Newsletter#1: Embodied Cognition Theory

The video has recently gone viral online, with many teachers sharing, liking, and recommending it. Why did the professor remove the student from class? The reason will astound you.Watch the video first:

What educational theory or pedagogical approach is employed?

The Key of Touching the Heart

The key to touching the heart lies in engaging emotions and creating a resonance between emotions and cognition. 

Neuroscience succinctly and clearly reveals：

• no cognitive process can occur without the support of emotions. Emotions have a profound impact on cognition, whether positive or negative.

The underlying brain mechanism is the Triune Brain Theory:

• for the Rational Brain to function effectively, it requires the full support of the Mammalian and Reptilian brains, achieving a resonance at the same frequency among the three brains.

Therefore, to enable students to genuinely understand a “principle” from within, or even just to ensure they remember it firmly, relying solely on pure analysis and reasoning (which are functions of the ‘rational brain’) is quite challenging. True understanding is achieved only by evoking emotional engagement in students during this process, as this is what truly ‘touches the heart’.”

Context is the key

“How can we stimulate students’ emotions?

One important method is creating contexts. 

According to the Embodied Cognition Theory: 

• Brain functioning is influenced by the body, and bodily reactions are affected by the environment, making ‘environment-body-brain’ an integrated trio.

To elicit brain responses (emotional or cognitive), we can achieve this through the creation of environments. Imagine a scenario where, without any warning or explanation, a teacher seemingly randomly sends a student out of the class. It’s understandable that this would provoke a range of emotions from surprise to confusion, not only in the student involved but also among their peers and viewers watching. This kind of ‘emotional response’ provides a strong motivation for subsequent learning and thinking. In fact, the greatest secret of effective teaching is how to ‘stimulate motivation.’ Many teachers focus on imparting knowledge but lack methods for stimulating motivation, often leading to teaching challenges. This is a lesson we can learn from this video. Additionally, the relationship between ‘context-thinking-knowledge’ in teaching and learning is also very clear:

• Thinking is always at the core of teaching and learning.
• Knowledge is the product of thinking.
• Context is also an object of thought.

Embodied Cognition Theory

• The Origins of Embodied Cognition
  

Embodied cognition originated in philosophy and later became a new orientation in cognitive psychology. It is a rebuttal to the mind-body dualism in philosophy, where Western philosophers like Descartes believed in a clear division: “The essence of the mind is to think without extension, and the essence of matter or body is to have extension but not to think,” thus establishing the mind-body dualism. This dualism posed a dilemma: either humans are a kind of spirit, governing the world but intangible, or they are determined matter, real but lacking vitality. Philosophers like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, following Martin Heidegger’s introduction of “being,” began to realize that our way of understanding the world involves interacting with it appropriately using our bodies. In this interaction, humans are embedded in the world and are one with it. This idea became the ideological source of embodied cognition. Later, researchers in embodied cognition (mostly cognitive psychologists) empirically demonstrated that the physical properties of the body directly influence the formation of cognition, making embodied cognition a new direction in cognitive psychology research.

• The Concept of Embodied Cognition

Embodied cognition upholds the notion that the body and its environment jointly serve as the foundation for cognitive activities, emphasizing cognition as an organic composition of the body, mind, and environment. The concept of embodied cognition was proposed by George Lakoff, often referred to as the “father of cognitive linguistics,” and Mark Johnson. They argue that a key feature of embodied cognition is the brain’s understanding of the world through the body. Cognition refers to the process of information processing in the mind, and embodied cognition emphasizes the critical role of the body in this process. Sensation, memory, thinking, and imagination are all shaped based on the interaction between the body and the external environment.

Embodied cognition, also known as “enactive cognition,” has profoundly impacted the traditional mind-body dualism in educational views. Traditionally, education often presents a “disembodied” approach, focusing on the cultivation of the mind and the instillation of knowledge. The body is often seen merely as a “carrier” to bring the individual mind to the classroom and a “container” for storing knowledge, not involved in the individual’s information processing. This leads to a dichotomy of mind and body separation. In contrast, embodied cognition emphasizes the connection of the body with the mind and the environment in the holistic cognitive process. The presence of the body enables individuals to promote cognitive development through interaction with the external environment. Therefore, teaching should follow the monism of embodied cognition, focusing on the central role of the body in the individual’s cognitive process.

• The Educational Implications of Embodied Cognition

1. Creating Teaching Scenarios with Bodily Participation

Teachers, as providers of teaching contexts, can set up educational scenarios using videos, images, or role-playing, allowing students to experience and perceive in appropriate settings for understanding knowledge. Teachers can also take students into nature to listen, see, smell, and touch. Physical involvement in nature gives students more firsthand experiences.

2. Increasing Physical Interaction between Teachers and Students

Interactions between teachers and students should integrate both “body” and “mind”. The relationship is not a simple one-way interaction of just teaching and listening but a two-way interaction. Equal dialogue, free sharing, and mutual understanding can not only stimulate students’ initiative in learning but also motivate teachers’ enthusiasm in teaching. In this pleasant atmosphere of teacher-student physical and emotional integration, a mutually beneficial teaching and learning effect can be achieved.

3. Respecting and Cultivating Students’ Agency

Learning should be a process of students’ conscious and proactive engagement. No one can replace their learning process; teachers guide students toward self-directed learning. Respecting students’ agency and motivating their initiative lets them use their bodies to see, hear, smell, touch, think, and reflect, thereby gaining authentic bodily experiences and actively absorbing the teaching content.

4. Enhancing Flexible Use of Embodied Metaphors

Teachers should flexibly use bodily metaphors in the teaching process, allowing students to have personal experiences and understand the knowledge being taught more easily. Additionally, nurturing students’ use of embodied metaphors is not only beneficial for their understanding of concepts but also fosters their metaphorical thinking, achieving a coordinated development of logical and metaphorical thinking.

In the video, the teacher did not just explain the concept verbally. Instead, he created a carefully designed, unexpected, and even conflicting “live event.” This produced a strong “embodied situation” for us, the viewers. It made us empathize deeply, generating intense emotional responses and learning motivation, and laid a powerful contextual foundation for understanding the subsequent principles.

Do you have similar instructional designs in your teaching process? How do you view the application of concrete cognitive theory in teaching? Welcome to share your teaching stories.

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