Learning in the Ivory Tower

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Learning in the Ivory Tower: Students' Embodied ExperienceAuthor(s): Jerry McClelland, Karin Dahlberg and Jane PlihalSource: College Teaching, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Winter, 2002), pp. 4-8Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27559068.

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Learning in the Ivory Tower:Students' Embodied

ExperienceJerry McClelland, Karin Dahlberg, and Jane Plihal

A general review of pedagogic andeducational research literaturegives a clear picture of a onesided perspective of learning as some

thing entirely cognitive. Learning theorieshave been written with a psychological,sociological, or biological physiologicalapproach, but there is no account of thelived body in learning. Even from readingrecent research (Marton and Booth 1997)about learning, one forms the image ofbrains or minds hovering above schooldesks, in front of which is one more cognitive object, the teacher.Since the eighteenth century there hasbeen a marked split between the humanbody and mind inmost of the social sciences and also, for example, in medicine.This approach to human existence wasreinforced by the positivist movementwhich was developed to ensure that all

metaphysics, with its magic and mysticism, once and for all was gone. Theirony, of course, is that a new mysticism,the magic of numbers, replaced the earlier one. Researchers within education fellinto this trap, too. That which could be

measured became of great interest.Given this context, it is fairly easy tounderstand why educational theories

became bodiless and were based on vari

Jerry McClelland and Jane Plihal areprofessors in the Department of Work,Community and Family Education at theUniversity of Minnesota. Karin Da h Iberg isa professor in the College of Health Sciences,at Boras University in Sweden.

ables that could be measured (Bengtsson1998). There are investigations beingdone on the learning body, although thesestudies can be understood as naturalistic(in the word's truemeaning), and with thebody being of interest only as a physicalobject. Both theory and practice in education have subordinated the body to themind (Vick 1996). We want to emphasizethe lived body in learning.We have accessto the world, says the philosopher Merleau-Ponty (1995), through the body:"The body is the vehicle of being in theworld." We are to the world as body. Thelived body ismore than the body alone; itconnotes the integration of the physical

body, mind, consciousness, and how weare in the world. We have no consciousness and no learning without bodies. Understood in this way, learning is a bodilyaffair, and that idea became the startingpoint for our project. The aim of our studywas to describe how university studentsexperience their bodies while learning.

MethodPhenomenological research describestheworld as it is experienced prior to any

theories devised to explain it. Such research demands openness from the researcher so that implicitly understood experiences, such as learning, can bearticulated. This notion of openness iscentral in a lifeworld approach to researchand correlates with the phenomenologicalmethod that guided this project.

Giorgi (1997), one of the foremost

phenomenological psychologists, hasargued that it is crucial to distinguishbetween phenomenology as philosophyand phenomenology as an empirical

method, and offers three criteria for conducting phenomenological research.First, phenomenology includes a descriptive step, "a detailed concrete descriptionof specific experiences from an everydayattitude from others"(243). The description should be concrete and have a mini

mum of generalities and abstractions.Second, phenomenological researchrequires that the researcher "withholdpast knowledge about the phenomenon heor she is researching in order to be fullypresent to the concrete instance of thephenomenon as presented by the subject's description"(244). This also meansthat one attempts to set aside any beliefthat the phenomenon actually is what itis; one no longer takes it for granted asthe thing that one knows. Consequently,this approach signifies a need for intersubjective openness (Dahlberg and Drew1997). Third, phenomenological research

means a search for what Giorgi defines asscientific essences. In phenomenologicalresearch, scientific essences are contextual and depend on the disciplinary frame

work within which the research is conducted. For example, the scientificessences described from an educationalperspective may be different from thosedescribed from psychological or sociological perspectives. The search for

essences is based on imaginative or expe

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rienced variations of a phenomenon.Husserl (1973) noted, "In such free variations of an original image, e.g., of a thing,an invariant is necessarily retained as thenecessary general form, without which anobject such as this thing, as an example ofthis kind, would not be thinkable atall"(341). The invariant form is understood as the essential meaning of a phenomenon, which also may be called ageneral structure of meaning. As Polkinghorne (1989) notes, "The finding of aphenomenological study is the generalstructural description" (56). This structure tells us what the experience is like ina condensed form (Fischer and Wertz1979). In addition, what Giorgi (1997)

