Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

by Susan Hrach

What happens to teaching when you consider the whole body (and not just “brains on sticks”)?

Starting from new research on the body—aptly summarized as “sitting is the new smoking”— Minding Bodies aims to help instructors improve their students’ knowledge and skills through physical movement, attention to the spatial environment, and sensitivity to humans as more than “brains on sticks.” It shifts the focus of adult learning from an exclusively mental effort toward an embodied, sensory-rich experience, offering new strategies to maximize the effectiveness of time spent learning together on campus as well as remotely. Minding Bodies draws from a wide range of body/mind research in cognitive psychology, kinesiology, and phenomenology to bring a holistic perspective to teaching and learning. The embodied learning approaches described by Susan Hrach are inclusive, low-tech, low-cost strategies that deepen the development of disciplinary knowledge and skills. Campus change-makers will also find recommendations for supporting a transformational mission through an attention to students’ embodied learning experiences.

Genres: Teaching, Academia

224 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2021

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tremendously important thesis: college students (and their professors) are not just brains on sticks, but embodied minds who are subject to millennia of evolution encouraging movement, shifts of position, connection with the natural world, etc. in opposition to the standard industrial model of Western education.

Hrach discusses classroom spaces that are often over crowded, full of fixed furniture, and designed to keep the natural world at bay, as well as our practices within the classroom: do we expect students to sit still and pay attention for hours on end? These are questions that have bothered me, as well, and I can't say definitively I have cracked the code.

In many ways, I identify the examples she gives of professors who try to arrange "outside days" for their classes and find that the student complain quite a bit, or the class discussion doesn't seem particularly inspired, or the sun is too hot, the wind too loud, and the fire ants out in number. She recommends creativity and flexibility, that our outside classes can't just be our inside classes, but out-of-doors, but that can feel a little exhausting when you're teaching multiple sections, keeping an eye on the weather report and the schedule at the same time.

And is this strictly necessary for college students in particular? Sure we ask them to sit in windowless rooms, but we also require them to hike across campus from building to building, class to class, and, after all, they are only constrained to spaces for such a limited portion of the day. A full-time student may be in class only 3-5 hours a day, with plenty of time to study on the quad or stretch their limbs through those college staples of Frisbee and hackysack. College students are among the people with the most bodily autonomy in our society.

The strongest argument for this all, though, is that attending to the needs of bodies aids learning. That I have seen and experienced. The attention that comes after a five-minute break is different than that which comes before one, especially if that break is a mandatory standing break instead of slightly shifting one's gaze from the big screen in front of the class to a small one in the hand. Activities where students move around the room or move to a new space, even if it's just sitting in different rows in the library computer room, create visual and kinesthetic markers that aid in retention of information. Using hand gesture "mnemonics" can encode information and throwing a ball can create connection and participation. These practices ring sensible to students and to me.

However, there can be, in education, a novelty bias that prioritizes the oddest practices. This book includes many such practices that would mortify me as a student and especially as an instructor. Would I be okay leading students in improv games where we shout gibberish words, or putting them through "power poses" before a presentation, or asking students to bring in favorite scents to associate with their names? Student would remember the experience, but I'm skeptical it would pay off in terms of education, or, for that matter, in their overall health and wellbeing. There are differences in professorial personas and these can run the gamut, but we do best by our students when we give them sustainable practices with clouds of evidence behind them, rather than extremely novel studies with small sample sizes and no replication.

But it is crucial to remember our embodied students, that they can be cold or hungry, dehydrated or antsy and address not just the minds in our classrooms, but the full person.

[Kim Schellin-Rog · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know I’m in a minority here but as much as I want to try the ideas in this book they seem unrealistic as well. Sure it would be great if you could take classes outside if your campus has that opportunity but what about those that don’t? Also love the idea of movement but does that take away from the content. Yes your students might be engaged for that but then you may lose them again when you get it the content.


I was hoping for so much more in this book but it felt so basic. Maybe it’s the discipline income from so I have already studied components of this book.

Also I felt that the writing was very rudimentary I felt I was reading the authors blog/personal thoughts more than a text.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really appreciate the integration of research and practical application here. While I know how much movement helps my own learning, I haven’t been able to figure out how to integrate it into teaching, given classroom logistics and the reality of some students mobility issues. Reading this has me thinking about “movement” in a lot of ways now. Certainly, the library scavenger hunts I used to do are movement-based. Balling up paper and throwing them across the classroom is, too (what an interesting approach to collaborative brainstorming!). I’m now thinking of other ways to think about “movement” and teaching.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm getting really excited by all of the excellent work being done to consider students less as brains on sticks and more as embodied creatures. I love thinking about the ways that we can use our bodies to help us learn and the ways that we should be attentive to our haptic responses whilst doing so. Hrach's book is a wonderful example of this work, full of insights as well as really clear ideas for how we might incorporate them into our classrooms.

[Liz Norell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hrach's book is a timely, engaging, urgent volume in the WVU Teaching in Higher Ed series. She makes clear the need to engage the *whole* student (with our *whole* faculty selves) -- not just their "sticks on brains." This book may make you feel uncomfortable, but it does so in only the best ways. Highly recommended to all higher ed faculty. (And all educators, period.)

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very cool book. It's all about the science behind the intersection of cognition and movement and the way in which that should shape pedagogy. Lots of really great ideas here for incorporating movement into teaching, some of which are more doable than others depending on discipline, institution, and resources.

[Neregauzak]

2021/05/25