Thinking through action; reflections on the implications of

embodiment for higher education practice.

by Fergus Anderson

This paper was jointly presented by Fergus Anderson and Simon Charter at the
Thinking Through Action conference at the Field Centre in Nailsworth,
Gloucestershire on the 8th and 9th November, 2013.

Introduction
This paper seeks to make a small contribution to the following question: How
could higher education practice be more in tune with the full implications of
embodiment? The contribution is in the form of a reflective, first-person account of a
teaching event that took place in Russia in 2013. This event was important in
deepening my understanding of what embodied teaching and learning might mean in a
higher education context. Through writing this account, my hope is to further deepen
my own understanding and also to present something that may be of use to others who
are also interested in this subject. This enquiry was developed in dialogue with Simon
Charter, who co-presented the paper with me at the Thinking Through Action
conference in December 2013.
As a way of placing this enquiry into a broader context, it is necessary first to
give a brief overview of embodiment and what I mean by the 'full implications' of
embodiment.

Context
Over the past thirty years or so, there has been a shift in the way that human
cognitive engagement with the world is understood and conceptualised. In a very
general (and perhaps too general) sense, this could be summarised as a shift from the
epistemological stance of objectivism to that of embodiment. Objectivism, very
broadly speaking, is the perspective that the world exists 'out there' completely
independently of our understanding and cognitive engagement with it. According to
this view, knowledge (taken in the sense of reasoning, understanding etc.), is
essentially an unconscious process of symbol manipulation in the brain (semantic
processing), and meaning arises through the direct mapping of these symbols onto the
mind-independent reality they represent. Non-propositional experiences, such as
perception, imagination and feelings, play no essential part in this process. This
objectivist stance is rooted firmly in the Western philosophical tradition going back to
René Descartes, Immanuel Kant and others, and it has played a major role in
informing cognitive science, psychology and philosophy of mind in the 20th century.
The embodied (also sometimes called enactive) approach sees cognition as
taking place rather differently. Here rationality is understood to be directly linked to
the body as it lives and moves in the world. 'Our reality is shaped by the the patterns
of our bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and the
forms of our interactions with objects. It is never merely a matter of abstract
conceptualisation and propositional judgements'. (Johnson, 1987, p. xix). The
cognitive process through which 'objective' knowedge arrises is therefore seen not as
a disembodied process that maps abstract, representational structures onto a mind
independently objective reality, but rather, as a creative and living process that is
already implicated in the emergance of objective reality as such. 'Perception is not
about objects in the world affecting subjects. Rather, the perceptual field itself is
constituted through the articulation of body and world' (O'Loughlin, 2006, p. 13).
The knowledge process is therefore something much more dynamic and creative than
the 'knowledge as reproduction' account presented by objectivism. As Mark Johnson
puts it:

What counts as knowledge is inextricably linked with the creative activities of

imagination and metaphore, and the criteria of rationality are ineliminably
evaluative and dependent on our purpose and interest. (Johnson, 1987, p. xiii).

Embodiment draws on many different sources including the phenomenologies

of Edmund Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the constructivisms of John Dewey, Lev
Vogotsky and Jean Piaget, the philosophical hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamar, the 'tacit
knowing' of Michael Polanyi and the post-structuralism of thinkers such as Gilles
Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Michel Foucault. The central thesis of embodiment has
been articulated in many different ways and in different contexts, for example; Varela,
Thompson & Rosch (1991), Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Thompson (2007), Lakoff &
Nunez (2000), Noe (2004).
A further stream that could be said to be connected with embodiment, though
this connection is very rarely made in the literature, is that of J.W. Goethe and Rudolf
Steiner1. Goethe developed a phenomenological approach to scientific enquiry that
has what could be called an embodied understanding of thinking and perception at its
centre (Bortoft, 1996). Steiner developed an epistemological stance based on Goethe
that laid the foundations for his 'anthroposophy' and also for Waldorf education
(Steiner, 1966, 1978)). He also made the connection between the emergence of
mathematical understanding and the experience of the movement of the body in space
(Steiner, 1991), an insight that is later found in Lockoff (Lakoff & Nunez, 2000).
What is of particular interest in relation to what follows is that Steiner also
developed an embodied approach to cognition. He maintained that there are three
kinds of knowing related to thinking, feeling and will, and he connected each of these
to a specific body system. Thinking to the nerve/sense system, feeling to the rhythmic
systems (breathing and blood circulation) and will to the metabolic and limb systems
(Steiner, 1970). I will return to this later. The connection between Goethe, Steiner and
embodiment theory would be an interesting avenue for further research.
The general epistemological positions of objectivism and embodiment have
been outlined above. If objectivism understands cognition as a representational add-
on to an objective world that exists independently 'out there', then embodiment sees
cognition as inextricably bound up with that world. Objectivism and embodiment
therefore present not just two radically different views about what knowledge is and
how it is acquired, they present radically different views about the structure of reality
as such, and if embodiment presents a more accurate account of this structure, then
this would potentially have important implications for education.
However, in my view, the actual practice of education, and particularly
perhaps higher education, seems to be taken little real notice of the ideas emerging in
embodiment theory. This is evidenced in the continuing emphasis on rationalism and
abstraction in the way that learning is evaluated and in the rituals and activities
through which the vast majority of higher education learning takes place (sitting,
listening, writing, reading, speaking). In support of this view, Marjorie O'Loughlin
writes:
It seems to me that educational theory, policy and practice in Western
consumer societies retains an allegiance to an excessively rationalistic view of
mind, or forms of cognitivism, which cast it as a kind of ‘pilot’ steering a
sometimes unruly or unpredictable body (O'Loughlin, 2006, p. 5)

