On the Education About/of Radical Embodied Cognition.

John Van Der Kamp,Rob Withagen,Dominic Orth

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02378

Abstract

In mainstream or strong university education, the teacher selects and transmits knowledge and skills that students are to acquire and reproduce. Many researchers of radical embodied cognitive science still adhere to this way of teaching, even though this prescriptive pedagogy deeply contrasts with the theoretical underpinnings of their science. In this paper, we search for alternative ways of teaching that are more aligned with the central non-prescriptive and non-representational tenets of radical embodied cognitive science. To this end, we discuss recent views on education by Tim Ingold and Gert Biesta, which are based on Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism and Gibsons’ ecological approach. The paper starts by introducing radical embodied cognitive science, particularly as it relates to motor skill learning, one of our prime interests in research and teaching. Next, we provide a synopsis and critique of the still dominant prescriptive and explicating pedagogy of strong education. Following Ingold and Biesta, we search for a weak alternative through a careful consideration of the education of attention and the participating teacher. To illustrate our arguments, we use examples of the first author’s teaching about/of motor skill learning. The paper is concluded by briefly considering the implications of weak education for a radical embodied science of motor skill learning.

Highlights

This paper addresses a contradictory practice among researchers of radical embodied cognition; in our teaching about radical embodied cognition, many of us tend to rely on the prescriptive and explicating pedagogy that squarely belongs to traditional cognitive science
Do we truly practice what we preach? It appears to us that, ironically, in teaching about radical embodied cognitive science, we often rely on the prescriptive pedagogy that we strive to avoid in our research in motor skill learning
The gift of teaching is not something that is, but something that makes a difference9 (Biesta, 2013, p. 85). It is a shared experience, perhaps in the form of making a critical or supportive remark, or posing a question, exchanging ideas, by offering guidance or inspiration, or by setting an example. It is distinctive of weak education, that the teacher cannot plan this gift, because planning it would annihilate the uncertainty that is necessary for it to be received as a gift

Summary

INTRODUCTION

This paper addresses a contradictory practice among researchers of radical embodied cognition; in our teaching about radical embodied cognition, many of us tend to rely on the prescriptive and explicating pedagogy that squarely belongs to traditional cognitive science. It stands to reason that within traditional cognitive science teaching (motor), skills involve introducing the learner to the most appropriate set of rules This has resulted in a pedagogy that is largely prescriptive (e.g., Brass et al, 2017). These ideas strongly resonate in current radical embodied cognitive science, especially within the ecological approach to (motor) skill learning (e.g., Thelen and Smith, 1994; Chemero, 2009; Newell and Ranganathan, 2010; Davids et al, 2012; Chow et al, 2016; Orth et al, 2017). Do we truly practice what we preach? It appears to us that, ironically, in teaching about radical embodied cognitive science, we often rely on the prescriptive pedagogy that we strive to avoid in our research in motor skill learning

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF STRONG EDUCATION

THE EDUCATION OF ATTENTION

THE PARTICIPATING TEACHER