On the Education About/of Radical Embodied Cognition
Frontiers in Psychology November 5, 2019 J. van der Kamp, R. Withagen, Dominic Orth
This theoretical paper argues that mainstream university education, which prescribes and transmits knowledge, conflicts with the core tenets of radical embodied cognitive science. The authors propose an alternative 'weak education' based on the philosophies of Tim Ingold and Gert Biesta, rooted in Dewey's pragmatism and Gibson's ecological approach. They emphasize educating attention and the teacher's participatory role, contrasting with prescriptive pedagogy. Using examples from teaching motor skill learning, they illustrate how weak education aligns with non-prescriptive, non-representational principles. The paper concludes by considering implications for a radical embodied science of motor skill learning, suggesting that teaching should foster exploration and attunement rather than explicit instruction.