associated with a sym-

bolic world. But there is more to such a deterritorialization, such an emer-gence of ideas from movements and ideations, including the inherent in-

tersubjective (objective) nature of knowing and its historically developing form.



8 1

Rethinking constructivist presuppositions

In this study, I propose a different approach to thinking the relation be-

tween animate bodies and knowledge and, therefore, education. This ap-

proach, articulated in the analyses of the preceding section, also allows us to rethink some common constructivist presuppositions: intersubjectivity

(objectivity), historicity, and the role of discrepant events (contradictions) as sources of learning.

Ideation Implies Intersubjectivity and History

Time is emergence and absenting, coming-going to presence. (Nancy, 2000, p. 104).

In and through the formation of an idea, time itself is born. This is so because the new is seen as different from the past—which Melissa specially

marked by recognition and surprise in the irst and second emergence of form (cube, rectangular solid). That is, there is a delay between the irst con-

tact of what comes to be recognized as one object and the related idea; there is a second temporal dimension in the emergence of the idea itself. Melissa

marks, in her facial expressions, the appearance of something (cube, rec-

tangular solid). There is a tension-laden transition, a deterritorialization, from whatever was to the newly emerging idea. The transition is not all of

a sudden but has a microstructure (Petitmengin, 2006; Roth, 2012). Thus, recognition and surprise, as we see marked in and by Melissa’s face, both require a past appearance to be present again together with the new and un-

foreseen. In the irst emergence of an idea, which arises from and describes something that has preceded it - movement - also emerges time. This is cap-

tured in the opening quotation, which predicates (speciies) time as emer-gence (of new) and absenting (of movement), as a coming-going to presence. Time arises when a past experience comes to presence when it actually has disappeared. That is, ideation implies temporality and, therefore, historicity. But because historicity requires the making present of a past presence - i.e., representation and repetition - ideation also implies intersubjectivity. That

is, even if one of these three children were to arrive at a radically new idea about geometry, it would, by its very nature, immediately be reproducible, by the same and other students, and, therefore, be intersubjective and his-

torical. This contradicts the constructivist notion of knowledge as something

singular and subjective.

Looking for the origin of the most primitive form of thought, Maine de Biran (1859a) inds it “identiied in its source with the sensation of an ac-

tion or a wanted effort” (p. 205). This wanted effort, together with the double

A R T I C L E S


sensation of resistance in the body attributed to the object, lies at the basis of all cognition. In the constructivist approach, however, scholars claim that the learning and developing child constructs for itself the world - through

assimilation to existing schemas preceded or not by accommodation of ex-

isting schemas. Apart from the fact that this theory overlooks that both

(interpretive) horizon and object change, it does not explain how the tools and subject of the construction come to be constructed in the irst place. Yet more recent analyses show that the tools and subjects themselves emerge as

the result of experience (Romano, 1997; Roth, 2013). In ideation, the birth of an idea as we observe in the episode, the object, subject, and tool all emerge, unpredictably, at one and the same instant. The object does not exist dis-

tinct and independent from the subject and its movement that is subject to the object. The object essentially is given in, as, and through movement. This is what allows the contention that “external perception and the percep-

tion of one’s own body vary together because they are two faces of the same act” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 237).

The framework I propose here allows us to rethink the origin of time, which Piaget suggested—thereby revising Kant’s notion of time as an a priori—to be the result of a construction. As shown in a celebrated analysis of the fun-

damental nature of everyday human consciousness, a different relation is at work between Being [Sein] and time (Heidegger, 1927/1977). How the two are connected to learning has not been explored beyond Piaget in the educa-

tional literature but is an integral consequence of an epistemology that gives

primacy to movement, where “any movement creates its own space, time, and force, and thus a particular felt qualitative dynamic” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2010, p. 226). In the emergence of an object (idea) into consciousness, there is an essential temporal aspect. The new object, as we see above, is not given once and for all. It arises from kinaesthetic and sensory movements. Then, all of a sudden, the realization of the form, a realization that itself marks a difference from what was there before, a cube, to what is there now, a rec-

tangular prism. Ideation is a movement shifted with respect to what the idea

is about, the original movement and what has spring from it. Ideation, the movement shifted with respect to itself, original/originary and symbolic, con-

stitutes time, as the new comes to stand against what was: what is currently present is the same and different from a past presence. This difference itself, this dehiscence, is constitutive of time. There is a decalage (but not of the Piagetian kind) between movement and idea or, as shown in the celebrated but little understood Sein und Zeit [Being and Time] (Heidegger, 1927/1977), between Being [Ger. Sein] and beings, things [Ger. Seiendes]. But for the past to be present requires making it present again: re-presenting it. With ideation, therefore, comes the historicity of the idea. But, if the past can be made pre-



8 3

sented again, represented, then it can be made present again not only by the same subject but also by other subjects. The standing out and being present

to consciousness implies its iterability in general and, therefore, community and intersubjectivity. That is, rather than having to be constructed and, in es-

sence, being unachievable - as this is assumed in the constructivist account - intersubjectivity is given with the very possibility of making something pre-

sent again. Intersubjectivity also means objectivity and historicity: Geometry, as science, can be performed over and over again, simultaneously and across time, without changing (e.g., Husserl, 1976). The same experiments and the same proofs lead to the same results whoever conducts them whenever.

Besides temporality, there is another problem in constructivist approaches to knowing: how can two or more individuals know the same world in the

same way. The problem arises because knowing is theorized in terms of indi-

vidual consciousness and constructions rather than in terms of an inherently

shared passibility of the incarnate body (lesh). In other words, in constructiv-

ist, enactivist, and embodiment approaches, intersubjectivity as a problem is an artifact of the theory. This is not the case in those approaches that are

based on the primacy of movement. It is precisely because we move, because we are bodies in movement, that we share forms of experience on biological grounds that make us the same: In and through our bodies, life affects itself, and, in so doing, shows itself to itself (Henry, 2000; Ingold, 2011).

In the initial encounter of a worldly object, the movement of turning, turn-

ing around, and sensing the object - the cube in the demonstration and the mystery object in the box - there is a irst experience not yet idea but no longer just raw nature. In the irst contact between hand and mystery object, the movement of ideation has begun, a movement that reaches from the invisible to the seen (e.g., Roth, 2012). It has been said that “this original layer above nature shows that learning [sic] is In der Welt Sein, and not at all that In der Welt Sein is learning [sic], in the American sense or in the cog-

nitive sense” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 262). Because the logical predicate (e.g., is In der Welt Sein) constitutes what we assert about the logical subject (e.g., learning), In der Welt Sein is what we can assert about learning rather

than the other way around. We cannot assert about In der Welt Sein that it is

learning. When Melissa learns—as marked in the surprise visible in her face and the subsequent actions that turn the cubiform model into a rectangular

prismic one—then we can assert about it that it is a form of In der Welt Sein, being-there in and with an animate body in movement. The fundamental re-

sult of this study therefore is this: Learning is indissociable from the animate body and, therefore, the knowing-how and knowing-that associated with it. In other words, a material body does not imply learning but learning implies an (animate) material body.

A R T I C L E S


Multiplicity, Bifurcations, Pregnance: On Contradictions and Differentiation

In the literature we can ind intimations that students are to be ex-

posed to “discrepant events” and “counter intuitive demonstrations” (Lee

& Byun, 2012). However, the present observations suggest that we cannot automatically assume that a situation is contradictory from the perspec-

tive of the learner. Through the eyes of Melissa, the cubical model was the appropriate one itting her (kinaesthetic, sensory) experience, and there was no evidence for her to assume otherwise. Whenever she tested the mystery object during the preceding seven times, it was consistent with the experience of the cube in the way she demonstrated having tested (Figure 5) and articulated (Figures 2–4) the features that made the mystery object resemble the model she had constructed, that is, a cubiform entity. If there was a contradiction, it existed between the models Jane and Syl-via had constructed and her own. But the evidence that she had collected

spoke against the contentions of the others. Initially, therefore, there is no contradiction between Melissa’s kinesthesia and sensations related to the mystery object and cube. It is only when she does the comparison (Figure

6) that all of a sudden the differentiation emerges from kinesthesis and sensation and, in this, a contradiction between an earlier claim and the one in the process of emerging.

Initially, the movements of the right hand/ingers lead to the production of the cubiform plasticine object. What has given itself to the right hand and ingers came to be associated to the igure known as cube. Initially, and in response to Sylvia’s and Jane’s assertions that the mystery object was not a cube, Melissa showed how she had moved around the object with the caliper coniguration (Figure 2), which, because it remained the same, was evidence for her that there was a cube. Later, when asked by the research assistant, Melissa twice does indeed provide both a gestural (symbolic) and a verbal description consistent with formal geometrical properties of

a cube. In fact, there appears to be a contradiction between the movements in the irst three articulations of the mystery object as a cube (Figures 2–4) and the gestural description of what Melissa says to have done (Figure 5). The subsequent movements of ingers and hands (Figure 6) give rise to a certain form of tactile experience, which is recognized to be the same as the one in the other hand, and which, in the instant of the recognition, is marked as surprise. Something unexpected has occurred: where one form of experience may have been the anticipated one, something else is born: the commonality in the kinesthesis and tactility of both hands. The move-

ments and sensations in the right hand and ingers emerge as correspond-

ing to the associated movements of the other side. Here, cognition of the



8 5

object in the right hand is tied to recognition: cognition is irremediably

associated with cognition, which also goes beyond what was previously known to be there.

In the present instance, a problem occurs only after a new kind of sense emerges. Melissa initially feels what she articulates to be a cube. Thus, she is modeling and holding the plasticine cube in her hands and follows

its outline with her hands, a contradiction between the initial kinesthesia and sensation and the one that subsequently is related to the movement

does not appear. The two kinesthesia and sensations, the one inside the box and the one outside the box, appear to be the same. The problematic of the coordination of senses in the early parts of learning already has been

pointed out. The actual transfer of sense, as pointed out above, remains topologically unexplained. Paraphrasing Sheets-Johnstone (2010) we might ask, how does Melissa know that the kinetic deformations she experiences are replicable by the kinetic deformations of the plasticine she can achieve?

A contradiction, however, does not initially arise for Melissa when Sylvia and Jane say that the mystery object is not a cube, when Sylvia uses sym-

bolic gestures to describe the mystery object, or when Sylvia and Jane show their own models (descriptions of the mystery object). The episode becomes intelligible when we think about the kinaesthetic and sensory holistic experi-ence that comes to be differentiated in ongoing and subsequent movements, sometimes requiring particular exchanges with others. Thus, initiated by the demonstration that Jane provided and the encouragement on the part of Sylvia, Melissa uses another model to conduct a direct comparison with the mystery object. It is in this unfolding that the differentiation occurs, which then allows distinguishing between cubical and rectangular prism forms. In

fact, the experience initially means likeness between the mystery object and the model at hand, which itself is different from the initially postulated and modelled cube.

Such differentiation is a general movement observed in development, such as in that pertaining to concept words. Thus, for example, students often use “heat” to denote not only the phenomenon that scientists associ-

ate with the word (i.e., energy) but also the ones referred to as temperature and entropy (Eng. hot à heat; Ger. warm à Wärme; Fr. chaud à chaleur). As those interested in food know, with increasing exposure the senses of smell and taste become increasingly differentiated and knowledgeable about dif-

ferences between foods to the point of being able to indicate, during blind tasting, to locate the food items (chocolate, wine, olive oil) to the general area of production, varietal, and soil type. Differentiation allows a reconigura-

tion of experience. Such a reconiguration of experience also is well known to those producing transcriptions of classroom videotapes. Even experienced

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transcribers ind that what they originally heard was said changes when someone else offers a different possible hearing, or sounds that are heard but not recognized as words all of a sudden turn into clearly recognizable

words.