calls "constitutents" and we call"themes" explicate the meaning of thephenomenon.In this study, data consisted of fourteeninterviews conducted by students in acourse on phenomenological epistemology and methodology, three interviewsconducted by the authors, and three written accounts from students. The infor

mants were undergraduate and graduatestudents who were willing and able todescribe the awareness of their bodywhile engaged in learning. Since we wereinterested in the experience per se, nospecial procedure was used to select students. Both the interviews and thewrittenaccounts had their origins in an invitationto "tell me about a time when you werelearning and you were aware of your

body." The three accounts were writtenby students in the class mentioned earlier;all the other interviewees were not students in the class. The interviews wereconducted at the university and in thehomes of the informants.

Gathering data in phenomenologicalresearch means practicing openness(Dahlberg and Drew 1997). Openness

during the interviews was a matter of setting aside everything else and giving oneself over to listening and comprehendingthe informants' accounts of their experiences with learning. The pace of the inter

views was slowed so that informants'statements could be explored in depth;interviewers only asked questions toenable the informants to clarify andexemplify what they said. More simplyexpressed, such open interviewing tookthe form of being honestly interested in

each informant's story and in the students' written accounts of lived experiences. The handwritten narratives weretyped, and the dialogical interviews weretranscribed verbatim to create the text.

With the aim of finding a phenomenalessence, we analyzed the text for meaning on the basis of Giorgi's method of

first reading the text, breaking it intoparts, organizing and expressing elementsof the text from a disciplinary perspective, and finally synthesizing and summarizing the results (Giorgi 1997). Thismethod was varied in that, individually,each author broke the text into parts

where meaning seemed to change, identified key ideas in the parts, and madenotes in the margins of the text aboutmeaning. Through dialogue, the authorscame to a synthesis of the meaning of thetext from an educational perspective. The

goal of the analysis process was to explicate the implicit; to discover, articulate,illuminate, and describe the tacit knowing; and to avoid interpreting.We elaborate the findings below; they

concern the general structure of embodied learning and themes of meaning of thephenomenon.A General Structure of theMeaning of Embodied Learning

Learning is a complex bodily phenomenon. The meanings of learning for university students signal a need for, on theone hand, bodily relaxation and freedom,and on the other hand, bodily excitement.

During learning experiences, studentslose the sense of their bodies.Negative bodily activity can suggestthat learning is problematic. The physical

setting and the emotional climate of aclassroom can create discomfort that canbe channeled into negative bodily activity, occupying or distracting the body.

The students described their experiences of learning, and the themes of

meaning disclosed in their experienceswere named as follows: the physical

setting creates discomfort; the body sensesthe emotional climate in the classroom;activity occupies or distracts the body;there is a lost sense of body whenimmersed in a good learning experience;

bodily relaxation and freedom occurwhen one is learning; and bodily excitement accompanies learning.

The Physical Setting Creates DiscomfortOftentimes the physical environments

of classrooms make students uncomfortable. Examples include those where seatsare too small, no left-handed seat is available for a left-handed student, the room istoo hot or too cold, there are no windows,seats are too close together,

or the lightingis poor. One student said, "It was hotterthan heck in the room, so I would normally open a couple of the windows to get a

breeze. Otherwise I would cook." Unfortunately, in the experience being described, there were no windows to open.Students' descriptions also includedother kinds of physical disruptions inrelation to learning. A chair that was toosmall "told" a student that she was "older,fatter, and not the typical student," especially compared to the others, whoseemed not to fill up their chairs. Anotherstudent said, "The chairs are uncomfortable; my back hurts."

These problems not only cause bodilydiscomfort, they impede learning anddirect attention away from the focus ofthe class.

The Body Senses the Emotional Climatein the Classroom

When the emotional tone of the class isnegative, students report bodily responsesto tension, threat, irritation, or otherunsettling conditions. They blush, shake,tighten in the chest, bite nails, and feelknots in their stomachs.