1
Although for the purposes of this paper Goethe and Steiner are considered as a unity, there
are also distinct differences between them that will not be explored here.
 At the formal and institutional levels the curriculum is still to a large extent
evaluated in terms of whether or not it conforms to standards of rationality and
abstraction. (O'Loughlin, 2006, p. 16)

This is not to say that rationality and abstration should not play a central role
in higher education, it is to say that the excessive focus on a certain kind of learning2
is perhaps out of step with how learning and meaning-making is now increasingly
understood. Perhaps this is because our very notion of education is linked to an
objectivist paradigm lying at the heart of our Western consumer societies, in other
words, that we have an enormous amount invested in going about learning in a
particular way. Or perhaps it is because it is simply too hard to break the mould and
imagine what the full implications of embiment might mean for education in practice.
Where embodiment ideas are applied in practice in and education context, the
result can seem curiously inadiquate and one dimensional. For example, Kelan
observes:
In my own teaching practice, I have noticed that students are almost reluctant
to take their embodiment seriously. When I ask students to change seats in
class or if I ask them to do some stretches very few students do this. Many of
them seem to believe that education means to sit still, which is of course what
they are told from primary through to higher education. Students are trained to
focus on the mind. (Kelan, 2010, p. 43)

Putting Kelan's complaint about the lack of student participation aside, is

embodied education really about changing seats now and again or doing stretches
during a lecture? Maybe, but my feeling is that it goes beyond this. I also feel that the
idea of 'experiential learning' (Kolb, 1984) does not exhaust the full implications of
embodiment.3 Here the central idea is that we learn better through concrete experience
rather than through abstract enquiry, and while this is very likely true, it is still misses
the central challenge of embodiment, in my view.
For if embodiment has implications not just for our understanding of the
knowledge process but also for our conception of reality (as was claimed above), then
it is not just a methodological question that embodiment raises but an ontological and
perhaps an existential one. To put this another way: if embodiment gives an accurate

2
The rise of MOOCs (massive open online courses), Virtual Learning Environments, the 'flipped
classroom' (www.knewton.com/flipped-classroom), seem to me to be an amplication of the same
tendency to 'disembodied' learning
3
Perhaps an example of where the deeper implications of embodiment are engaged with more
thoroughly in an education context is found in the action research work of Jean McNiff and Jack
Whitehead (McNiff & Whitehead, 2006. Whitehead, 1988).
account of the knowledge process, then the process of meaning-making and acquiring
knowledge goes deeply to the heart of what it means to be human. It also goes to the
heart of our interaction with the natural environment and our production of a
technological environment. In fact it defines and constitutes not only our interaction
with our environment but the environment itself, because the environment, as with
any 'object', is the result of embodied cognition, not its starting point. And if all this is
the case, then this needs somehow to be taken seriously within the 'business' of
education, teaching and learning.
My own personal hunch - and this has only the status of a hunch - is that
'embodied' education may be braught about as much through a change in the activity
of thinking-in-learning as through a change in the way that the activity of the body is
used in learning. In other words, embodied learning may not necessarily be about
using the physically active body more in a learning context (though of course it might
also include this). I will try and explain a little more what I mean by this later.
I am aware that this is by no means an adiquate discussion of the points raised,
and while I have attempted to formulate something in the above discussion, I by no
means claim that I have presented a proper case or that I have offered adiquate
grounds for the various claims and observations I have made. I also don't have a
'solution' to the main question I am raising, but I do have an example to offer that
might at least point in a direction.
The example I will give can be interpreted in different ways. I feel that it
suggests something of concrete practical response to the above discussion, but not in
any prescriptive or defined way. I therefore invite the reader to make their own
meaning out of it, but baring the the above discussion in mind.