Coda

In this study, I argue for a theoretical reorientation from the material body that enacts schemas and embodies knowledge to the movements of an

animate body endowed with kinesthesia. An empirical example shows that rather than simply being embodied and associated with abstract movement

schemas somehow enacted, our knowing-how and knowing-that emerge from movements of our animate bodies. In such an account, therefore, the distinction between knowing and knowing one’s way around the world (i.e., movement) has been erased. “Knowledge” is thought in terms of deterrito-

rialized movements (originary à symbolic) reterritorialized in movements of an “I can” that now anticipates certain changes in perception associated

with movement. It is only in this way that the body of sense (of words, lan-

guage) is the reverse side of the sense(s) of the body. It is not that abstract knowledge has to be grounded, that there is a “grounding problem,” but rather, anything that can lay the claim to being epistemic, arises in and from the movements of the body. Adjectives such as embodied and enacted are

artifacts of epistemologies that begin with and privilege the mind over the

body rather than constituting epistemologies that are sound on evolutionary

and cultural-historical grounds. If such adjectives and concepts as “enacted

schemas” and “embodied concepts” are to have any sense, the very point of emergence of these schemas and concepts needs to be demonstrated. On

biological grounds, (human) schemas and concepts are evolutionary late-

comers. Their origin has to be explained without drawing on a priori and in-

nate knowledge - a form of reasoning that uses the explanandum (what is to be explained) to explain the explanans (that which explains). The post-con-

structivist approach proposed here simultaneously is a pre-constructivist

epistemology. It establishes the possibility of any so-called embodied or en-

acted schema. Before a process of construction sets in, the tools of the con-

struction need to be explained. On philosophical and evolutionary grounds, which reconstruct the beginning of life in motility and sensation, self- move-

ment and self-affection are the origins of any higher conscious form of life.

Because movement and kinetic melodies constitutes their own memory, no (mental) schemas are necessary. In fact, the mental schemas are the result when movement comes to be deterritorialized rather than being instinctive

and, therefore, transcend themselves that any schema can emerge. What



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enactivist scholars refer to as “enactment” is in fact a reterritorialization in

the world of a previously deterritorialized movement. Willed acts come about when spontaneous movement come to unfold after some conscious mental

act consistently triggers their release and unfolding.

The geometrical object - such as the (ideal) cube - is a limit idea arising from continuous reinement of actual objects encountered in practical ex-

perience (movements), a reinement that can only in the unachievable limit become consistent with geometrical properties (Husserl, 1976). Practical ex-

periences, such as we see them in Melissa’s movement, are sedimented in and underlie any geometrical knowledge. In the present study, we observe a differentiation that is required before the reinements of the cube can oc-

cur: the differentiation of cubical from other, similar forms. This movement of differentiation itself comes to be sedimented to constitute the fundamen-

tal sense, the ultimate ground of any geometrical concept of three-dimen-

sional forms.

In the episode, we observe hand movements both over a model object (Fig-

ures 2–4) and on their own (Figure 5) used to explain why the mystery object should be a cube. There also is observable a conceptualization, a mode of transcendence or deterritorialization. Thus, in Figure 5, Melissa shows what she has done, repeats the movements that have earlier arisen while follow-

ing and sensing the mystery object. These movements, however, differ from the ones she previously used to “prove” why the mystery object has cubical

form: the caliper coniguration held to the model is the same for the different faces. We do not know whether Melissa’s hands have moved like this ever before. In any event, to be intentionally enacted, the body needs to know that these movements are part of its powers, part of an “I can.” That is, it has moved in this manner at least once before. The same movements can

be executed in the absence of the original form associated with them; and they can be recognized only when they have been cognized before. Thus, it is in this way that there is a transfer from the movements that the hand has

made following the mystery object to gesturing the movements as part of the

argument that it has cubicle form. It also lies at the origin of the recognition

that occurs when some other material of the same form is followed.

In conclusion, then, the original movements in the shoebox are the origi-nary and original signs of diverse elementary perceptions related to them; these movements cannot be separated from the primary qualities that come

from the resistance of the movement to itself (associated with kinesthesia) and the resistance deriving from the outside object. The movements, there-

fore, can actually serve to recall, bring back, the ideas associated with them; and this recall, in turn, is the fundamental experience and memory in which words and language are grounded. Whatever we know about the world al-

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ways and already is grounded in and arises from bodily movements, or, more exactly, the kinesthesia and sensations associated with them. When we say that something “makes sense” or “is meaningful,” we address pre-

cisely this association of sound-words with original movements, kinesthesia and sensations, in the social and material world.

References

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980). Mille plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie

[A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia]. Paris, France: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Heidegger, M. (1977). Sein und zeit [Being and time]. Tübingen, Germany: Max Nie-

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nomenology of the lesh].Paris, France: Éditions du Seuil.Husserl, E. (1973). Husserliana Band I: Cartesianische mediationen und pariser vor-träge [Husserliana vol. 1: Cartesian meditations and Paris lectures]. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.Husserl, E. (1976). Husserliana Band VI: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaf-ten und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologis-che Philosophie [Husserliana vol. 4. The crisis of the European sciences and tran-

scendental phenomenology. An introduction to phenomenological philosophy]. The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Lon-

don, UK: Routledge.Lee, G., & Byun, T. (2012). An explanation for the dificulty of leading conceptual change using a counterintuitive demonstration: The relationship between cognitive

conlict and responses. Research in Science Education, 42, 943–965.Leont’ev, A. N. (1959). Problemy razvitija psixhiki [Problems of mental development]. Moscow, USSR: Idastel’stvo Akademii Pedagogičeskix Nauk.Maine de Biran, P. (1859a). Œuvres inédites, tome 1 [Unpublished works vol. 1]. Paris, France: Dezobry and Magdeleine.Maine de Biran, P. (1859b). Œuvres inédites, tome 2 [Unpublished works vol. 2]. Paris, France: Dezobry and Magdeleine.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie de la perception [Phenomenology of per-ception] Paris, France: Gallimard.Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Le visible et l’invisible. Paris, France: Gallimard.Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Corpus [Corpus]. Paris, France: Métaillé.Petitmengin, C. (2006). L’énaction comme expérience vécue [Enaction as lived expe-

rience]. Intellectica, 43, 85–92.Petitmengin, C. (2007). Towards the source of thoughts: The gestural and trans-

modal dimensions of lived experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, 54–82.



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Rizzolatti, G., L. Fadiga, V. Gallese, & L. Fogassi. (1996). Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions. Cognitive Brain Research, 3, 131–141.Rizzolatti, G., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (1997). The space around us. Sci-ence, 277, 190-191.Rizzolatti, G., Fogassi, L., & Gallese, V. (2006). Mirrors in the mind. Scientiic Ameri-can, 295 (5), 54-61.Romano, C. (1998). L’événement et le monde [Event and world]. Paris, France: Press-

es Universitaires de France.

Roth, W.-M. (2012). Mathematical learning: The unseen and unforeseen. For the Learning of Mathematics, 32 (3), 15–21.Roth, W.-M. (2013). To event: Towards a post-constructivist approach to theorizing and researching curriculum as event*-in-the-making. Curriculum Inquiry, 43, 388–417. Roth, W.-M., & Jornet, A. G. (2013). Situated cognition. WIREs Cognitive Science, 4, 463–478. Roth, W.-M., & Lawless, D. (2002). Scientiic investigations, metaphorical gestures, and the emergence of abstract scientiic concepts. Learning and Instruction, 12, 285–304.Roth, W.-M., & Radford, L. (2011). A cultural-historical perspective on mathematics teaching and learning. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Roth, W.-M., & Thom, J. (2009a). Bodily experience and mathematical conceptions: From classical views to a phenomenological reconceptualization. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70, 175–189.Roth, W.-M., & Thom, J. (2009b). The emergence of 3d geometry from chil-dren’s (teacher-guided) classiication tasks. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 18, 45–99.Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2009). The corporeal turn: An interdisciplinary reader. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.

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Author:

Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne ProfessorUniversity of VictoriaApplied Cognitive ScienceMacLaurin Building A557Victoria, BCV8W 3N4Canadaemail: [email protected]


DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0005 JoP 5 (1): 90 – 114

Embodied civic education: The corporeality of a civil body politic

Donna Paoletti Phillips

Abstract: This study explores the lived experience of democratic civic education for middle school students. Grounded in the tradition of hermeneutic phenomenology

as guided by Heidegger (1962), Gadamer (1960/2003), Casey (1993), and Levinas (1961/2004), among others, the framework for conducting action-sensitive research, as described by van Manen (2003), guides this inquiry as I endeavor to uncover what it means for students to embody civic education. Twenty-nine students are taped

engaging in discussions, debates, simulations, and other civic education. Twelve students self-select to engage in relective writing and conversations about their ex-

periences.

The existential theme of lived body emerges from this inquiry. The importance of embodying one’s learning, as well as connecting physically and socially to one’s soci-ety are apparent. The students’ learning through their corporeal experience serves to create the civil body politic of the classroom and inform their behavior outside of the

classroom. Insights from this study may inform curriculum theorists and develop-

ers, policy-makers, and classroom teachers. Recommendations are made to trans-

form the social studies for students to capitalize on their bodily experiences within the classroom so that they may grow in their role as a citizen. Students may then

embody the ideals essential in civic education and democratic societies.

Key words: Civic Education, Social Studies, Curriculum, Pedagogy, High School, Phenomenology, Democracy, Corporeality, Embodiment

The corporeality of a civil body politic

We shall need to reawaken our experience of the world as it ap-

pears to us in so far as we are in the world through our body,



9 1

and in so far as we perceive the world with our body. (Merleau-

Ponty, 1945/2005 p. 239).

This study explores van Manen’s (2003) fourth existential, the lived body or corporeality of civic education. This prominent theme emerges as stu-

dents describe their experiences in civic education. The role of the body, and more importantly, the importance of the chance to “embody” one’s learning in civic education cannot be overemphasized. As Branson (2003) reminds us:

Some scholars claim that knowledge of the values and principles

of democracy may be the most signiicant component of educa-

tion for democratic citizenship, because when democratic norms are well understood they may have a kind of “grip on the mind”

that makes them operate at a deeply internalized if not uncon-

scious level (p. 5).

I take this notion one step further and suggest that civic education estab-

lishes not only a “grip on the mind” but also a grip on the body. When stu-

dents embody their learning in civic education, they become the democratic values about which they are learning. Thus students who embody their civic

education become actors for social justice, equality, and commitment in society.

The body historic

In the class, we started the year simulating the voyage of the Maylower and students drafted their own version of the Maylower Compact. As such, we created a social contract within the classroom. In the 1620 Maylower Compact we ind the reference to the “civil body politic:”

To covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body

Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation…(Maylower Compact, 1620, as posted on www.law.ou.edu/hist/maylow.htm)

In calling for the formation of a civil body politic, this irst example of democracy in the new world calls to mind the fact that people are physi-

cally together in a society. The analogy of the body to society has its roots

as far back as the ancient Greeks and Romans. Hale (2003), for example, notes, “Plato characterizes the highest good as a peaceful, friendly state, like

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a healthy body that does not require medical attention (p. 69). What parts of the body are analogous to the features of a civil society? When students de-

scribe their experiences in the classroom as emanating from their body, how does this help us understand their lived experience of civic education? What connections are they making to the larger civil society, to each other, to their own bodies as they bodily experience their learning? As Todes (2001) states:

Our body also plays a fundamental role in our impersonal sense

of social identiication with “fellow-citizens” whom we may never have met. …The irrepressible metaphor for society as the “body

politic” (as in Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, Hobbes, Hegel, Spen-

cer) bears some witness that the features of civil society may relect those of our individual body. (p. 3)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) further elucidate, “Our experiences with physical objects (especially our own bodies) provide the basis for an extraordina- rily wide variety of ontological metaphors. (p. 25) Thus with these thoughts and questions in mind that I return to the social studies classroom to un-

cover the lived language of students who have combined themselves in a civil

body politic for the purposes of civic education.

Every body in the classroom

Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it

keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2005, p. 235).

As Merleau-Ponty suggests, we are always bodily in the world. Students are present in our classrooms physically, as well as intellectually and emo-

tionally. Casey (1993) explains, “This body has everything to do with the transformation of a mere site into a dwelling place. Indeed, bodies build places”. (p. 116) Additionally, ontological metaphors such as the “mind is an entity” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) develop meaning through experiences.