A graduate student said:It was a freshman English class at the university when I was 17 years old. The professor would use examples of students'

writing .... He would make an overhead ofsomeone's paper and then use it as anexample in the class of how not to write

with marks all over it. And he wouldridicule it in front of the class .... I decided that I just could not accept his teachingstyle and was unwilling to stay in the class.... So I withdrew, and my whole bodywas just a nervous wreck. [Interviewer: Youused the words nervous wreck. What doesthat mean?] I would shake. I would have

heart palpitations. I felt extreme fear ....Kind of a thick hollow feeling inside.

Another student told about her discomfort in discussing lesbian and homosexual couples in a family therapy class. Sherealized she was biased and prejudicedand wished she were not. She said,

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My stomach started bothering me, actually.And when that happens . . . sometimes it'sjust my stomach, something that I've eaten,but sometimes [it] can be really telling methat I am uncomfortable.

Another student said the followingabout classmates:

There are people that annoy the heck out ofyou, people in the class .... they just go onand on about things that are really irrelevant to what we're trying to get out ofthings, or a group project where someone isjust disrupting the whole thing. You do getphysical reactions to things; you get thetight chests and you get irritated and youfeel that response to something, you know.

Activity Occupies or Distracts the BodyIn students' descriptions, bodily activity often signaled a problematic learningsituation. The bodily discomfort described in the above comments emanatedfrom undesirable physical settings or negative classroom climate and sometimes

was channeled into bodily activity. Students tried to occupy or distract the bodywith activity: they ate, chewed, drank,sucked on cough drops, wriggled, crossedand uncrossed their legs, fiddled withpens, and so forth.

A student told about being in a classthat she did not find engaging, and herbody was quite active, although sitting.She said,

It's an evening class, so I'm aware I'm hungry. I'm aware I'm thirsty. I cough a lotmore. I suck on cough drops,

so I'm playing with things in my mouth. Urn, a lot oftimes I have itchy ears so I realize I'mtouching my face, scratching my head,scratching my ears. A lot of times my throatbothers me, so I sit with my hand on myneck. So I'm a lot more fidgety.Energy stemming from events either

outside or inside the classroom was oftendescribed as having been transferred intobodily activity. One student spoke ofbeing "busy" when an event outside theclassroom caused her body to be active asshe tried to attend to the lesson. By"busy" she meant "wriggling back andforth, tapping my feet, shifting my position nine million times, tapping my fingers, moving my papers. Whatever. Just

moving around a lot." She was busy in anevening class at the end of a day during

which one of her clients had been murdered. Another student's bodily activitywas stimulated by the class itself. She was

nervous, not knowing what to say if shewere called on. She said, "I shuffle mynotes around on my desk and bite mynails, and I change my position all thetime."

The bodily reaction of a student whohad made a mistake is described in thesame way as fear. She had studied her statistics assignment before class, but noted,

When something in the class happens thatmakes me see that either I didn't develop acorrect understanding of something or

there's something that's off about it, then Ifeel my stomach, you know. I feel like thepit in my stomach falls out, or that I get adrop in, in the sense of my stomach.

When bodily activity seems to occupyor distract students, it usually corresponds with a lack of learning.There Is a Lost Sense of BodyWhen Immersed in a GoodLearning Experience

One meaning of a learning experienceis that one loses a sense of body. The students describe that as occurring whenthey are immersed or intensely engagedin learning. One student had asked hisinstructor a question that she answered

with a story. He said,While she was speaking, I was very intenton her story. I do not recall anything aboutmy body or the room or those around me.As she finished, it was a very emotionalevent for me?the fact that she would payso much attention to the question?andwant to make sure I understood how heranswer related to my understanding. Iremember even having tears in my eyesafter she was done, that I was completelyintent on listening to her and visualizing

what she was talking about, but not beingaware of my body while she was speaking.Another student was puzzling over

confidence intervals and margins of errorin a research class. She said,

I was trying to figure out why there wasn'ta margin of error associated with hypothesis testing. And that was a time when Iwasvery engaged in the conversation . . . andrealized I had been unaware of my body fora long period of time. I hadn't been payingattention to it.

