Embodied learning approaches emphasize the use of action to support pedagogical goals. A specific version of embodied learning posits an action-to-abstraction transition supported by gesture, sketching, and analogical mapping. These tools seem to have special promise for bolstering learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, but existing efforts need further theoretical and empirical development. The topical collection in Cognitive Research: Principles includes articles aiming to formalize and test the effectiveness of embodied learning in STEM. The collection provides guideposts, staking out the terrain that should be surveyed before larger-scale efforts are undertaken. This introduction provides a broader context concerning mechanisms that can support embodied learning and make it especially well suited to the STEM disciplines.Keywords: Embodied cognition, STEM learning, Gesture, Education, Analogy, Action Recent cognitive theory, under the umbrella term embodied cognition, has emphasized the role that the body and environment play in cognitive processing (e.g., Barsalou, 1999;2008;Clark, 1999;2001;Shapiro, 2011). While there are several "flavors" of embodied cognitive theory, all challenge the conception of human cognition as amodal and abstract, uncoupled from the concrete world. Considering the role of the body in human cognitive function has led to basic insights in cognitive science regarding the role of embodied tools: gesture, action, and analogical mapping. These embodied tools could be leveraged to improve learning in several ways. An embodied framework for cognition provides an opportunity for science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines to include embodied learning tools to enhance pedagogy. STEM education initiatives may particularly benefit from incorporating embodied cognitive principles because STEM disciplines rely on representation systems that require sensory encoding (e.g., visualizations of data and information including maps, blueprints, graphs, charts), and are nevertheless dependent on highly abstract, formalized symbol systems (e.g., those used in math or chemistry). Students need a "way in" to linking sensory representations with abstractions.The purpose of this topical collection is to bring together theoretical discussions of how embodiment can inform educational practices in the STEM disciplines with empirical examinations of whether or not such practices actually work. While much research remains to be done, we hope that this collection provides a theoretical and empirical framework on which a more embodied pedagogy can be built. In this overview, we begin with a brief primer on what we mean (and do not mean) by embodied cognitive theory, and then develop several themes that we see in this literature.