As a teacher arranges her room at the beginning of the year for incom-

ing students, she imagines the bodies that will soon occupy the chairs and desks. How will the students move throughout the room? What will it mean to them to be seated physically next to someone else: a friend, an acquaint-ance, a stranger? The site of the classroom will transform into the place of learning and activity once the students’ bodies inhabit it.



9 3

The essence of lived body, however, goes beyond the acknowledgement of the physicality of their doing and being in civic education. Embodiment lends

a much deeper meaning to the students’ experiences. Csordas (1999) explains:

It is when we begin to think of the body as being-in-the-world

that we ind ourselves no longer interested in the body per se, but in embodiment as an existential condition. (p. 147)

Thus the uncovering of the students’ experiences of lived body serves as a conduit through which we can more fully examine how students are civicly in the world, and how civic education shapes their being-in-the-world. Ul-timately, the students’ corporeal experience informs their decisions as citi-zens. To study embodiment does not simply mean to attune to the students’ use of idiomatic phrases and references to the body. Rather, how does their use of such language help me understand the “twinge in the gut” they ex-

perience when recalling their lived experiences in civic education (Csordas, 1999, p. 149)? Furthermore, how does the body, its parts and actions serve as a metaphor for the students’ civic education and how does this meta-

phorical thinking shape their experiences and thus civic dispositions?

Off the top of the head

As Merleau-Ponty (1945/2005) asserts, we do not just take up space, we inhabit it. Sartre (1943/1995) claims, “I exist in my body” (p. 378). What is essential in civic education as related to middle school students’ lived body? One place to start is at the top of the body, the head. Some students claim that they experience their learning as if “off the tops of (their) heads,” or within their heads.

Layers of Civic Education

As related to civic engagement, the students, as part of a simulated con-

gressional hearing competition must be ready to answer follow-up ques-

tions from the judges after they deliver their prepared testimony. To do

this, the students spend a large portion of their time researching historical events, current issues and constitutional examples that relate to their topic. Bobby’s group, for example, testiies on the role of political parties, and as such, needs to be able to speak about the impact of political parties on our democratic government and opportunities provided for people to participate.

Bobby describes what it is like to be able to engage in such conversations, with each other and with the judges. He states:

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Well, I have all my stuff ready. I guess it is just there are these follow-up questions they (his group members) have to do and …they can come up with it within their heads like at the last

minute. (Bobby)

Bobby references the part of the body where thinking takes place, the head. What does it mean to answer off the top of one’s head? This idiomatic phrase conjures the image of knowledge piled up in layers ready to be peeled

off. The knowledge is ready and waiting for the right question. But the stu-

dent is not aware of it and can only access it when the right question is

asked. How does thinking “off the top of one’s head” contribute to the experi-ence of civic education?

Following the “Conduit Metaphor” of experience Michael Reddy (1979) explains that ideas are objects, linguistic expressions are containers, and communication is sending (Lakoff, 1980). In this vein Bobby conceptualizes his experience of follow-up questioning as idea as objects students create in their own heads, the container for their linguistic expressions, ready to be sent or conveyed to the judges.

Civic Education Looking Up

A further layer in the orientational metaphor is the notion of “up is posi-

tive.” Lakoff and Johnson (1980) give some examples if this in use such as “She’ll rise to the top” and “Things are looking up.” (p. 26) in Bobby’s own words, the students “came up with” answers. Lakoff and Johnson assert that the assigning of such metaphorical orientations is not arbitrary, but rather “They have a basis in physical and cultural experience.” That “up” is good, more, and forceful is no coincidence. When Bobby explains that ideas are made up in the head his experience of the follow-up questioning takes on a metaphorical meaning of adding force to his civic knowledge and learn-

ing. Applying this back to the conduit metaphor, Bobby and other students now have their civic knowledge (linguistics expressions) contained in their head which are communicated or “sent” to others. In this way the students

embody their civic education as they themselves are the conduits of civic

knowledge, imparting it upon their audience.When students look outside of their own knowledge base and research

historical and current events to apply to our constitutional principles and

then engage in conversation around this store of knowledge, they experience civic education. One of the questions to which Bobby and his group must

respond “off the top of their heads” is, “Do you think the Supreme Court should have the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional?” In

response, his teammate states:



9 5

I believe that the Supreme Court should have the power to say

that an act of the Congress is unconstitutional. Since the Con-

gress has the power to make laws, they have a good amount of power. But, since the Supreme Court has the power to tell whether or not this law is good, if the Congress makes a bad law then the Supreme Court should have the power to say that their

act is unconstitutional…

Being able to access this knowledge, off the top of one’s head, serves the purposes of civic education in that Bobby and his team are able to recognize

and name times when the government must intervene to protect human

rights. Outside of the classroom, when Bobby sees or hears about an abuse of human rights, perhaps he will be able to speak up (off the top of his head) to protect his and others’ rights. Speaking “off the top of one’s head” implies a lived meaning waiting to be accessed when faced with a situation that

calls forth such a bodily response. Furthermore, embodying the metaphor of “making up answers” gives Bobby and his classmates a disposition to have

conidence and force in their civic knowledge.

Free of Calculation

According to the Free Idiomatic Dictionary, “off the top of my head” means “from quick recollection, or as an approximation; without research or cal-culation” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/). This kind of thinking does not call for the effort, however, that Bobby has described he and his team have given their project, and yet it is still an instance “free of calculation.” Perhaps when one learns something at this depth, their new knowledge is experienced as if it did not require any effort to call it forth. Perhaps there is also a movement from the head to the heart, as moral claims of rightness are made in the body. A quick response comes from a sense of commitment

to what is “right” action.

In civic life, Bobby’s knowledge of political parties and his experience speaking off the top of his head about it will lead him to take “right” actions

and join a political party, vote, and engage in conversations with other citi-zens about the political topics he came across during his research. If citizens

can speak “off the top of their heads” on a topic, this indicates a physical connection and ownership of the civic knowledge and disposition and per-

haps they are more likely to maintain their civic engagement.

Are we freer to approximate knowledge in a democracy? Furthermore, how does the rest of his body respond when one is free to approximate knowledge

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and not expected to be fully accurate? Perhaps this is when learning takes place, in the space created “off the top of one’s head” where one is permit-ted to take risks and make mistakes. And yet, what is the responsibility for “right” thinking that one justiies when the quickness of the moment has passed?

Stuck in the Head

Jay’s experience of learning in civic education is a variation on the use of the head in learning. He remembers because it is “stuck” in his head. Jay explains how he learned during the Simulated Hearing preparation.

This type of learning was very good because I learned about my

topic researching and reading my speech so many times it got

stuck in my head. What got stuck in my head was the responsi-bilities of a good citizen. (Jay)

Drawing once again on the conduit metaphor, Jay, in contrast to Bobby, names the head as the place where the knowledge got “stuck.” For Bobby, the knowledge and memories rested there but came out when elicited. For

Jay, the knowledge is also in his head, but he portrays a more permanent, less luid arrangement. Is he able to access it the way Bobby describes? Jay, too, connects his doing, “researching and reading so many times,” with his learning. Because Jay does not experience his learning as if off the top of the head, but rather “stuck” in the head, perhaps his recollections are more tied to accuracy and calculation than those of Bobby. Is one type of learning

more valid than another? Does Jay feel the same sense of freedom, of ap-

proximation that Bobby may experience in being able to answer off the top of his head?

I turn to Jay’s performance in the simulated congressional hearing. As he states in our conversation, the responsibilities of good citizens are what “stuck in his head.” In their prepared testimony, he and his team assert:

In order to be a ‘good’ citizen, you should be informed by keep-

ing up with current events. Moreover, a citizen in a democracy should be an active participant in society. This includes voting, cleaning the environment, doing various community services. Lastly, a citizen has the right to attempt to change the law, but must obey the current law until it is actually changed. (Written testimony, unit 6)



9 7

Thus, for Jay, his experience of civic education seems to be a cementing of knowledge of good citizenship. From his experiences in the classroom, Jay now embodies good citizenship as someone who will “keep up with current

events,” participate in community services, and someday vote. In the follow-up questioning round of the simulated hearing, Jay demonstrates this civic-mindedness when he responds to the judge’s question by explaining how young people can get involved in government. Jay later relects:

They asked us a question on how a young person can get in-

volved with voting and I said you guys involved us here [refer-ring to the judges in the hearing]. Also I stayed up watching the news… and the Rock the Vote on MTV... That was a good ques-

tion. (Jay)

Casey (1993) names the body as the place wherein memories are stored. He states, “The things of memory remain with me, within me. They occupy interior (and doubtless also neurological) places…. I remain with them as

well by returning to them in diverse acts of remembering” (p. 129). This type of remembering may be what Jay experiences as he describes the knowledge that is now “stuck in his head,” knowledge of what it means to be a good citizen. His memories of the simulated hearing, his preparation for it and the conidence he felt answering the judges’ questions occupy interior places in his body, and he may remain with them when he is called to remember them. This “bearing in mind” or as Casey (1993) names it, “bearing in body” (p. 129) speaks to the lived body experience of civic education. When Jay turns 18 and can vote or when he is presented with an opportunity to partici-

pate in community service, his experiences with the simulated hearing that have “stuck in his head” perhaps may prompt him to act in a bodily way; to go to the voting polls, engage in a political discussion, or join a protest.

Living out the conduit metaphor, we ind once again, the students them-

selves embody their own civic education as they are delivering their mes-

sages which have been contained, or “stuck” in their heads as a product of their civic learning.

To the bottom of the feet

But the head is not the only place where memories and civic knowledge

may be stored in the body. Students also name their experience in civic edu-

cation, particularly during the follow-up questioning during the Simulated Congressional Hearing, as one of learning to “think on their feet.”

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We can’t use exactly current events like all your research you did because they might not ask those speciic questions so it was really hard because you had to think on your feet. (Kelly)

During the follow-up questions I found out that I was good at

thinking on my feet. When asked hard questions that I hadn’t rehearsed I was quick at coming up with an answer [and] giving an example. (Kate)

One part of the hearing that taught me something was the fol-

low-up questions. I learned how important it is to be able to

think on my feet. I will remember this in the future because it is

so important to be able to do this and I will need it many times

throughout my life. (Brandon)

In their participation in debates and the Simulated Hearing, students had to “think on their feet.” What does it mean to be able to do this? The stu-

dents seem to experience this in a few ways. Kelly’s experience relates to the idea of not knowing, but not knowing you know until challenged. Kelly ex-

periences this aspect of civic education as she forms answers to the judges’ questions. As she states, she prepared for the hearing by learning about current events, but she knew that the judges could ask her anything. One such question from the judges was:

This week the identity of Deep Throat, a very high-ranking ofi-

cial in the F.B.I., was revealed. Should he be prosecuted for vio-

lating conidentiality or does his freedom of speech protect him?

Kelly replies:

I agree he should be prosecuted because he was supposed to

remain conidential. Just like how in school if you try to publish something with freedom of the press, you can still get in trouble for violating the honor code or school rules. (Kelly)

Kelly actively connects a current event, about which she knows little and admits to having to think about on her feet, with her knowledge of her irst amendment rights and their limitations. Turning to Westheimer and Kahn’s (2004) theory of three types of citizenship, perhaps Kelly is more apt to participate in her society since she has been called to think on her feet. In

their model, the second type of citizen, those who participate, may be encou-



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raged based on her experience of civic education in the simulated hearing. I imagine someone jumping up at the sound of a question and once up, not returning to a seated stance. Kelly, in forming opinions and ideas about such current events, experiences civic education as a value engagement. Now that she has been afforded the opportunity to think on her feet about these and

other issues, might she act in society in a more thoughtful, conscious way?

Clarifying on Foot

Brandon recognizes the phenomenon of thinking on his feet as positively

stating he knows he “will need it many times throughout my life.” Kelly recog-

nizes the importance of being able to “think on her feet.” Kate found out she

was “good at thinking on her feet” when the judges ask her to clarify her

understanding of her rights.

