Leveling the playing field: Grounding learning with embedded simulations in geoscience

Teaching Approaches to Learn Theoretical Contents in Physical Education: A Study about Contour Lines

Purpose: Fostering student’s map reading skills, specifically understanding contour lines, is a challenging area of the Physical Education curriculum. Method: 238 students in their first year of secondary education (Mage = 13.1) were randomly assigned to one of these experimental conditions in physical education classes: (a) Teaching intervention 1 (TI-1): integrating the concept of contour lines into practical sessions of acrobatic gymnastics; (b) TI-2: theoretical sessions regarding contour lines; (c) Active control (AC): reading an introductory text about topographic maps; and two passive controls (PC) without any intervention, (d) PC-1 and (e) PC-2. Results: All students, except for PC-2, improved their knowledge of contour lines. Nevertheless, performing corporal figures (in TI-1) and employing pointing and tracing gestures (in TI-2) helped students to correctly resolve a broader range of tasks. Conclusions: The results highlighted the benefits of teaching proposals that favor movement and the experience of the body.

Embodied cognition and STEM learning: overview of a topical collection in CR:PI

Embodied learning approaches emphasize the use of action to support pedagogical goals. A specific version of embodied learning posits an action-to-abstraction transition supported by gesture, sketching, and analogical mapping. These tools seem to have special promise for bolstering learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, but existing efforts need further theoretical and empirical development. The topical collection in Cognitive Research: Principles includes articles aiming to formalize and test the effectiveness of embodied learning in STEM. The collection provides guideposts, staking out the terrain that should be surveyed before larger-scale efforts are undertaken. This introduction provides a broader context concerning mechanisms that can support embodied learning and make it especially well suited to the STEM disciplines.