Gut Instinct: The body and learning

Abstract

In the current socio-political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re-thinking the nature of mind-body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its point of departure recent feminist scholarship, which is demonstrating that attending to physiology can provide insight into the complexity of mind-body relations. Elizabeth Wilson's account of the role of the gut in psychological processes suggests a far less hierarchical relation between brain and body than rationalism allows. Such insights are also supported by recent phenomenological inquiries into cognition and the body. My question is, what implications do these insights have for how the nature of embodiment is understood, and, by extension, learning? This paper explores how informal, non-cognitive modes of knowing, or of engaging with the world, inform learning in higher education contexts. More specifically, it raises the question of what role non-cognitive modes of engagement, such as sensibility, have in augmenting, enabling or delimiting the learning process.world into the natural and non-natural there is the possibility for new paths of educational inquiry and, ultimately, improved educational approaches and outcomes. Note1. This paper has seen various iterations and has gradually evolved based on the feedback received. I would particularly like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their suggestions as well as participants in the symposium on phenomenology in education at the

Bodies in narratives of doctoral students' learning and experience

“…Bodily academic practices Barnacle (2009) points to intimations, hunches and gut sensibility as necessary for doctoral students in developing more formal intellectual understanding. This suggests that the academic work of the doctorate -thinking and writing -lies not in the realm of the mind, but involves a twisting between mind and body (see Bartlett 2006).…”

Sustainable development, environmental education, and the significance of being in place

“…Such learning was seen as engaging the whole child -body, as well as mind -and this notion of embodied learning that seeks to overturn the deep influence of Cartesian dualism in education has become a matter of renewed interest both in environmental education (e.g. Payne & Wattchow, 2009) and in education in general (for example, Barnacle, 2009;Doddington & Hilton, 2007).…”

Habituated: A Merleau-Pontian Analysis of the Smartphone

“…6. Barnacle (2009) is instructive here. Barnacle writes on the advances of understanding of the role of the body in learning, specifically the way in which the phenomenological models Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus, among others, posit a central place for the body in understanding and learning.…”

“…2. Here we follow the example of Connell (1996) and Barnacle (2009). Connell explores the implications of Don Ihde's phenomenology of technology in order to explain how best to use and instruct students how to use computers, expressly addressing the importance of critical reflection on the use of technology in our everyday lives.…”

“…Instead, the author insists we must see that technologies, like computers, have a sort of intentionality and change humans' relationships to and perception of their environments (12). Barnacle (2009) writes on the advances of understanding of the role of the body in learning, specifically the way in which the phenomenological models of Merleau-Ponty and Dreyfus, among others, posit a central place for the body in understanding and learning. Barnacle argues that the recognition of the centrality of the body means that the old trope of the "life of the mind" is no longer sufficient for understanding learning and that "informal modes of knowing in learning," including embodied knowing, must be explored (32).…”