‘the sessions exposed me to a part of myself that really values the unexpected’ (postcards)
‘Language is something we are very familiar with and at times the responses we go to or use are almost ‘replicas’ or unconscious repetitions of things we have learned or heard. Whereas embodied practices allow you to tune into more micro, and unknown elements of your personal knowledge.’ (Questionnaire)
These responses point to the importance of uncertainty as a dimension of learning that resists the notion of ‘bankable knowledge’, famously critiqued by Freire (1970:72). However, many students value knowledge as stable and can find the relational demands of embodied pedagogy challenging. As Manning suggests, ‘the body is not a stable form but a process’ (2009:4). Embodied pedagogy therefore involves a high degree of uncertainty, which can be uncomfortable. Even ‘pedagogies of discomfort’ (Zembylas and Boler, 2002), which engage difficult emotional states to make oppression more visible, work towards a clearly defined outcome.
‘I was confused whenever the task was too open ended’
5/12 students said they were confused by some of the tasks. I am aware from Unit 1 feedback and here that I can rely on a sense of performative allure as a teacher (wait and see!) and need to frame practices more clearly to improve inclusivity. However, I question why we are prepared as educators to invite discomfort for some activities (apprehending critical theory for example) and not others. A sense of what can or cannot be asked of students, or what forms of discomfort are allowed, is steeped in colonial discomfort around the body, so I am wary of jumping to ‘regulate’. But I also recognise that movement can make people feel uncomfortable. Menakim’s (2017) work on the somatic precarity experienced by people of colour is important here – as is the anti-racist work of Mitra (2020), who has critiqued the universalist assumptions that go into inviting all bodies to quiet, eyes closed, shoes off, somatic practices.
So, how can embodied spatial practices be used to resist logocentric forms of teaching and promote social justice in HE?
Findings
- they work because they de-hierarchise the learning environment
- they allow students to take space but maintain a collegiate sense of working alongside others
- they valorise multiple ways of knowing
- they create space for people as embodied learners
This promotes a socially just learning space that students feel more able to talk in
I have ADHD and can often disassociate and this kind of learning was the best experience with academia I’ve had.’ (Questionnaire)
Challenges
- not everyone feels safe enough to move
- not everyone finds managing uncertainty easy
My plan is to now
- improve how tasks are framed in terms of their relationship to knowing/not knowing.
- introduce greater optionality
- work towards making a shareable HE resource that teachers might use to bring embodied practices into their teaching as a social justice tool.
*of course, care can also act as a radical form of anti-oppression (de la Bellacasa, 2017)