Embodying Teaching: A Body Pedagogic Study of a Teacher\u2019s Movement Rhythm in the \u2018Sloyd\u2019 Classroom

Joacim Andersson,Jonas Risberg

doi:10.1007/s10780-018-9321-x

Abstract

The article draws on body pedagogics and considers that teaching and learning experiences and outcomes are directly related to the different characteristics of movement behaviour. In this article movement behaviour specifically centres on a sloyd (handicraft education) teacher’s walk through the classroom. The analysis illuminate the specific teaching use of the body as a spatial, temporal and situational movement rhythm in the classroom and how teachers and pupils tune into educational discourses by means of different body techniques. A wireless GoPro camera was attached to the teacher’s chest in order to gain detailed view of pupil–teacher–body–material–tool encounters and a specific visual perspective of the sloyd teacher’s walk. During a 2.5 years fieldwork, 25 wood–metal sloyd lessons were observed and recorded (circa 50 h of video). The study is informed by Dewey’s embodied theory of learning and focus the alternation between active and passive phases in the stream of experience. From such Deweyan perspective the rhythm of an activity for organising experience, is fundamental to the creation of intelligent moving habits. The results show the body pedagogic experiences, outcomes and means by highlighting the teacher’s (a) spatial path by describing mutual relationships between the material arrangement of the classroom, the teacher’s bodily movements and the pupils’ participation in the lesson, (b) temporal pace by his ‘flights and perchings’ through the lessons and how he moves from pupil to pupil and assignment to assignment, (c) specific pacts by describing body techniques and situated teacher–pupil encounters that terminate in an agreement about how to proceed.

Highlights

This article contributes to educational knowledge about the environment of embodied action (e.g., Shilling 2017) to the growing field of body pedagogics
The article draws on body pedagogics and considers that teaching and learning experiences and outcomes are directly related to the different characteristics of movement behaviour
The results show the body pedagogic experiences, outcomes and means by highlighting the teacher’s (a) spatial path by describing mutual relationships between the material arrangement of the classroom, the teacher’s bodily movements and the pupils’ participation in the lesson, (b) temporal pace by his ‘flights and perchings’ through the lessons and how he moves from pupil to pupil and assignment to assignment, (c) specific pacts by describing body techniques and situated teacher–pupil encounters that terminate in an agreement about how to proceed

Summary

Introduction

This article contributes to educational knowledge about the environment of embodied action (e.g., Shilling 2017) to the growing field of body pedagogics. Video recordings of a teacher’s movement ( walking, stopping, starting, turning and so on) in the classroom, collected during a five term long fieldwork of wood and metal craft lessons (part of the Swedish school subject ‘sloyd’), have been examined and analysed. Important to the body pedagogical framework of this study is that the sloyd teacher’s walk is considered as a certain teaching habit and a purposeful moving through a specific terrain This specific teaching use of the body is analysed as a spatial, temporal and situational movement rhythm in the ‘sloyd’ classroom; a rhythm that facilitates synchronicities between ‘the other’ and the ‘the self’ that are of crucial importance in sloyd education. The last decade of research on body pedagogics is relevant to our general understanding of education and pedagogy This growing analysis tradition suggests that as embodied beings intentionally situated in specific environments, we are capable of both securing and transforming existing habits and cultural customs (Shilling 2017). In much the same way as urban life can be analysed through complex polyrhythmic patterns, the learning environment in classrooms can be analysed through the spatial and temporal pattern of how teachers and pupils tune into educational discourses by means of different body techniques

Background

Method

Findings

Discussion