So, one day in June 2013...

A teaching and learning experience at Blage Delo

....Simon Charter and myself went to the Urals to contribute to an adult
education programme. The location was the Blagoe Delo day centre for people with
disabilities. This centre, which is unique in in the region and possibly in Russia, is
trying to spread person-centred approaches to supporting people with disabilities. As
well as providing day centre, employment and education services for local people
with disabilities, the centre runs a three year, part-time training programme.4 The
programme is attended by a range of care workers and managers drawn from care
institutions in the local region and beyond. It therefore offers an opportunity to spread
new ideas and practices far beyond what is possible in the Blagoe Delo centre itself.
The module that we were invited to contribute towards was called Self-
enquiry and Qualitative Research Methods in Social Work. My task was to introduce
the idea of self-development and reflective practice in a social care context, drawing
on, amongst others, the work of Rudolf Steiner. I also had the task of introducing
basic action research methods that students could use in their various work-based
research assignments. Simon's task was to integrate into the more classroom-based
activities a series of water and clay sessions. In these sessions, students observed
water phenomena and built clay vessels to facilitate water flow. They also participated
in building a flow-form water feature in the grounds of the centre, based on the
student's own designs.
It is important to mention that Simon and myself had not been involved in
choosing this combination of activities. The two directors of the Blagoe Delo training
(Vera Simakova and Petter Holme) had invited us both to teach on the same block,
bringing our respective areas of expertise. But they had not defined how our areas of
expertise were to combine or in what sense they were linked. They gave some general
indications, but it was left up to us to make a coherent, integrated and meaningful
experience for students out of these two apparently quite different subjects. In
retrospect, this openness and lack of prescribed guidelines at the beginning was a gift,
for it challenged us to enter into our own process of enquiry about exactly what we
were doing and how we could make it meaningful. This may not have happened had
we been given a more defined brief.
The result of the various planning conversation we had was that we decided to
take what could be called a participatory action research approach (Park, 2011). But I
mean this in the loose sense of simply inviting the students into an emergent process
where we would find the meaning of what we were doing together. What follows are
my insights that arose as a result of this process. It is also important to add that the
following account is based on my own first-person observations rather than a
structured and controlled process of data gathering.

