Turning thinking on its head: How bodies make up their minds

The assumption that bodies have little to do with thinking – other than to be the vehicle that gets a mind to a classroom – deeply underpins the traditional model of schooling. Lessons and seminars are designed on the premise that thinking happens best when people are pretty still, their bodies are quiet and undemanding of attention, and they are writing or talking. Unless it is interfering, the physical body has little to do with cognition. This paper offers an overview of the emerging field of ‘embodied cognition’ that profoundly challenges this model of the mind, and therefore undermines many of the assumptions that underlie the dominant sedentary and disembodied approach to the high-status bits of education.

► Challenges Ryle's ‘official doctrine’ that mind and body are separate.
► Presents findings from embodied cognition to an educational audience.
► Argues for an expanded, embodied conception of intelligence to underpin education.