Embodied Learning and Umwelt

Embodied learning is an interesting concept and one that I hadn’t previously encountered. William Winn (2013) describes embodied learning as the body, brain and environment as one; these facets are interdependent and cannot be separated from one another. Winn further describes learning as a physical act that involves the whole body. As Winn states, “Learning is no longer confined to what goes on in the brain” (2013, p. 22). While exploring Winn’s work, as well as delving into the deep depths of this module’s readings, a couple of key points stood out to me. These points are umwelt, collaboration and physical movement in the form of gestures.

Winn’s article introduced me to the concept of Umwelt. A term coming from Germany in 1934, Winn describes Umwelt as, “used to refer to the environment as seen and understood, idiosyncratically, by different individuals” (2013, p. 12). Each person’s umwelt is different from everyone else’s. Further, umwelts are ever changing. This is something, particularly after taking a few MET courses, that I think about often in my teaching. Students all come to my class with different knowledge systems and experiences. Winn (2013) argues that these are all connected. What I hadn’t fully thought about before was that we as teachers can never fully understand a student’s umwelt and how they will react to a certain situation. This made me cautious not to underestimate the impact of the environment in students’ knowledge.

Collaboration is a topic that comes up over and over again, though I had not previously thought about it in relation to physical movement and the connection to the brain. Roschelle et al. (2010) argue, that tasks “…should be designed so that individual contributions are needed for group success” (p. 405) – the we sink or swim together mentality. They believe that this collaborative learning will become more structured and easier for teachers to deliver with more embedded technological practice.

Novack et al.’s (2014) work on using hand gestures to teach mathematics was intriguing. This article was of high interest to me as I often use physical manipulatives to teach math. The author’s research found that acting (the act of acting directly on physical objects) gave a relatively shallow understanding of a novel math concept as compared to gesturing (the act of representational hand movements) which developed a deeper and more flexible learning. Further, the knowledge translated better to applying this learning to other tasks. This made me think about my own teaching of math; when I taught Kindergarten I think I did much more gesturing, whereas in grade 6 I do a lot less. This is certainly an issue that I will explore further. (Full disclosure, I still use the ol’ hand trick for my nine times tables!)

I enjoyed the readings this week as they introduced me to some new concepts but also helped my increase my understanding about topics that I was already familiar with. My new goals that have originated out of several readings combined are to combine collaboration with physical movement, as well as to gesture away while teaching math!

Questions:

1. Can anyone provide any examples of how they have included technology to harness the benefits of collaborative learning? How to do hand out specific roles or tasks to ensure that each group member contributes?
2. Do you use gesturing when teaching math? Can you provide a specific example?

References

Novack, M. A., Congdon, E.L., Hemani-Lopez, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math. Psychological Science 25(4), 903-910.

Roschelle, J., Rafanan, K., Bhanot, R., Estrella, G., Penuel, B., Nussbaum, M., & Claro, S. (2010). Scaffolding group explanation and feedback with handheld technology: Impact on students’ mathematics learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 58(4), 399-419.

Winn, W. (2003). Learning in artificial environments: Embodiment, embeddedness, and dynamic adaptation. Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning, 1(1), 87-114.