Judge: What is the difference between natural rights and the rights given up in forming a social compact?

Kate: There is not much difference. You have to give up some liberties and property to make sure most of it is protected.

Judge: But isn’t property a natural right?

Kate: If you didn’t give up some of it, you would be at risk of los-

ing all of it.

Judge: Where does the risk come from?

As the judges press her, she is forced to think on her feet, beyond what she had explicitly prepared. This experience is signiicant in civic education because it is exactly the experience active citizens are faced with in society. As Jay and his team assert in their prepared testimony, good citizens stay informed on current events. Students who are able to think on their feet

might become citizens who think on their feet, in conversations with oth-

er citizens and in deciding to take action when they witness injustices. In

“thinking on their feet” students make new connections between ideas, and thus arrive at new understandings and dispositions, which they carry with them out into society. In this way, moving beyond the metaphor, students can come to embody their learning.

Off the tops of their heads and on their feet, before their fellow classmates in debates, and before judges in the simulated hearing, students are con-

A R T I C L E S


structing new understandings of what it means to live in a civil society from

their storehouse of information, experiences, and beliefs. They actively con-

struct knowledge through their bodily action.

Heidegger (1993b) ponders, “What is it that calls us, as it were, commands us to think? What is it that calls us into thinking?” (p. 383). Civic education allows students such Kate, attending to their experiences in the classroom, to be called into thinking outside of the classroom. Kate describes how her

experiences in civic education shape who she is outside of the classroom.

My learning experiences weren’t limited to that. For instance when we learned about how the environment affected people’s lives and where they lived, we also learned that [it] often played a role in determining people’s college choices and careers. After that we were given the opportunity to speculate about which colleges

and careers would suit us. … I learned more about life in world

studies than I had ever imagined. (Kate)

When her values are challenged by events and interactions outside of the classroom, she now has a lived experience from which to draw to ind the strength and body memory to think on her feet and act in a civilly responsive

way.

Stand and deliver

Casey (1993) claims “bodies build places.” It is for human bodies that buildings are constructed and these buildings are built for bodies to be

able to stand up. Students in civic education have their own sense of what

it means to stand up, in and out of the classroom. When asked to recall an experience in civic education, Jamilla shares:

When we had the simulation that we had to pay tax for the pa-

per, that really showed how you could stand up for your rights and how if you did try, it could be changed. And how some peo-

ple stood in with the government or the king and others just

protested and got their rights. (Jamilla)

Jamilla describes a time when students spontaneously decided to protest a fake tax the eighth grade teachers levied so they could experience the injus-

tice similar to what the colonists may have felt leading to the American Revolu-

tion. It was an unpremeditated move on the part of the students to protest by

physically leaving the classroom and “standing up” for their rights. Some stu-



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dents showed their discontent by forming and signing petitions. But Jamilla connects protecting her rights with physically standing up for them by joining

in the more active protest. Several of her classmates actually stood up and left

the classroom marching down the hall chanting against the “tax.” In contrast, those who did not want to protest, still “stood in,” remaining in the classroom. She explains how she connects her experience in “standing up” during the simulation with a real-life situation outside of the social studies class.

It’s kind of like when we did the simulation with the tax you kind of saw how you could stand up for your rights and things like

that so when in one of my [other] classes, it’s a student’s right that you can stand up and a teacher can’t say anything rude or offending about you. So I stood up for that and I thought that

kind of goes with the simulation because you learn how to stand

up for yourself and what to do in those cases. (Jamilla)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) explain that the orientational metaphor “up” re-

fers to having control so it is no surprise that Jamilla and others equate stand-

ing “up” for their rights as a form of empowerment. “A metaphor can serve as

a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 18) Thus Jamilla’s experience of empowerment through standing up is experienced through th lived metaphor.

A republic of many voices

Was it the physical act of standing up during the simulation that allowed Jamilla to stand up for herself in other cases in other classrooms? If so, this connection is not limited to classroom behavior. As she continues to

describe, Jamilla inds herself standing up for her rights at home as well.

At home my brother usually tries to get me in trouble… So

whenever he does play a prank on me I’ll use different proofs of evidence like things we had in the debate and make compelling

arguments and say like I have the right to stand up for myself.

(Jamilla)

Once again Jamilla is empowered through the lived metaphor that argu-

ment is war where all the elements of war as it relates to argumentation are

present. Speciically, Jamilla recounts experiencing the conlict and “mar-shalling her forces” or using different “proofs of evidence” in her interaction

with her brother. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 79) Jamilla takes a stand in

A R T I C L E S


her own family and consequently inds her voice. Ayers (2004) asserts that allowing students to ind their voice is essential to teaching toward freedom. He states:

The irst commitment a teacher teaching toward freedom makes is a pledge to take the side of the student… A second, closely linked commitment is to create a space where a republic of many

voices might come to life… (p. 69)

In this light, Jamilla has been afforded the opportunity through her ex-

perience in civic education to allow her voice to come to life, not only in the classroom, but also at home within her family community. It is through her voice that she has come to embody her civic education.

Ayers (2004) continues to describe the “republic of many voices”:The freedom teacher vows to build an environment where human

beings can face one another authentically and without masks, a place of invitation, fascination, interest, and promise. (p. 69)

This environment that Ayers (2004) describes is the classroom space es-

sential to civic education. Through the simulation, Jamilla is able to face her fellow classmates authentically, and as a result, inds her voice, which allows her to stand up for her rights and express her views. In this “republic of many voices” the students who occupy the physical space in the classroom ind their voices, thus support each other as they feel compelled to take a stand. Jamilla has a chance now to embody the third type of citizenship Westheimer and Kahne (2004) describe, which is the “Justice-oriented Citizen.”

Civic Education Stands

What does the physical act of standing do to transform students’ learning? As one of the etymological roots of “stand” is “place” or “position” (Barnhart, 1988, p. 1059), perhaps standing up for one’s rights gives students a new sense of their place or position in the classroom, families or in society. From their elevated position, do students feel a greater sense of power, of claim to a place in society or in the classroom? When they stand, does their physical action automatically transform their self-perception? And referring back to

Casey, how does the students’ act of standing up add to the transformation of the site of the classroom to a place? As place is an etymological root of

the word stand, perhaps students taking a stand means creating a place for themselves, a place in the classroom, a place in society.



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Jamilla’s descriptions bring me to an excerpt of a poem by D. H. Lawrence (1929):Stand Up!

Stand up for something different, and have a little fun

ighting for something worth ighting for before you’ve done.

Stand up for a new arrangement

for a chance of life all round, for freedom, and the fun of living bust in, and hold the ground! (no pagination)

When Jamilla experiences injustice at the hands of her teachers or other family members, she pictures “something different” and acts in pursuance of that end. In her retelling of these experiences, she was almost gleeful, able to share her triumph over those who would hold her down and take away

her rights. Her rights as a student in different classes, as well as her rights as a member of her family, are “worth ighting for” and therefore she stands up for them.

Stand up, sit down, ight, ight, ight! What else can teachers do as instruments of civic education to allow other

students to feel the same sense of urgency and eficacy that Jamilla experiences in standing up for her rights? As the last stanza of the poem implies, standing up for justice or a “new arrangement” is standing up for “a chance

of life all around.” Where would American society be if it were not for those who did stand up in the face of adversity? One only need to turn to the

1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights Movements for examples of those who stood up for their rights and who fought for “new arrangements” and a “chance of

life.”

What life does Jamilla envision as she stands up, sometimes to her own peril, for her rights in the face of adults who control her classroom experi-ences, grades and social opportunities? Jamilla sees these risks and still feels supported to take them by “standing up.”

One of the things that I learned from being in the system is that

you should never allow the teacher or any authority power push

you down. Like if they say you do something that is wrong, you need to stand up. I think students don’t realize authoritarian power until later. (Jamilla)

A R T I C L E S


Jamilla seems to be invoking the last line of Lawrence’s (1929) poem that students need to “bust in, and hold the ground!” Students do not always recognize the authoritarian power over them and therefore do not act at the

time. Only later do they realize that they should have “stood up” for their

rights, “for freedom, for fun all around.”

Chance of Life All Around

Looking back to her irst experience “standing up” for her rights we re-

member that Jamilla is afforded the chance to stand up physically during a simulation. How does the act of physically standing up affect the students’ understanding of what it means to stand up for their rights, for “jolly justice” for freedom? As Casey (1993) notes:

The mere fact that we stand up in buildings represents another

dimension of dwelling-as-residing. Although we sit and recline, we stand upon entering and leaving and sometimes during our

entire stay (stay and stand are etymological cousins). In a built place, we continually take a stand… (p. 117)

Jamilla’s opportunity to take a stand in class led to a deepening of her sense of dwelling-as-residing in the classroom. This may in turn forge

a stronger connection between herself and her classmates. Did she notice

who took a stand with her? What connections did she feel to those who stood with her? Casey (1993) goes on to state:

When human beings stand in rooms, they are especially sen-

sitive to their height, which echoes their own uprightness as beings. …Moreover, to be upright signiies self-assertion and ambitious reaching up and out…just as it connotes moral forth-

rightness… (p. 117)

Perhaps Jamilla and her fellow classmates experienced this sense of moral forthrightness and self-assertion. They certainly were asserting their

rights in their actions and in their words, and the physical act of standing gave form to their intentions. Jamilla and her classmates were morally and physically “reaching up and out.” Thus to have the opportunity to “stand

up” in the classroom may foster students’ embodiment of such civic educa-

tion ideals of self-assertion and moral forthrightness.



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Standing for oneself

Fletcher takes a stand in a different way. He relates a time when his

classmates did not believe he would follow through on his part of the group

process in preparing for the Simulated Congressional Hearing. He explains why he was motivated to do extra work for the beneit of his group.

I could take it [the prepared testimony], I could bring it home and bring a new one in and say ‘hey I made a few changes.’ I could do that but I was hoping I could do something sooner. Because

this is what I am standing for. I am “unit two” and this is what

I am supposed to do. It is what I need to do. … It is what I need

to know. I have to do it. I think I have to do it more for myself to

know that I have trust and stuff that everybody knows. (Fletcher)

Fletcher’s experience of standing in civic education has to do with naming a place or position for himself to be in relation to his group members. Refer-

ring back to the etymological root of “stand” we remember that it is a synonym

for position. Fletcher experiences a disparity between his “standing” in his group and what he knew he was capable of contributing. By doing the extra work, he hoped to improve his standing or position in his group. Fletcher seeks to become the whole of his unit, his team. He wants his teammates to see that despite his absence, he is as much a part of the group as they are. He is “taking a stand” in order to prove (or im-prove) his standing in the group.

Moving beyond the mere physical action of standing, I ind evidence of Fletcher embodying his civic education. He asserts, “I am unit two.” What does this mean for Fletcher? His testimony is about the principles of good

government described in the Declaration of Independence and their rele-

vance today. In it he asserts:

The irst and most important rule of good government is “All men are created equal, …Good government protects its people at all times and can be adjusted… Good government also has the ide-

as of Rule of law. Rule of law is when everyone in a society has

the same rights and laws to follow. (Written testimony, Unit 2)

For Fletcher to take a stand and embody the ideals of good government, he is adding to the democratic culture by helping uphold rule of law. His

“stand” is that the most important purpose of government is to protect natu-

ral rights and to promote equality. In standing for Unit Two in class, Flet- cher stands for these ideals outside of class.

A R T I C L E S


Furthermore, Fletcher, in “taking a stand” and embodying the goals of his group, seeks to enrich his Being. As a member of the class and his team he dwells with his classmates who depend on him for their success, not just in their performance in the Simulated hearing, or for a grade, but also, as Fletcher puts it, to share the “stuff everybody knows.” Fletcher experiences his citizenship in the classroom as something for which he has to ight to prove his worthiness. Outside of the classroom, perhaps he will approach his citizenship in the same way. Fletcher will remember what it was like to

“stand for” something and be able to re-embody the experience to “stand for” something important in his community.

