Learning is a gateway to power and freedom

Learning increases our degrees of freedom by giving us new ways to move, communicate and adapt to challenges and capitalize on opportunities.

 

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True learning is a sacred process that is not honored in how typical classrooms are run.  

I have seen many kids begin to believe that something is wrong with them. Not because they are unable to learn, but because of the teachers’ and education system’s outdated understanding of how humans actually learn and optimize their functioning.

On a deeper level, because of outdated and ineffective education models that exist in schools, I think many of us were not given a chance to truly tap into our unique brilliance, and the effects of this linger in us today.

The highlights of my life have been working with young people and watching them light up as they recognize their capacities to learn.  I love teaching them the magnificent systems-logic that exists in the world and in their bodies for them to use for their own sense of power and agency.

It was an honor to speak with two professors who align with this and are taking action to transform and disrupt education as we currently know it.

 

In this episode, Drs. Sheila Macrine and Jennifer Fugate and I explore how our cognitive and learning processes are embodied as we discuss their book, Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning.

 

Their website is: embodiedcognitionandlearning.com

 



 

An example from the Movement Matters book is an expert bassoon player.  When this expert musician thinks of ‘bassoon’, their entire brain lights up with activity that simulates what it’s like to feel the smoothness of the instrument, the vibration of the sounds, etc. as they hear and play the instrument.

Someone who has never played that instrument will not have the same areas light up when they think about a bassoon - there will be categories and words associated with ‘bassoon’, such as instrument or music, but that embodied, sensorimotor anchor of knowledge will not be there.  To learn something well enough to apply it, personalize and use it, we need to ‘play’ with the world, interact with it using our bodies and senses.

As Dr. Fugate says in the interview, “the richer the initial experience , the richer the information that can be used for the simulation”.  Using more of our senses (including interoceptive and proprioceptive senses) during the learning process gives the brain-body more data to use later.

 

Embodied, Enactive, Embedded, Extended

The idea of this process is aligned with 4E cognition. As described by Dr. Shaun Gallagher, this framework proposes that “cognition is not just in the head. it's something that involves the body in general and also the situation of the body in the environment …”

As Schiavio and van der Schyff (2018) describe, there are 4 components of 4E cognition:



* Embodied: Cognition cannot be fully described in terms of abstract mental processes (i.e., in terms of representations). Rather, it must involve the entire body of the living system (brain and body).