When students are learning, they areattuned in the moment and are veryimmediately present; at these times theyreport forgetting about their body, time,and space.

Bodily Relaxation and Freedom OccurWhen One Is LearningGood learning may be accompanied by

experiences in which the body feelspeaceful, soft, and at ease. As one studentnoted, toomuch attention to her body disturbs her learning. Therefore, for a goodlearning experience to take place, she

wants to be relaxed, to wear comfortableclothes and sit in a comfortable chair.

Another disliked a "lecture-typeatmosphere" and preferred the morerelaxed environment that she experienced

when she and classmates worked on anassignment to design a product for sale.

The student said,You know that you're free to do whateveryou want. You can sit, you can lie on thetable if you don't want to sit. You're a lotlooser. You don't have headaches or backaches because you're free to do whateveryou want. You just get up and move, andusually you're not thinking about it becauseyou're so busy doing other things.

Bodily Excitement AccompaniesLearning

The experience of learning can alsomean bodily excitement. The body isenergetic and alert, and it encourages thestudent to learn.

One student said that when she comprehends something she has struggled tounderstand,

I get real excited, and I can go kind oftingly from excitement in my body, a littlebit like pins and needles that you feel whenyour foot's gone to sleep.... It's like a buzz,vibration, a generation of something from

my body.Another student said,There is a level of excitement to what islearned. My body may tell me to physically keep on to be excited about learningmore information to get more adrenaline. Itis a feeling of learning more and physically

pushing yourself to do that.

The bodily reaction in learning is similar to a bodily reaction in physical activity such as a sport competition. A subject

described her experience giving class presentations in the following terms:Before a group presentation, I get the samenervous, puky feeling that I got when Iskated, before I performed in a show, or ata competition. Then afterwards you get thesame, you know, euphoria of being done,

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and especially if you know you did a goodjob. It's like, "Oh, yeah I'm done Yeah "It's the same exact physical reactions thatyou'd get either way.Other subjects spoke about being en

gaged mentally and feeling warmer,about learning being visceral, and aboutsitting on the edge of a chair. When stu

dents are learning, they may experienceexcitement.

Reflections and ConclusionThe lived experiences of university students ' learning remind us that we are inthe world bodily, not just cognitively.Students don't have bodies in learning

situations; they are their bodies. The"body is indicated as the orientationalcenter in relation to everything else"(Leder 1990, 22). Our bodies, being situated, give us a sense of being here, notthere; of left and right; and of far awayand nearby. Sensorimotor capabilities are

possible because we are embodied?wegaze around the classroom, hear thesounds of voices, feel the temperature ofthe room, and so forth.

Pollio, Henley, and Thompson (1997)note that the body reacts to events, andthrough illness or injury the body mayintrude into awareness, as was the case

with students who experienced physicaldiscomfort. Leder (1990) uses the termdy s-appearance to designate one'sexplicit awareness of one's body when itis problematic. The Greek prefix dys sig

nifies "bad," "hard," or "ill." Awarenessof the body is stimulated by the dysfunction. Students who find the classroom toohot or stuffy or have backaches from sitting in uncomfortable chairs becomeaware of their bodies. The body beckons,calling the students away from learning toattend to the discomfort.

Students also were aware of their bodies when tension or dissonance characterized the emotional climate of the classroom. In some cases, such tension was

experiencedas counterproductive for stu

dents' learning. We see in students' descriptions that an awareness of their bodies recedes (Leder 1990) when engagedin learning. "Experiences of engagementappear to be among the most ordinary"(Pollio, Henley, and Thompson 1997,84). For example, when one reads, watches a movie, or has an angry exchange

with another, one is intensely focused onthe activity. Hence, losing track of one'sbody while learning suggests intense engagement. The body can also be the siteof pleasure when learning is going well.What can be done to improve students'learning opportunities in college? Itseems that students have a responsibilityto come to classes well cared for, fed,rested, and so forth. Yet this isn't easy forstudents to accomplish in a culture thatencourages an instrumental view of thebody, inwhich we condone sleeping lessand skipping meals in exchange for moreproductivity. Instructors could countersuch cultural tendencies and encouragestudents to come to class with their bodies well cared for; we could encouragethem to bring fluids to drink or snacks toeat during breaks.