A civil body politic at hand

The most salient aspect of the students’ civic education was their bodily experience of civic education as “hands-on.” Dewey (1916/2006) discusses the role of the hand in education as he states:

The lips and vocal organs, and the hands, have to be used to reproduce in speech and writing what has been stowed away.

The senses are then regarded as a kind of mysterious conduit

through which information is conducted from the external world into the mind; they are spoken of as gateways and avenues of knowledge. (p. 89)

The hands are “gateways and avenues” of knowledge. Dewey does not

posit that knowledge is acquired only through the eyes and ears, but rather through all the senses. The hands as well as the other senses bring the out-

side world into the mind. Conversely, Dewey (1897/2004) states:

The muscles of eye, hand, and vocal organs accordingly have to be trained to act as pipes for carrying knowledge back out of the

mind into external action. For it happens that using the muscles repeatedly in the same way ixes in them an automatic tendency to repeat. (p. 89)

In this way, the hand, eyes, and voice are used to transport knowledge from the mind into external action. This action is what creates habits in “an automatic tendency to repeat.” Civic educators are concerned with how

students form certain “habits of mind.” These habits include civic virtue, volunteerism, critical thinking, and other civic-minded actions necessary to maintain a democratic republic.



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Civic education handed over

Teaching is illed with mundane aspects involving the hand such as hand-writing, hand-outs, and hand-raising. Students, however, do not refer to these uses of the hand when they re-member their experiences in civic edu-

cation. Instead, they describe their learning as “hands-on.”D. Breault (2005), relecting on Dewey’s understanding of the necessity

for students to be actively engaged in their learning, states:

[There are] critical prerequisites for the kind of active learning

Dewey described throughout his work: thoughtful planning, sol-id understanding of the subject matter, a willingness to experi-ence ambiguity in the learning context, and a relationship of mutual trust between the teacher and the students. (p. 19)

It is this kind of hands-on experience that students in civic education have. For example, in describing their preparation for and participation in the Simulated Congressional Hearing, many students refer to a hands-on mode of learning.

This type of learning was totally different from the other types

because it was more hands-on. The students were allowed to be

more independent and the teacher trusted the students to work

without her constantly watching over us. (Joy)

I like this type of learning better. It is more hands on—basically, the teacher stepped out of the way a little and we were in rule. It

was a lot of fun. (Jamilla)

[In the] simulated congressional hearing itself I was able to put into my own words, and translate from others what it meant to me. I found it …to have been pretty hands-on. (Sam)

The type of learning involved in this process is the best kind. It is

hands-on. You have to ind the information yourself, instead of listening to a teacher’s lecture. It makes learning more fun, and deinitely more interesting. (Bernie)

Hands-on learning is learning of “the best kind.” It is a time when “the

teacher steps out of the way” and students are “allowed to be more independ-

ent and the teacher trusts the students.” These descriptions imply a trans-

A R T I C L E S


fer of power and ownership from the hands of the teacher to the hands

of the students. When students experience their learning as hands-on, they are “handed-over” this power and allowed to make decisions for them-

selves. Teachers “step aside” and invite students to have a hand in their

education. This evokes an image of a teacher physically stepping aside with

the sweep of their hands as they make way for the students to enter into

their own learning.

Heidegger (1993b) explains that when teachers allow for letting learn, their pedagogy “often produces the impression that we really learn nothing from

him, if by ‘learning’ we now automatically understand merely the procure-

ment of useful information” (p. 380). This speaks to the students’ percep-

tions of the teacher “not teaching” during the simulated hearing preparation

or during other hands-on activities. Dewey asks:

Why is it, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learn-

ing by passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice? (as cited in D. Breault, 2005, p. 18)

Indeed, as student after student relays their experience of civic education and relects upon the times when they are most active in their own learning, Dewey’s decades old question is even more relevant today than ever!

A Hand in teaching

Furthermore, as D. Breault (2005) interpreting Dewey explains, just as the students experience a sense of their teacher’s trust in them, so too, the students have to trust the teacher to enter into this hands-on arena. I pic-

ture the teacher extending a hand and helping the students cross a border or boundary, where students are not always permitted to go: the place of au-

thority or authorship in their education. The students are now the teachers.

They now have a hand in their own learning. As Jamilla and Kelly relect, this type of learning they re-member.

Kelly: Because when you actually ind your research you’re like oh, I found that out. When you teach us we kind of forget after a while.

Jamilla: It is hands-on like, you are…

Kelly: You are the teacher



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They connect the act of teaching themselves with re-membering because

they “had a hand” in inding the information. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) assert that a metaphorical concept must it

the experience. “It is by means of conceptualizing our experiences in this manner that we pick out the “important” aspects of an experience. And by picking out what is “important” in an experience, we can categorize the ex-

perience, understand it, and remember it.” (p. 83) Thus the students have chosen the hand and their experience in civic education as a metaphor for their civic learning. This is how they re-member their civic learning, through their hand.

A hand turned upward

I continue to ask what the choice of the term “hands-on” means for civic

education. What is the role of the hand in civic education? The last lines of the poem, A Hand, by Jane Hirshield (2001) may help to elucidate this con-

nection.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question. Unan-

swerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs. (http://www.poets.

org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19011)As these lines imply the hand is not the lesh and bone, nor is it the pro-

ducts which it helps to shape. Similarly, the essence of the hands-on experi-ence for students in civic education is not in the materials they actually use, nor the physical labor of using their hands. Rather, it is in the opening of possibilities this experience allows. Many students savor this opportunity. Other students feel anxious when the answers are not readily “at hand.”

Presence-at-hand

In discussion of the essence of being, Heidegger (1993a) explains:

Legein itself or noein—the simple apprehension of something

at hand in its pure being at hand…has the Temporal structure

of a pure “making present” of something. Beings, which show themselves in and for this making present and which are under-

stood as beings proper, are accordingly interpreted with regard to the present; that is to say they are conceived as presence (ousia). (p. 70)

As students work in hands-on ways in civic education, they are becom-

ing more present to their learning, to each other and to themselves. As stu-

A R T I C L E S


dents experience their classmates and their own presence in this authentic way, they are able to transform from a passive recipient of civic education to an active participant in civic education, and thus in society. Hands-on experiences, in making civic education more present to the students, roots the students in the present, while drawing upon the past. Thus rooted to-

gether and experiencing civic education in this hands-on presenting way, students come together in the presence of each other in their civil body

politic.

Readiness-to-hand

Another aspect of the hand Heidegger (1962) refers to is “readiness-to-hand” or zuhanden. By this, he means involvement. He relates this to one’s Being-in-the-world, stating:

Dasein, in its familiarity with signiicance, is the ontical condi-tion for the possibility of discovering entities which are encoun-

tered in a world with involvement (readiness-to-hand) as their kind of Being, and which can make themselves known as they are in themselves. (p. 120)

Students experience “readiness-to-hand,” or involvement in civic educa-

tion when they work in hands-on ways with each other. The opportuni-

ty for this involvement allows students the chance to assert their being to

one another and come more authentically into themselves. Indeed, just as students’ presence may be reafirmed by working together in this way, the chance to work in a hands-on way also affords students the opportunity

to reafirm their involvement. As future citizens, we want our students to experience this sense of commitment to one another and their community.

The question at hand

How does hands-on learning, with its “unanswerable” question, a hand turned upward, inluence the student? Are students more willing to dwell within the questions, not beholden to the “right” answers? The hand turned upward allows the free exchange of ideas and views; “humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.” So, too, does the classroom sound like humming bees as students are engaged in hands-on work. Questions shoot back and forth between students like bees. Bodies are in motion. Students are in and

out of their seats moving to talk to each other to reach their hands out for

more resources, to ask and answer each other’s questions.



1 1 1

I think about the physicality of citizenship itself. Societies come to be

through the physical organization and interaction of the people. Much like

in the classroom, people must work “hand-in-hand” with one another and with their government for democracy to work. They must “have a hand” in

politics for their voice to be heard and for democracy to be truly a “govern-

ment of the people.” “Swarms” of people protest, gather for rallies, meet in town halls and show up at polling places.

A hand in voting

What role does the hand play in how students acquire civic knowledge when they act in civic-minded ways? I now turn to more of the students’ text to see how they perceive the use of their hands in their education. When asked to describe a time when they experienced civic education some students shared “hands-on” activities in which they had participated. For

example, Kelly remembers a time when she voted.

When we got to vote, it was like really kind of refreshing be-

cause teachers usually choose who is going to be in charge and

when we got to vote, it was really in the hands of the students to decide who they really thought was going to be the best cap-

tain. (Kelly)

Kelly experiences this aspect of democracy as something that was “in the hands of the students.” What does putting decisions in the hands of the students do to shape their experience of civic education? Kelly states that it was refreshing to be “handed” this responsibility from the teacher. She feels

a level of comfort in making this decision along with her classmates, belie- ving that sometimes students make the best decisions about team partners, implying an attunement to the “civil body politic” that is the social studies

classroom. For students to feel that they may make sound judgments for the

beneit of the whole class also implies a connectedness between and among all the students. Will Kelly take this dispisition into her own hands to vote in national, state and local elections?

What does it mean to be a member of a civil body politic? The Maylower passengers combined to from a civil body politic for “better order and pre-

servation.” Because not all the passengers on the ship were familiar to each

other, they decided to come to an agreement with one another to organ-

ize their efforts and protect their rights. As such, they moved from being strangers to each other to fellow citizens combined for a common cause.

Students in the same way make up a civil body politic in that they are

A R T I C L E S


among friends and strangers in the classroom. John Locke (1620/2006) theorizes on this obligation as humans enter into a social contract with

one another.

And thus every man [sic], by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society… (sec. 97)

When students experience democracy in the classroom, through voting, protecting and defending theirs and each other’s rights, and taking on re-

sponsibilities, they move from being strangers to citizens of the classroom as they reinforce their coming together in a civil body politic.

Whole-Body Membership

This membership is whole-body and one inds connections back to early political philosophers’ notions of a civil body politic. Students experiencing civic education through their bodies comprise the civil body politic of the

classroom. As Hale (2003) reminds us, “Seneca says that as it is unnatural for the hands to destroy the feet, so the need for harmony, love, and mutual protection causes mankind [sic] to protect individuals” (p. 69). Furthermore, there is no society without the physical people. Restating Parker’s (2003) claim:

It is citizens who walk the paths to the public squares and, by walking them, create them. There, struggling to absorb as well as express, to listen as well as to be heard, they strive to com-

municate across their differences, recognizing them and joining them with deliberation. This is how publics come to be. (p. 11)

Publics and communities come to be by the physical joining of people

together. In civic education, students approximate the experiences of deli- berating for the common good, balancing their liberties and the obligations to the public, and problem-solving together. They are physical members of the group and, thus, their mere membership creates the civil body politic.

Reliable actors in the world

Looking forward, I ask how the students’ bodily experiences shape the type of citizen they might become. Casey (2000) states:



1 1 3

To be habitual is to have or hold one’s being-in-the-world in certain ways, i.e., those determined precisely by one’s settled dispositions to act in particular patterns. The presence of these

dispositions means that our habitual actions help to constitute

us as reliable actors in the world—to be counted on by others as

well as to count on ourselves. (p. 150)

Civic education has the potential to encourage certain habits in students.

As actors in a democracy, we need to be able to count on our fellow citizens to uphold the law, respect rights, speak out against injustice and participate in democratic processes. Students participating in civic education through

their whole bodies have a chance to form such habits, and having experienced civic education through their lived body, hold their being-in-the-world in a certain way becoming reliable actors in the world. Whatever shape their being-in-the-world takes, it is through their corporeal experience in civic education that they have been able to transform and will in turn trans-

form their own civil body politic.