4
The programme is validated at level 6 by Crossfields Institute
 Where the interesting area lay, at least in connection with the current enquiry,
was in the 'open space' between the theoretical content and the water and clay sessions.
The open space was simply the question of how/why these two subjects were being
delivered together and how/why working with water and clay could help care workers
in large care institutions to do what they do. Although we did not explicitly pose this
question at the beginning, but by the end of the week it felt like the question had been
answered.
We decided to split the day into four sections. A classroom session in the first
half of the morning was followed by water phenomenology and clay work in the
second. This was then followed by a theoretical session in the first half of the
afternoon and second water and clay workshop in the second half of the afternoon.
Our plan was simply to juxtapose the subjects and allow for synergies to emerge. To
facilitate this, we started and ended the day with reflection sessions where students
could share their experiences and (hopefully) begin to discover a coherent underlying
emergent meaning within the diversity of what they were doing. Should no coherent
connections emerge, then at least we were creating a water feature for Blagoe Delo
which could be enjoyed by staff and service users.
By chance, the weather during the block was unusually bad. It rained for most
of the time and the temperatures were unseasonably low. For the water and clay
workshops we were in an outdoor workshop open to the elements. The clay and water
were cold and the clay forms that students made were large. It was a challenging,
tactile and muddy experience to try and shape large piles of cold, wet clay into vessels
through which water could flow.
The students worked in groups of four or five without a leader, each group
working on one large single form set on a table. We used an electric pump to pass
water through the forms to observe how the water interacted with the form. What
were we looking for? How were we to know when the water was flowing in the 'right'
way? The only guidance we had were the water phenomenology demonstrations that
Simon had shown us, together with a short film of a flow form in action. However,
these short demonstrations were important, for they established the idea that water has
inherent structure and tends towards certain specific movements. It was up to each
group to decide how they engaged with this information in designing their form.
Interspersed with these sessions, the students engaged with a series of
reflective exercises. The aim was to ask the questions: what is thinking, what is
feeling and what is will? In what sense do these capacities form a bridge between
ourselves and the world such that a deeper engagement with the world (and the self)
can take place?
We began with simple, phenomenological exercises to explore the attention
and how the attention tends toward the polarity of either distraction or fixation
(ADHD and autistic spectrum). We then observed the phenomena of presence and
how this can bring stillness and focus to the attention. We then looked at thinking and
how our conceptual understanding can greatly influence the way we experience and
interpret 'objective' external events. We then looked at feeling and the difference
between feeling and emotion, and how feelings can also be 'perceptual' in the sense
that they can tell us about realities external to us as well as about our own internal
state. We then looked at will and intention and the importance of clarity of intention
when working in a care role. At each step we looked at the possibility of bringing
presence into an experience as a means of become reflective and awake to the
subtleties of that experience. This enquiry was also placed within the context of care
work, not in the sense that we discussed the student's actual work with service users,
but in the sense that the students brought their own personal challenges that they faced
in carrying out their role.
As the week progressed, a rhythm was established between a delicate and
ephemeral process of contemplative and dialogic enquiry and a visceral, physical
immersion in water and clay. Clothing, shoes, notebooks and cameras became
increasingly clay covered. We also started to work on the water feature which
required lots of digging and concrete mixing. The quite, warm and reflective indoor
classroom environment contrasted sharply with the cold, mud, rain and physical
activity of the outdoor environment. However, as the week progressed, the two
environments with their respective activities became closely linked and began to
enhance and sustain each other.
Over the course of the week, I observed two distinct changes. The first was
that the design of the clay forms that the students were making generally became
simpler. What had started as complex 'water features' with sculpted, ornamental
designs and barriers and channels to guide the water flow, gradually become simple
open dishes. These were more roughly made but more effective at facilitating the
rhythmical movement of water.
 What had prompted this change? One way to explain this would perhaps be
that the attention of the student's had shifted from the form of the clay vessel (a static,
physical object in space) to the movement of the water within the vessel (a continually
changing 'form' in time). In order to improve the function of the vessel, large chunks
had to be shifted from one place to another, walls had to be rapidly re-built, areas had
to be thinned etc. This meant that painstaking 'cosmetic' work quickly became
redundant or was destroyed in the constant adjustment and re-design process. We had
discovered that the purpose of the vessel was to serve the movement of the water, and
that our work with the vessel also served this purpose. This required a shift of focus
from 'what can I make the water do with the vessel?', to 'what kind of vassal does the
water need in order to move as it wants to?' To put this very simply, the shift of
attention was from the clay vessel as a fixed form in space to the 'form' of fluid water
movements in time.
Another shift was in the way that the groups worked together. Initially the
groups were less internally coordinated. Either there was disagreement as they tried to
come up with a coordinated plan, or each person in the group 'did their own thing',
resulting in a form that had no overall coherent design. Each group gradually realised
that if they were to progress, then the form needed to be designed as a whole, and for
this they had to begin discussion and negotiation with each other over what to do,
seeing as only one design solution could be pursued at any one time. As the week
progressed, the groups become more internally coordinated and focused on achieving
an agreed aim. They began to try out controlled experiments based on observation and
discussion and in this way to gradually improve the function of their form.
A lot more could be said about the two observations above, however a further
phenomena began to emerge which is much more important in the current context.
The enquiry onto thinking, feeling and will that accompanied the water and clay work
led gradual to a discovery that these too can be understood as 'vessels' - to the extent
that thinking, feeling and will are able to mediate accurately between ourselves and
the world. In other words, if we are to perceive 'objectively', then the meaning making
capacities we have (thinking, feeling, will) must become sensitive to the emergence of
something 'other'. For example, to be able to empathically understand a complex
situation, it is not a question of working it out logically from past experience. The
situation itself 'speaks' in me, it becomes present to me in my understanding of it. Of
course I can also work it out logically, based purely on a rational consideration of
what I already know, or what I or others have done before, however this is different to
perceiving and understanding currently in the moment. To feel empathically is to
allow an external reality to 'become itself' in my perceiving organism. I have to do
something, but that doing is also a 'getting out of the way' so that something 'other'
can emerge. This requires a complex, embodied perception/cognition process that
takes place at a number of levels
In the work with water and clay, the same principles could also be found. If
the water was to flow 'waterly', then the vessel had to become sensitive to the
otherness of water movement. This sensitisation was brought about through the
careful shaping and adjustment of the vessel, carried out by the collaborative activity
of the group. Through this, the clay became an environment in which the water could
'be itself'.
One way to look at this is that the water and clay work became a metaphor in
the deeper sense (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In other words, an imaginative construct
through which an 'objective' reality could speak. The clay and water relationship
became the context through which a deeper understanding of our own meaning
making and cognition process could emerge.
As the week came to an end and the students reflected on and discussed what
they had experienced, it was clear that some real insight and understanding had taken
place. This was not to do with the content that we had brought as teachers, it was to
do with a completely uncontroleable and unpredictable meeting of environment,
substance, personal experience and social collaboration. In this process, Simon and
myself were as much in a learning role as the students. The other interesting thing was
that the learning and insights that emerged were often deeply relevant to care work
and to the real every-day challenges that the students faced. This became clear in our
regular discussion sessions that punctuated the practical and theoretical work.

