Embodied Education and Education of the Body: The Phenomenological Perspective

The concept of embodied cognition (EC) includes a variety of approaches involving embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition (sometimes referred to as the 4Es) and it can offer meaningful contributions to educational research and educational practice, including the re-evaluation of the role of the body in educational experiences. To discuss the reciprocal relevance of EC and phenomenological pedagogy, in this paper we start by shortly reviewing the “disembodiment of Western culture” and the “disembodied school” model, we then outline the origins of the connection between EC and education, and we conclude by discussing embodied education in formal education context. We argue that embodied education goes far beyond sensorimotor processes, physical exercise and motor skills. Adopting a phenomenologically oriented embodied cognition perspective means taking seriously the idea that a cognitive experience is always and necessarily grounded into a bodily dimension, and that it has a complex phenomenological nature intertwined with emotional, affective, reflective dimensions. Education, particularly formal one, must be able to consider and promote such embodied mind.