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Branson, M. (2003). The importance of promoting civic education. An Address to the

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ena, CA. Retrieved September 2006 from http://www.civiced.orgBreault, D. (2005). Work in school. In D. Breault, & R. Breault, (Eds.). Experiencing Dewey: Insights for today’s classroom. (pp. 18-20). Indianapolis, Kappa Delta Pi, In-

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Casey, E. (2000). Remembering: A phenomenological study. Bloomington: Indiana

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Center for Civic Education. (1998). We the people: The citizen and the Constitution: Teacher’s guide, level II. Calabasas, CA.Csordas, T. (1999). Embodiment and cultural phenomenology. In G. Weiss & H. Haber, (Eds.), Perspectives on embodiment: The intersections of nature and culture. (pp. 143-162). New York: Routledge.Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, LIV (3), pp. 77-80. Re-

trieved November, 2004 from http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm.Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and education. Retrieved April 2006 from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Democracy_and_Education#The_Democratic_Conception_in_Education

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Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. New York: Harper & Row.Heidegger, M (1993a). Introduction to being and time. In D.F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writ-ings, (pp. 37-87) New York: HarperCollins. (Original work published 1927)Heidegger, M. (1993b). What calls for thinking? In D.F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings, (pp. 365-391) New York: HarperCollins. (Original work published 1954)Hirshield, J. (2001). A Hand. In Given sugar, given salt. HarperCollins. Retrieved

October 2005, from http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19011Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chi-

cago Press.

Lawrence, D.H. (1929) Stand up! Retrieved April 2006 from Online text copyright © 2003, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto.Locke, J. (1620) Two treatises on civil government. Retrieved July 2006 from http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/locke/loc-208.htmMaylower Compact. (1620) Retrieved August 2005 from www.law.ou.edu/hist/may-low.htmMerleau-Ponty, M. (2005). Phenomenology of perception (Routledge & Kegan Paul Trans.). New York: Routledge Classics. (Original work published 1945)Parker, W.C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Sartre, J.P. (1995) Being and nothingness. An essay on phenomenological ontology (H. Barnes, Trans.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1943)Schubert, W. (2005). Active learning as relective experience. In D. Breault, & R. Breault (Eds.). Experiencing Dewey: Insights for today’s classroom (pp. 12-16). Indi-anapolis, IN: Kappa Delta Pi , International Honor Society in Education.Todes, S. (2001). Body and world. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Van Manen, M. (2003). Researching lived experience: Human science for and action sensitive pedagogy. London, Ontario: Althouse Press.Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004, summer). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41 (2), 237-269.

Author:

Donna Paoletti Phillips, PhD.University of Maryland College ParkJames Hubert Blake High School300 Norwood RoadSilver Spring, MDemail: [email protected]

J O U R N A L O F P E D A G O G Y 1 / 2 0 1 4 1 1 5

DOI 10.2478/jped-2014-0006 JoP 5 (1): 115 – 132

Cultivating lived-body consciousness: Enhancing cognition and emotion through outdoor learning

Malcolm Thorburn, Aaron Marshall

Abstract: Through using school-based outdoor learning as the research context, the paper analyses the connections between bodily experiences and the embo-

died mind. Recent theorizing in outdoor learning, in relecting phenomenology and Deweyian inluences, has teased out how the relationships between the self, others and nature (environment) can be extended to include embodied experiences. This would, it is argued, add something extra to either the intrinsic pursuit of enjoying practical experiences or the instrumental quest for subject knowledge gains via co-

gnitive-informed analytical cycles of action and relection. While generally sympathe-

tic to this critique, we consider there is a cognitive and emotional need for embodied experiences to demonstrate that they can be suitably contemplative as well. Through drawing upon Tiberius (2008) naturalist-informed theorizing, the paper reviews the part bodily experiences in outdoor learning can play in cultivating stable values and in developing reasoning practices that provide insights into how personal responsi-

bility can be exercised in relation to how we live. Through referencing the Scottish policy context, the paper exempliies how learning outdoors can lourish on the basis of a joint body-mind focus; where pupils review their relations with others and na-

ture, as well as valuing times when they are absorbed in experiences which fully engage their personal interests, skills and capacities. To enhance the prospects of these learning gains occurring we provide a self-check set of questions for teachers

to review to as part of appraisal of learning and teaching outdoors.

Key words: learning outdoors; the body in education; phenomenology; personal values

A R T I C L E S


Introduction

The notion that learning outdoors might yield exciting and varied ed-

ucational dividends continues to energise educational thinkers. Three

recent papers - Quay, 2013; Doddington, 2013 and Nicol, 2012 - have drawn upon a mix of phenomenology and Deweyian inluences to support their theorising. Quay (2013) teases out how the relationship between the self, others and nature (environment), the typical trinity around which outdoor learning experiences are based, can be unhelpfully skewed to-

wards particular points of this triangular relationship. He argues that

our relationships with the world might be better cast as a simple phe-

nomenological whole. Ontologically this would provide pupils with bet-

ter opportunities to review their perspective on the world, and it would boost the prospects for enhancing aesthetic capacities as well as relec-

tive abilities. In a similar vein, Doddington (2013) through reference to Deweyian perspectives on the educational nature of embodied experience and Shusterman’s (2004) study of somaesthetics, reviews the ben-

eits of a irst person understanding of the body when learning takes place outdoors. Nicol (2012) ruminates on the relational possibilities of knowledge gained from nature-based outdoor learning experiences con-

tributing to personal and social actions that enhance sustainable living.

Nicol accesses different bodies of knowledge, among them phenomenology for exploring what it means to be fully immersed in nature. We consider that these philosophical enquiries are all interesting, as they prompt ini-tial enquiry into how more sure-footed pedagogical initiatives in outdoor

learning might take place. It creates a context as well where a more nu-

anced critique of aims and values can occur; one, for example, where du-

alisms are not presented as either/or positional dilemmas. Such dualisms

have often blighted the ield with programme arrangements either organ-

ising learning around the intrinsic (subjective) enjoyment and practical mastery beneits of participation in activities (e.g., canoeing, sailing, hill-walking, skiing) or by using practical contexts as the mere medium for ac-

cessing instrumentally-driven (objective) areas of knowledge (Nicol, 2012).However, we also believe that further fresh thinking is required; especially

in regard to identifying and clarifying the values which might best support

experiential learning approaches in the outdoors. This is necessary as the work of phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty does not contain (quite

properly) deinitions of normative standards by which we can reference pro-

gress, and similarly the contribution of Dewey is limited at times by his failure to clearly deine the criteria for personal growth (Thorburn & McAl-lister, 2013). In exploring how progress could happen, we draw upon the


Cultivating lived-body consciousness: Enhancing cognition and emotion through outdoor ...

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naturalist-informed theorizing of Tiberius (2008), and the part her thinking can play in considering how stable values can develop reasoning practices

that provide insights into, for example, how greater lived-body conscious-

ness can become evident through our experiences. Making advances in this way could, we contend, add a form of values-ballast to future theorizing on the merits of outdoor learning. In mapping out our position, we argue for a middle path, where the acute dualism problems of learning engage-

ment being either excessively subjective or objective are avoided, and where a mix of cognitive and emotional embodied experiences provide the basis for contemplation. In short, we concur with Searle’s (2002, p. 1) view that we need to ‘make our conception of ourselves fully consistent and coherent with the account of the world that we have acquired from the natural sciences’. Thus, our view of lived-body consciousness is one which appreciates that the physical and the mental should not be considered as distinct metaphysi-

cal domains. Furthermore, there is a need to recognise that subjective or irst person ontologies can feasibly connect and relate to an objective sci-ence of consciousness in ways that are uniied and comprehensible.

In assembling ideas in this way, it is realised in advance that our plans might upset the views of some experiential educators who are concerned by the notion of there being ‘set’ values and phenomenologists who might be uneasy that the desired ‘middle path’ continues to privilege certain values over others. Other philosophers or neuroscientists might consid-

er that it is very dificult to adequately explain subjective feelings and thoughts. However, in educational contexts, as failing to address such critical questions is likely to result in pedagogical stasis, there is as Nicol (2012) notes, a clear challenge for those who view outdoor learning as a key contributor to personal growth to outline philosophically how change

can happen. We intend to take up this challenge through critically re-

viewing how cultivating lived-body consciousness can be enhanced when

a shared set of values are nurtured in outdoor learning contexts. In assist-ing with this exercise, we are deining outdoor learning as a progressive series of learning opportunities which are: based around the normal school

day; take place in local environments; are free or low in cost and taught by pupils’ normal school teachers. This distinguishes it from a version of out-door education (learning) which is based around emphasising the beneits of undertaking outdoor activities with an associated focus on personal and

social development and environmental education while residing at outdoor

centres and where teaching is mostly conducted by unfamiliar in-situ in-

structors and teachers.

A R T I C L E S


The promise of phenomenology for outdoor learning: a critical introduction

Phenomenology explores the consciousness of intentional experiences from a irst-person point of view e.g., the meaning of events, embodied ac-

tions and the importance of sensations as they are experienced by the body. Through trying to fully explain realities, preconceived ideas can be eliminat-ed and replaced by a new non-subjectivist perspective which ‘has to do with the universal-personal, not the particular-personal’ (Martinkova & Parry, 2011, p. 194). This is not a straightforward task, as initial relections on ex-

periences can often be overly subjective. Nevertheless, if successful, a irst-person ontology which is informed by rich narrative description and relec-

tion can enable the links between experiences and knowledge to become increasingly sophisticated and helpful in forming general statements which

are true e.g., in making general statements on the impact of human agency on the natural world. As such, phenomenology can provide the methodologi-cal foundation for experiences (thoughts, perceptions, feelings) which help us to look better at the world we live in.

Merleau-Ponty (1968) explored in most detail how the experiences and motility of the body can play a key role in our perception of the world.

Merleau-Ponty contends that lived-body experiences should not be sepa-

rated from cognitive learning; rather the holistic nature of the ‘body-subject’ provides a way of conceiving relations between the body and the world, which avoids over privileging the role of abstraction and cognition (concepts and

rules) and under-representing the centrality of the body in human experi-ence. Appreciation of this point enables phenomenological description to be-

come more vivid than the “casual explanation which the scientist, historian or the sociologist may be able to provide” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. vii). Thus, rather than being bound by the dichotomies of reason/emotion and mind/

body, Merleau-Ponty articulated a concept of lived space, where the body-subject’s experience is referenced through movement and language. While there is some recognition of the socially constructed nature of experience, it is the inclusion of pre-relective knowledge (experiences) of the body that enable universal-personal meanings to develop. Consequently, knowledge is not something to be understood in a inert and detached way, but is founded upon integrated perceptual experiences which reveal ever more of the world as we live and experience it (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). This enables our relations with our self, others and nature to become more visible. Thus, as pupils walk in a forest area, sensory experiences and bodily awareness exist together within a perceptual ield, where at any one time parts of the experience e.g., the irmness of the forest track or colours in the forest are



1 1 9

temporarily more prominent than others sights, sounds and smells. In such instances, the continuous nature of comprehending our ever-changing per-ceptual ield is made more revealing and understandable through our lived-body awareness, as the “body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my ‘comprehension’” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 235).

For clariication, Merleau-Ponty and other philosophers of phenomenology when writing about ‘the body’ are essentially referring to the ‘lived body’ rather than the ‘physical body’. The earlier German language used in many phenomenological writings enabled linguistically the lived body

(Leib) to be separately described from the physical body (Korper); an option which is unavailable in the English language, where only one standard term (the body) exists. Consequently, it is important that justiicatory ac-

counts of the merits of outdoor learning, which are informed by phenom-

enology, avoid the pitfall of treating the human body as only a physical body that is investigated from the theoretical and experimental perspective of natural science, rather than conceiving of the body as a living body with its own inner point of view.

