Embodying Science Through Outdoor Learning Activities

• In Event: Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships for Developing and Assessing Informal STEM Learning Experiences

Abstract

Aims and perspective: Research in embodied cognition emphasises the importance of meaningful ‘bodily’ experience, or congruent action, in learning and development, e.g., swinging the forearm with a fixed elbow to learn about a pendulum (Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2014). These sensorimotor experiences are particularly important for young children as they can provide them with an embodied toolkit of resources (independent of language skills or subject specific vocabulary) that they can draw upon to support science ‘think’ and ‘talk’, through gestures that are grounded on sensorimotoric representations from action experiences. This paper presents a collaboration between digital learning experts and an educational charity that aims to enrich, enhance and inspire outdoor learning that aimed to support the translation of embodied cognition theory into educational practice through the design of outdoor activities for young children.

Mode of Inquiry & Evidence: Taking an iterative design-based research approach (Wang & Hannafin, 2005), we collaboratively designed, developed, and deployed a program of outdoor activities for children aged 5-6 years to engage with, and learn about, ideas of air resistance. Speaking to the interests of both stakeholders, we co-designed activities which exploit the outdoors, by drawing on environmental characteristics of space, airflow and outdoor objects (e.g., wearable resistance parachutes), and drew on embodied cognition theory to design activities that would provide differently embodied experiences of air resistance/drag. Specifically, we considered how the sensorimotor underpinnings of each activity, could be meaningfully linked with the science ideas. Each experience drew attention to embodied aspects, in particular, both the felt and observed experience, and in turn, the underlying science. By wearing different sized resistance parachutes children can feel the bodily sensation of a pull force which draws attention to the link between parachute size and drag, while handheld parachutes allow children to observe how different sized parachutes fall through air, drawing particular attention to visual features such as shape. Studies with 24 children aged 5-6 years showed how they were able to sense, observe, describe and develop ideas about the relationship between concepts such as wind speed, size, and shape of materials, and pull/push forces, both during their interactions and later in conversation with researchers using both talk and gesture.

Results and significance: This unique collaboration is instrumental in contributing to embodied cognition theory and STEM engagement strategies that benefit children and practitioners through: (i) a focus on larger scale outdoor activities which allow children to engage with their environment and their bodies in inspiring and empowering ways; (ii) a focus on meaningful bodily experiences which can help even very young children to engage with complex science ideas through sensory action and observations; (iii) the development of training sessions that integrate notions of embodied cognition to enhance early years practitioner confidence around teaching and engaging with science, and understanding young children’s communication. The charity stakeholders play a key role in upskilling educational practitioners, and through this work can bring new ways of engaging young children with science and developing their multimodal communication strategies to express their thinking.

Authors

• Rhiannon Thomas Jha, University College London

• Allison Motion, Learning through Landscapes

• Sara Price, University College London