While most instructors can easily conclude that

sleepingstudents are not learn

ing, we could also learn to read more subtle messages conveyed by students' bodies.

We can, for example, recognize when students are fidgety and concern ourselveswith what itmight mean. Tactful inquiryabout the disposition of thewhole class ora private conversation with one fidgetystudent may yield information about whatstudents are experiencing. Fidgeting mightmean the student is highly engaged inlearning, and her adrenaline is flowing;conversely, it could mean that her attentionis directed away from the lesson. Itmightalso mean the student finds the physicalenvironment uncomfortable, the emotionaltone of the class dissonant, or any numberof other things.

Can we counteract the physical settingthat creates discomfort in the classroom?

Until all the present, poorly designed, college classrooms are torn down, studentsand instructors are stuck with some difficult physical constraints. To help make thebest of not very good situations, studentsand instructors could come to an agree

ment about times and durations of breaks,whether fluids and food will be allowed inthe classroom, and placement and use ofchairs and desks. They can also request

more comfortable classrooms.What can instructors do about the emo

tional tone of the classroom? Here, students and instructors can create guidelines about conduct that could help

maintain a safe classroom and thereby

promote learning. For example, in a parent education class, one of the authorsexplains to students that deeply held values about family, children, learning, andsociety will be called into question anddisagreements about issues are likely inclass. She states that it is important toacknowledge the possible discomfort that

might be experienced. She asks the classto tell what they know about, stating theirviews honestly, and at the same time supporting people when emotional discomfort or conflict arises. The students andprofessor draw up guidelines for conductin the class. Examples of guidelineswhich recur are, "Try to listen withoutjudging others;" "Use I statements toclaim your beliefs;" and "It's okay to disagree, just don't get personal with it."Theguidelines are referred to occasionally tosee how well the present class is following them and to see if students want toamend them. The point here is not to control embodied learning; rather it is toacknowledge that learning requiresengagement of the whole self and thatsuch engagement may be manifested inraised voices, teary eyes, laughter, andsweaty palms. Professors and studentscan engage safely only if we have theskills to facilitate learning that goesbeyond cognition.

In conclusion, we note that when students are uncomfortable, they are awareof their bodies; but even when the students forget about their bodies, they areembodied learners. Instructors must be attentive to the learning bodies of universitystudents much more than is the case today.

REFERENCESBengtsson, J. 1998. Fenomenologiska utflyk

ter. (Phenomenological excursions). G?teborg, Sweden: Daidalos.

Dahlberg, K., and N. Drew. 1997. A lifeworldparadigm for nursing research. Journal ofHolistic Nursing 15(3): 303-17.

Fischer, C. T., and F. J.Wertz. 1979. Empirical phenomenological analyses of beingcriminally victimized. In Duquesne Studiesin Phenomenological Psychology. Vol. 3,edited by A. Giorgi, R. Knowles, and D. L.Smith, 135-58. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

Giorgi, A. 1997. The theory, practice, andevaluation of the phenomenological methodas a qualitative research procedure. Journalof Phenomenological Psychology 28(2):235-60.

Husserl, E. 1973. Experience and judgement.

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Evanston, 111.: Northwestern UniversityPress.

Leder, D. 1990. The absent body. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Maiton, F., and S. Booth. 1997. Learning andawareness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Merleau-Ponty, M. 1995. Phenomenology of

perception. London: Routledge.Polkinghorne, D. 1989. Phenomenological

research methods. In Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology:Exploring the Breadth of Human Experience, edited by R. S. Valle and S. Hailing,4160. New York: Plenum.

Pollio, H. R., T. R. Henley, and C. J. Thomp

son. 1997. The phenomenology of everydaylife. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.Vick, M. 1996. Fixing the body: Prescriptions

for pedagogy, 1850-1950. In Pedagogy,Technology, and the Body, edited by E.

McWilliam and P. G. Taylor, 113-26. NewYork: Peter Lang.

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