Pivotal to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception is that in mak-

ing sense of experiences, we come to make more discerning universal-per-sonal judgements of situations. For example, we can see how the shape of trees has been inluenced by prevailing wind patterns or as Merleau-Ponty (1962) notes, how through the shake of a branch from which a bird has just lown, we can understand more about the trees lexibility and elasticity. The capacity of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas to identify how experiences which might otherwise have remained at the pre-relective level (i.e., beneath the level of conscious cerebral awareness) can be brought to the relective level has been of interest to those working in environmental philosophy. Some ecolo-

gists have come to see the beneits of Merleua-Ponty’s ideas not just in terms of their potential for human gains but more widely in terms of the “mutual

well-being of all life forms” (Cataldi & Hamrick, 2007, p. 5). Nicol (2012) highlights this distinction as one which adopts a nature-centred view of the

world (ecocentrism or non-dualist perspective) relative to the more prevailing people-centred view of the world where the world exists primarily for human beneit (anthropocentricism or maintained dualist perspective). In teasing out issues around the detail of this distinction, Nicol (2012) concurs with Toad-

vine (2009) in arguing that the case for claiming that experiential learning can increase personal action with regard to how we live requires both a de-

gree of caution plus more reined philosophical analysis. We concur with this line of approach and consider that phenomenological informed ideas should

not be exclusively considered as part of a radical ecological alternative, but

A R T I C L E S


rather considered a worthwhile avenue for further theoretical and meth-

odological analysis about how we can understand better the various ways

young people can develop an enhanced sensitivity towards the qualities of

the natural world. Such an approach involves connecting with a wider ield of philosophy than is often the norm in many western countries. For exam-

ple, in the United Kingdom the dominant analytical philosophical tradition can lead to an excessive focus on induction into pre-selected activities to the detriment of thinking through the beneits of experiencing a wider range of activities (White, 2011).

The three papers introduced earlier, have sought in their various ways to explore how young peoples’ connections with nature-as-experience could be further enhanced. Quay (2013) combines a Heideggerian-informed phenom-

enological analysis alongside a more familiar Deweyian-informed means-

consequence set of transactions that are reviewed through cycles of analysis

and relection. Quay (2013) considers that these two compatible but distinct approaches are connected (theoretically at least) by a form of ontological passageway. Thus, Heidegger’s ideas that personal relections arising from everyday experiences can connect with problem-solving type learning ap-

proaches that are informed by the objective conditions of the world can be

used as the basis for pupils thinking about the sum of their experiences. These contrasting inluences could, if supported by suitably skilful peda-

gogical approaches enable, for example, relections generated from explor-ing green areas close to school grounds to be analysed as both a holistic

felt experience as well via cycles of problem solving. Such experiences can also avoid being unduly exclusive or excluding in nature. In essence, Quay (2013) advances two accounts of how existence could be experienced as you move back and forth along the ontological passageway: one aesthetic, wholesome and holistic in nature; the other more integrated, balanced and relational in terms of the analytical connections between self, others and environment.

Doddington (2013) considers that Dewey’s relevance to learning outdoors is aided by his focus on the transaction which takes place between the in-

dividual and the environment. Thus the continuous nature of open-ended

experience is strengthened when pupils possess initiative and are curious to reconstruct their experiences in order to grow further. As experiences pro-

liferate, Deweyian notions of continuity mean that pupils do not ind them-

selves “living in another world but in a different part or aspect of the same

world” (Dewey, 1938, p. 44), as their thoughts and feelings become part of a repertoire of lexible and suitably sensitised habits. Doddington (2013, p. 6), on balance, does not share Merleau-Ponty’s belief that action requires more of “an unthinking spontaneity”. Doddington (2013) follows instead the Dew-



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eyian and Shusterman view that relection plays a key role in developing mindfulness in lived-body consciousness. Speciically, she sees positive con-

nections between Shusterman’s (2004) strand of pragmatic somaesthetics and the capacity of pupils to cultivate interest and good habits as a result

of their lived-body experiences when learning outdoors. Doddington (2013) also highlights how those who are inclined to follow more phenomenological

informed methodologies would beneit, in the context of school education, of considering how analytical outcomes categories can be derived from holistic

outdoor learning experiences in order that the standard metrics for measu- ring curriculum effectiveness can be achieved.

Nicol (2012) emphasises the particular contribution outdoor learning can play in environmental and sustainable education. He articulates how this

could happen by teasing out a relational framework of epistemological di-

versity which is based around experiential, presentational, propositional and practical considerations providing the linkage necessary between the

personal and the environmental (universal). Nicol’s (2012) dualism views are different to Quay’s (2013) and Doddington (2013) position, in that he argues for a form of pluralist thinking where there is a more deinite role for abstract (objective) knowledge alongside personal experience, and where seeking dualist alternatives is not required. This approach is considered

necessary given the rapid depletion there is in the world’s inite resources. Thus, Nicol (2012, p. 4) sees the beneit of integrating the self with “a reality that is entirely independent of our thinking selves”; as possible, for exam-

ple, by blending objective scientiic data on climate change with our more personalised experiences of such matters. Nurturing such subjective and objective links could improve the interdisciplinary curriculum prospects for

outdoor learning provided (once again) that they are accompanied by suit-ably nuanced pedagogical practices. Nicol’s (2012) approach is ones which tries to avoid placing an unreasonable burden of expectation on the elemen-

tal possibilities of phenomenological methodologies. Such thinking relects Merleau-Ponty’s view that it is not necessary to distinguish or prioritise the particular ways in which cultural and natural worlds should be viewed. It

also connects with Searle’s (2002) view that we should view consciousness holistically and not unduly separate out, for example, the visual and the tactile from our streams of thought.

In summary, the three authors from their contrasting perspectives engage with a range of epistemological and ontological considerations that have

interesting implications for the ways in which teachers construct outdoor

learning experiences. However, the focus in these papers is rarely on the speciic values which might underpin pupils’ personal growth, even though Nicol (2012, p. 7) recognises that to “discriminate between ‘educative’ and

A R T I C L E S


‘miseducative’ experience one must turn to values or ethics for guidance”. This raises normative issues about the values we would expect pupils to de-

velop in relation to their outdoor learning experiences. The next part of the paper considers such matters and speciically the types of personal values which could support the development of pupils’ cognitive, emotional and contemplative development.

Enhancing cognition, emotion and contemplation: The contribution of Valerie Tiberius

We are attracted to the relective wisdom theorising of Valerie Tiberius; as she is one of the irst philosophers to consider at length some of the value-laden implications of trying to adopt a irst-person informed account of how to live well and wisely in ways which avoid the ontological limitations

of judgements being either excessively subjective or objective. Underpin-

ning Tiberius’s critique are the sceptical and empirical inluences of David Hume; as evident by her referencing that a self-directed account of living a life which you value should be based around there being coherence be-

tween relections and life satisfaction values, in ways which ‘can bear our re-

lective scrutiny’ (Tiberius, 2008, p. 12). Tiberius (2008) is concerned by the relatively modest reasoning powers many people have and the limitation this

places on them developing the relective skills necessary to evaluate how well their lives are faring. The notion of interest and relection being taken forward is one which Tiberius takes to include more than happiness or the

hedonic pursuit of pleasure, and is based instead on human lourishing. This includes a mix of subjective and objective inluences e.g., subjective concerns which recognise the importance of individual needs (such as being

absorbed in experiences which engage fully our skills and capacities) as well as objective societal inluences (such as positive psychological functioning and enjoying good relationships with others).

Tiberius (2008) position is that better quality rather than more frequent relection is needed to cultivate stable values. Thus, as values become in-

creasingly certain (as cognition and emotion develop in conjunction with

each other), it becomes possible to progressively endorse and justify reason-giving decisions as sympathy, understanding and empathy develop. Improv-

ing our relective wisdom can help therefore to ensure that thoughts are accurate and that unnecessary illusions or excessively severe self-assess-

ments are avoided. Such theorising progresses earlier subjective accounts of

wellbeing where there the person-subject was considered the inal authority on how their lives are doing (Sumner, 1996) and instrumental wellbeing ac-

counts that often argued for the achievement of pre-determined outcomes



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(Parit, 1984). The hyper-idealized nature of these list theory challenges of-ten limited motivational engagement due to their weakness in showing only

a supericial regard for personal relection and review. This weakness echoes Deweyian concerns that learning tasks should be kept as open-ended as

possible in order to foster pupils’ curiosity and continuous engagement with tasks. Overall, Tiberius’s (2008) normative intention is that her thinking can inform a regulative set of ideas that can help people to make coherent and

effective decisions about their lives, but which are not so idealized as to be off-putting. We consider that these aspirations match closely phenomeno-

logical notions of being able to improve the way we look at what we routinely

otherwise look through (Martinkova & Parry, 2011).Tiberius (2008) considers that four relective virtues are necessary in or-

der to cultivate stable values, namely: attentional lexibility; perspective; self-awareness and optimism. A person with attentional lexibility knows how to balance being lost in experiences with times when are more relective in nature. This is necessary in order to discover your passions in life and

to learn from experiences which capture your initial interest. A person with perspective knows when and how to review their future plans in a measured

way. As such, perspective can help refocus thoughts, feelings and actions in line with one’s overall values. A person with moderate self-awareness can make decisions which it in with their interests, abilities and values. This helps ensure that they can avoid unhelpful self-absorption and wasteful

over-analysis. A person with realistic optimism can live a life which is bet-

ter from one’s own point of view, but also one which appreciates the moral beneits of being good to others and of seeing the potential for goodness in human nature.

In trying to reconcile self-interest (subjective) vs. moral obligation (ob-

jective) concerns, the four virtues identiied by Tiberius (2008) are ones which include more than living by instinct but which nevertheless are not

constrained by over-thinking on being rationale. The virtues chosen adopt

a middle path where there is a need to balance achievable norms in areas

such as personal growth, relations with others and nature as well as recog-

nizing the importance of being absorbed in experiences which fully engage with our interests, skills and capacities. The notion of identifying virtues (but not being overly restricted by them) is Aristotelian in nature even though the virtues Tiberius discusses in her account of relective wisdom “are more like habits and problem-solving strategies than the robust character traits famil-

iar in Aristotelian virtue ethics” (Tiberius, 2008, p. 18). As James (2009, p. 97) highlights that “Heidegger seems to share Aristotle’s view that the good life can (for the most part at least) be cashed out in terms of the possession of certain character traits”, the possibility exists of making connections bet-

A R T I C L E S


ween the normative values of relective people and the key ontological im-

peratives of phenomenology. For example, there seem plausible connections between notions of perspective (as advanced by Tiberius) and concepts such as releasement which Heidegger uses as a way of expressing how people use their settled disposition to ind out and explain how things really are (James, 2009).

There also appear to be coherent links between Tiberius’ four virtues and Doddington’s (2013) recent paper; as evidenced by the strand of pragmat-ic somaesthetics outlined by Shusterman containing a focus on enhanc-

ing peoples’ passions in life (interest) and improving the ability to embrace problem-solving challenges (perspective). These same Tiberius-informed virtues also connect with Quay’s (2013) notion of an ontological passage-

way, which operates as a via media for linking aesthetic and holistic experi-ences (e.g., sensuous and joyous experiences) with those of a more problem solving transactional nature (e.g., reviewing issues associated with the en-

vironmental fragility of the world). Overall, making such outdoor learning connections helps to links with Tiberius (2008) belief that there is a close connection between individual and moral agency i.e., to live well from your point of view is likely to be positively associated with living well with regard

to others and with nature. However, inevitably, in the contested worlds of moral philosophy and education there are contrary viewpoints to recognise.

Kornblith (2012), for example, considers that the emphasis attached to solv-

ing problems by self-relection and reasoning is misguided and prone to a form of soft-psychological reasoning which is often overplayed in accounts

of happiness and of being positive. Kornblith (2012) argues for a more real-istic appraisal of what relection can offer; one which is based on cognitive and scientiic evidence, which he considers has a more impressive record in prediction and explanation. In light of these criticisms, the values Tiberius advances are not being taken forward in an unalloyed way; rather their fo-

cus on cognitive and emotional engagement is considered a viable starting

point in beginning to tease out possible positive connections between per-

sonal growth and outdoor learning. In the inal part of this paper, we outline how this might occur in the current Scottish policy content. However, prior to this we review how teachers’ can become more alert to the ways in which phenomenological informed outdoor learning interventions can cultivate

moral norms.



