What Is the Role of the Body in Science Education? A Conversation Between Traditions

Kersting, Magdalena; Amin, Tamer G.; Euler, Elias; Gregorcic, Bor; Haglund, Jesper; Hardahl, Liv Kondrup; Steier, Rolf

doi:10.1007/s11191-023-00434-7

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Embodiment in science has been increasingly becoming a topic of exploration, theorized differently in different studies. Recently, Kersting et al (2023) summed up existing literature by examining the role of the body in science education from existing traditions via "three fictitious personas that stand in for the cognitive, social-interactionist, and phenomenological research traditions" (p. 2), which do not include arts-based conceptualizations. In our previous work and continuing here, we embrace performing arts perspectives to explore the affordances of the body in learning science.…”

Section: The Performing Body As a Site Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science: Agency through imagining via the performing arts

Kotler,

Rosario,

Varelas

et al. 2024

Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Children are often denied science education that engages their emotions and multiple identities. This study focused on ways in which embodied arts‐based experiences offer opportunities for such engagement in pedagogical efforts associated with justice‐centered science. The conceptual framework that informed the study considers the body as a site of learning, embraces social justice in science education and engages with the dialectical relationship between various structures and children's agency, and frames the transdisciplinarity of imagination. The instrumental case study centered on a fifth‐grade class of Latinx students in an urban public school, as they grappled with lead contamination and peoples' rights to clean water through an embodied, arts‐based pedagogy in their science class. Analysis of video clips, student work, and other artifacts pointed to three findings on how children engaged with justice‐centered science learning via arts‐based embodied activities. Through perspective‐taking in the dramatizing, children engaged with science ideas intertwined with sociopolitical understandings. Through centering emotions that drama afforded, children experienced empathy and solidarity with others affected by environmental injustices. Through imagined and enacted participation in struggles that the embodiments necessitated, children engaged in actions to resist injustices. These findings suggest that exploring children's arts‐based embodied meaning making in science is a robust area of inquiry. Furthermore, the findings compel researchers and practitioners to consider emotions in performing arts, and how they can deepen engagement in, and exploration of, justice‐centered science. Recommendations emerged for practitioners poised to explore justice‐centered science with children through the arts.

show abstract

Section: The Performing Body As a Site Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science: Agency through imagining via the performing arts

Kotler,

Rosario,

Varelas

et al. 2024

Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Students’ Embodied Interactions During Collaborative Learning Activities in Physics

Gregorcic

2024

Challenges in Physics Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Representational Pluralism in Science Education

Flores-Camacho,

Gallegos-Cázares

2024

Sci & Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This essay analyses the theme of representational pluralism in science education and a possible interpretation through the inferential-pragmatic conception of scientific representations. A brief description of two principal conceptions of scientific representations (the semantic-structural and the inferential-pragmatic conceptions) and their implications for unicity and plurality are presented to compare how those philosophical approaches can help understand representational plurality in science education. Subsequently, a brief analysis of different topics of science education is made to determine relevant classes of representational plurality in science education: Plurality and coexistence of representations in subjects in a school context; plurality in diverse cultural contexts; plurality by approaches and methods of research; plurality and perspectivism. In the discussion and conclusions, those classes of representational plurality are analysed from the inferential conception of representations, and themes such as proliferation, reduction, normativity, and building in plurality are discussed. The conclusions point to the understanding that representational plurality is not a subject’s deviation from the norm of scientific and school representations; instead, it is inherent to the subjects’ construction of representations, individually and collectively. Certainly, this implies that the separation from the semantic-structural approach of scientific representations must be accomplished by cancelling any similarity condition for representations. Plural representations imply that teaching requires the construction of new scenarios for students to consider the intentionality of representations and interpret them more coherently with the expectations of scientific disciplines in diverse cultural contexts.

show abstract

What Is the Role of the Body in Science Education? A Conversation Between Traditions

Cited by 8 publications

References 60 publications

Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science: Agency through imagining via the performing arts

Latinx students embodying justice‐centered science: Agency through imagining via the performing arts

Students’ Embodied Interactions During Collaborative Learning Activities in Physics

Representational Pluralism in Science Education

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About