Educating the Senses: Explorations in Aesthetics, Embodiment and Sensory Pedagogy

Abstract

This volume takes two different, albeit intertwined approaches. The first concerns a reformulation of aesthetics in education-one which highlights the sensory dimensions of educational experience. The second concerns a turn to the body and the senses as that which is deeply involved in practices of teaching and learning. Keywords Senses • Body • Embodyment • Aestethics • LivingThis Special Issue was conceived long before the word COVID became part of our daily lexicon. We thought even then (way back in 2018!) that the sensory aspects of education were under theorized, if not downright forgotten, in the increasingly performative cultures that mark educational institutions at all levels as well as in contemporary theoretical framings of education. The pandemic's presence in our lives has occasioned a series of difficult adjustments around the globe, both personally and educationally, that none of us could have foreseen and which has only served to increase our sensitivity to the issues we identified earlier. For instance, because the virus is transferred through social contact, we have been compelled to minimize social encounters, largely avoiding physical meetings, shaking hands, hugging one another, and travelling to meet family, colleagues and friends. Educational institutions have been heavily affected by the lack of physical social contact as students of all ages have been sent into various forms of educational isolation, excluding them from the regular bodily interactions and material conditions that comprise everyday life in schools, universities and other educational settings. Teaching has moved onto digital

Children of Drama: An Arts-Based Educational Action Research Project Applied to a Group of In-Service Educators

“…Hoveid ( 2021) explained that when we only focus on the use of words when teaching, forgetting the body and its language, we anesthetize the speaking body. The importance of body language, embodiment, and the sensory dimension of teaching is also highlighted by Salti (2021) and Todd et al (2021). About the awareness and significance of body language, one participant from the Children of Drama stated: "It was a nice discovery for me to see the importance of body language.…”

The Pedagogical Benefits of Sensory Archaeology: A Case Study on Roman Britain

“…The desire to create a more dynamic classroom has only strengthened since the pandemic (Todd et al 2021;Assif et al 2022). Online teaching exacerbated the already sensorially simplified process of learning and was particularly damaging for a subject like archaeology.…”

“…The learning experience is similarly sensorially limited with an intense focus on the visual and the auditory (Classen 2014: 16;Thyssen and Grosvenor 2019: 122). This set-up does not promote student engagement regardless of the discipline, and for those studying archaeology, it allows for little interaction with the rich and textured past nor the practices of archaeology in the present (Price 2020;Todd et al 2021).…”

“If a (queer) revolt is to come”: Toward a sensuous pedagogy for dis/orienting management learning

“…While sensory education and embodied learning have traditionally been suppressed (Thyssen and Grosvenor, 2019), more recently, increasing efforts have been made to enact learning and education while taking into account their sensory and sensuous aspects (Todd et al, 2021), often in relation to the affective turn (Dernikos et al, 2020b). The senses, the body, and the affect have been addressed in organization studies—either in a singular or in an entangled way—in critical reflection (Rigg, 2018) as well as in professional (Antonacopoulou and Taylor, 2019) and entrepreneurial practice (Vogt et al, 2021).…”