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Cultivating lived-body consciousness through outdoor learning

Consistent across the three papers - Quay, 2013; Doddington, 2013 and Nicol, 2012 - reviewed earlier is an encouragement for teachers to take measured pedagogical risks in their teaching; as necessarily, effective teaching in the open needs to “involve a degree of disturbance of the self”

(Bonnett, 2009, p. 28). However, beyond this, the theoretical focus in the three papers means that the pedagogical pragmatics of how learning might

take place is not advanced in any great detail. This, while understandable, is nevertheless a limitation, as phenomenology is primarily concerned with how the world can be looked at afresh and with how experiences can be sensed and felt, rather than analysing the content of experiences. In or-der to encourage teachers to engage with phenomenological approaches

in outdoor learning contexts that are consistent with progressive notions of education, we consider that Merleau-Pontyian notions of freedom could help inform how pupils learning opportunities are designed. For Merlau-

Ponty, freedom is not ininite; if it were then there would effectively nothing to choose and nothing coherent to relect upon. However, degrees of pupil freedom provide the context to begin relection and to describe and review our responses to new situations; such as walking in or close to school grounds. A Merleau-Pontian ontology therefore opens up ways and means

to focus on not only scientiic and socially common experiences of nature but also to include our lived-body relations and experiences with the natu-

ral world around us. Such a focus is also consistent with Searle’s (2002) holistic view of consciousness, and of how irst person ontologies are best considered as a single uniied feature rather than as a series of separate components.

Theorised in such ways, learning outdoors is most likely to yield mean-

ingful gains when teaching is not overly constrained by the narrow pursuit

of set objectives, but where pupils instead have some measure of active co-construction responsibility for the pace and direction of their learning

(Thorburn & Marshall, 2011). Thus, over time and with repeated learn-

ing opportunities, pupils would have the chance to critique their outdoor learning experiences in more relective ways. In essence, outdoor learning environments would provide the opportunity to discover oneself by leaving

oneself behind, and looking at and experiencing the world afresh (Toad-

vine, 2009). Thus, the key methodological point for the skilled teacher is to perceive ways in which pupils’ initial enjoyment of simply being outdoors could transfer and later assist them to make greater sense of their natu-

ral world, with their uncertainties and hunches informing the later estab-

A R T I C L E S


lishment of more rounded conceptual understandings (Barnacle, 2009). Learning practices can also be further shaped and developed through us-

ing strategic questions and facilitative discussion to help pupils critical-

ly engage with their experiences, recognize available choices and discern viable ways forward. Following James’ (2009) outlining of how natural en-

vironments are inherently capable of making a virtue of exercising atten-

tion, a further key pedagogical requirement of teachers is to utilise expe-

riential learning approaches that engage pupils in practicing relection. This will aid the development of the cognitive skills and affective qualities

required for pupils to construct coherent and diverse meanings, as well as helping them to make good decisions. Thus, when journeying by kayak on local rivers, this mixed approach can encourage pupils to engage with nature in different ways e.g., through exploring the sensitivity of habitats from a sustainable living perspective and by contrast using their attention

to view the movement of the water in aesthetic rather than purely func-

tional terms.

However, the pursuit of these ambitions can become unstuck if pupils make poor decisions which are out with a certain framework of stable val-

ues e.g., if pupils’ poor deliberations lead to decision-making that fails to show some form of measured sensitivity and awareness towards others and

the natural environment. This is quite possible to expect, as for many pu-

pils making sense of their body and their contemplative mind outdoors will

be a considerable point of departure from the norm of using their rational

minds indoors. Therefore, teachers need to recognise and to some extent wrestle with the normative values framework which underpins their role.

Under the phenomenology and Deweyian-based plans being scoped out in

this paper, teachers’ remit is one where they are guiding pupils towards dis-

covering a normative set of values. This can be achieved in some instances

by pupils leaving their past experiences behind and viewing new situations and experiences afresh and/or in a Deweyian sense by developing further their existing mental maps of the world through continued continuity and interaction. Both of these approaches are largely consistent with the broad

tenets of constructivist approaches to learning.

To help teachers in these testing circumstances, it is useful if teachers have an accurate predictive understanding of the choices their pupils are

most likely to make. For example, if teaching a group who are planning to venture onto an upland area of some scientiic interest, fragility issues might exist about modes of travel. If the choices available are between walking (slow, quite physically demanding but relatively environmentally sensi-tive) or making use of mechanical uplift facilities available, the wise teacher would predict how the group would respond if a choice of modes of travel



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were offered. If walking was judged by the teacher to be the most suitable

way to travel, it would be prudent if choices were shared with pupils in terms of walking routes available, pace of walking, tasks which can be dis-

cussed on the walk, rather than on whether walking at all was a good idea. This level of anticipation, and the avoidance of situations where choices are offered but subsequently withdrawn (i.e., if the wrong option is chosen), requires a high level of teacher expertise in being able to predict pupils decisions and to continue to direct and redirect pupils’ attention towards looking at and experiencing nature as well as developing positive relation-

ships with other pupils. Developing and reining pupils language skills is also needed if teachers are to fully appreciate how pupils engage are relect on their experiences, as language enables values description to provide in-

sights into pupils’ needs and longer terms goals. And, while Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 235) indicates this should be possible, as it is the body ‘which gives signiicance not only to the natural world, but also to cultural objects like words’, the pedagogical details of how experiences can connect with curricu-

lum ambitions and statements of standards inevitably requires considerable

pedagogical planning and forethought.

Outdoor learning in Scotland: A brief review of curriculum and pedagogical possibilities

In common with many other western countries, school-based educational aims in Scotland have seen a “rebirth of progressive education” (Priestley

& Biesta, 2013, p. 3). The new 3-18 years programme ‘Curriculum for Ex-

cellence’ (CfE) is a holistically-driven capacity-based model of education, which is deined by high levels of teacher autonomy and positive references to constructivist-inclined theories of learning. A further distinguishing fea-

ture of CfE is that all teachers have a responsibility for literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing, and for teaching, where possible, to make greater use of integrated and inter-disciplinary learning approaches. CfE through

outdoor learning guidelines are a new feature of the curriculum and provide

a rationale and support for increasing schools involvement in learning out-

doors (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2010). Priestley and Biesta (2013) however note that a certain tension is evident

in CfE. The tension is between convergent notions of a mastery curriculum

(where there is an emphasis on what pupils are expected to become i.e., achieving pre-determined set objectives) and a progressive process driven curriculum (where there is an emphasis on the richness of learning and how

it can be experienced). Humes (2013, p. 8) considers that such operational confusion is to be expected as there “is no extended philosophical justi-

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ication for the particular values” underpinning CfE. Furthermore, as the new style of streamlined policy guidance is characterized more by general

aspiration than by detailed elaboration on implementation speciics, it has often proved dificult for teachers to comprehend how pedagogical change can happen (Priestley, 2011). These general indings match Thorburn and Allison’s (2013) outdoor learning indings which revealed only occasional evidence of teachers grasping the chance to create new learning opportuni-

ties. More typically, there was evidence of CfE policy aspirations not being fully met with prospects for pupils learning outdoors occurring as much by

chance as anything else.

Despite the risk of policy innovation without pedagogical change, evalua- tions of teachers’ beliefs conirm that most teachers endorse the broad as-

pirations informing CfE (Humes, 2013). Furthermore, many teachers have reported on their increased pedagogical experimentation, along with their greater use of open and exploratory styles of learning and a shift away from more traditional, content-driven forms of teaching (Priestley, 2011). The evidence is therefore that most of the criticisms of CfE have taken “the

form of grass-roots concerns about readiness” (Humes, 2013, p. 13). In an outdoor learning context, teachers seeking to infuse their teaching with greater levels of integrated and interdisciplinary learning have been helped

by Beames and Ross (2010) scoping out some of the child-centred learning possibilities which can emanate for greater journeying outside of the class-

room. The authors examined pupils’ relections on their outdoor learning experiences in their local neighbourhood from both a social-cultural and geo-physical perspective. They found that real-life experiences enabled pu-

pils to describe and share their thoughts on the inluence of human agency in both urban and more natural environments. Scotland has strong pos-

sibilities for offering such experiences, for as Thorburn and Allison (2013) note over 90% of all Scottish schools are within one kilometre of a green

space. Despite this good news, Beames and Ross (2010) also reported that teachers found it dificult to connect pupil generated experiences with the requirements of the CfE curriculum. We have sympathy with teachers on this matter through noting that the full schedule of experiences and outcomes deined within CfE comes in a hefty 317 page tome (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2009). So how in Biesta’s (2013) terms, can the beautiful risk of education be kept alive and reductive teaching to the test

and ticking check boxes to indicate that achievement has taken place be avoided. We consider that an important component of progress, as far as learning outdoors is concerned, would be for teachers to relect on the key questions highlighted below.



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Table 1

A self-check review for teachers using phenomenological-informed methods when teaching outdoors

Questions arising from observing pupils learning experiences

• Did pupils engage with learning tasks and accept a degree of re-

sponsibility for their learning?

• Did pupils relish the opportunity to make choices and help co-

construct their learning?

• Did relections on personal experiences help pupils to review their future learning plans (perspective)?

• Did relections on personal experiences help pupils to make deci-sions which itted in with their interests and values (self-aware-

ness)?• Did lived-body experiences help pupils’ cultivate good habits e.g.,

in terms of how they engaged with the natural world?

• Did lived-body experiences help pupils’ cultivate good problem-solving strategies?

• Did lived-body experiences help pupils develop sensitivity towards the different qualities in the natural world?

• Did lived-body experiences help pupils to make a virtue of atten-

tion?

Questions arising from reviewing planning and pedagogical practices

• Were pupils enthused and interested in learning outdoors?• Were pupils given suficient freedom to experience and describe

their experiences?• How well did I plan learning activities and predict the choices pu-

pils made?

• Were there any unanticipated beneits or limitations apparent in the learning approaches adopted?

• How effective was I in developing pupils’ attention e.g., through use of strategic questions?

• Were pupils provided with opportunities to relect in holistic (sub-

jective-led) ways and well as by cycles of problem solving (objective, blended approach to learning)?

• How successful were opportunities for relection in enhancing pu-

pils’ conceptual understandings?• How interested were pupils in sharing their reports?

• Were there ways in which learning activities could be further ex-

tended?

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Relecting on these questions could enhance the prospect of various situational experiences (which might originate from something as simple as walking in the local neighbourhood) becoming part of shared learning transactions. This would involve pupils learning experiences moving from ambiguous beginnings to something which could be described and relected upon in more structured terms in due course.

Conclusion

Thorough the context of outdoor learning, this paper has analysed the potential for enhancing cognition and emotion through strengthening the

connections between the lived-body and the embodied mind. We argued that recent related research on phenomenology and Deweyian inluences on learning can help advance understanding of embodied experiences in the outdoors. However, these inluences by themselves are insuficient, as they provide too little guidance and insight on values and pedagogical en-

gagement. We consider that Tiberius (2008) naturalist-informed theorizing, can when extrapolated provide insights into how outdoor learning experi-ences can play a constructive part in cultivating well-rounded and relatively

stable values. These values when supported by phenomenological-informed

reasoning practices can provide insights into how personal responsibility

can be exercised in relation to how we live. Merleau-Ponty’s work is also helpful to review in this context as it distils how engagement with the natu-

ral world can stem from the most every day experiences and our sense of being-in-the-world. Teachers play a crucial role in connecting theory with

practice and of drawing pupils’ attention to the qualities of the natural world and to the stable values which can underpin and support their ex-

periences.

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Authors:

Malcolm Thorburn, Dr. University of EdinburghCollege of Humanities and Social SciencesMoray House School of EducationSt Leonard’s LandHolyrood RoadEdinburgh EH8 8AQScotlandemail: [email protected]

Aaron Marshall, Ph.D. CandidateUniversity of EdinburghCollege of Humanities and Social SciencesMoray House School of EducationSt Leonard’s LandHolyrood RoadEdinburgh EH8 8AQScotlandemail: [email protected]

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