Conclusion
I am aware that the interpretation of embodiment outlined above is a quite specific
one and that some people would take a different view of what embodiment means and
how it should be interpreted. See for example Melsner (2004). Starting from the
specific interpretation of embodiment I have chosen, I have tried to open up the
question of what embodiment might mean for education. I have also made the
observation that the full implications of embodiment seem to have made little impact
on educational practice, particularly in an HE context. For me, embodiment does not
mean simply introducing more physical movement into the normally sedentary
process of education, neither does it mean simply 'experiential learning', in the sense
that learning through doing is more effective than learning through not doing (though
this may be the case). If the full implications of embodiment are taken seriously, then
this could change our basic notions of what education is for and what it is trying to
achieve. I have not tried to articulate what these full implications are, but I have tried
to give an example from my own experience of where I think it could be pointing.
This is of course not to claim that all education should be a free-for-all of water and
clay, for the same 'embodied' learning could perhaps take place through a very
different approach. I mentioned that embodiment may have as much to do with a
change in the activity of thinking as it may have to do with an inclusion of physical
activity and processes in 'cognitive' learning. Perhaps a key step in this is that the
objectivist pre-suppositions that so often define and constraining the learning process
are made more conscious so that they can be put aside - at least temporarily.
I will add one further indication to try and clarify what I think the implications
of embodiment could mean for education. One of the central ideas in embodiment is
that an imaginative and creative process lies at the heart of rational and objective
knowledge. For example, Mark Johnson states:
Without imagination, nothing in the world would be meaningful. Without
imagination, we could never make sense of our experience. Without
imagination, we could never reason toward knowledge of reality
(Johnson, 1987, p. ix)

If this is the case, then there is clearly a difference between our normal fantastical and
arbitrary capacity to 'make things up' and the kind of imagination that results in
objective knowledge and understanding. For embodiment is not saying that there is no
such thing as objectivity, but rather that both subjectivity and objective emerge
through the same embodied knowledge process. The question that embodiment would
have to address, and that would also be vital in developing a deeper understanding of
embodied education, is what is this imaginative and creative capacity that is so central
in our 'making sense'5 of things? For surely it is this that would have to be brought
more fully into the practice of teaching and learning.

5
Meant quite literally in that this imaginative capacity is deeply implicated in the constitution of the
'objective' sense world.
 Perhaps Goethe's idea of 'exact sensorial fantasy' could be of use here (Bortoft,
1996, 2012. Naydler, 2009. Zajonc & Seamon, 1998). Goethe developed this method
of working inwardly and imaginatively with observed phenomena as a way of
accessing 'archetypal phenomena'. As Bortoft has pointed out (Bortoft, 2012), this
does not mean that generalised characteristics are abstracted from multiple instances,
but that something ontologically real is allowed to emerge directly within the medium
of understanding, just as the eye can perceive in the medium of light. Or to put this
another way; thinking can wake up to itself not as an abstracting and abstracted
reproducer of the world but as an intergral aspect of the world. The shift in education
I am therefore pointing to has more to do with this shift of perspective than with an
introduction of new methods, though of course many new methods could result from
this shift of perspective.
Although this remains a very tentative formulation of something that would
require much more discussion, I hope that it at least indicates the direction in which I
think the idea of embodiment in education could lead - if the full implications of
embodiment were taken seriously. I also think that the Blagoe Delo story is a possible
example of how thinking can wake up to itself through action, in other words, a
possible example of thinking through action, which is perhaps one of the implicit
aims that emdodied education could reach for. It is for this reason that I have inluded
the Blagoe Delo example in this discussion.

The completed flow form at Balgoe Delo

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