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Embodied Learning in Shifting Mediatized Academic Environments: Transitioning and Interactive Skills in Education

This webpage presents the results of the research conducted under the international project (Fondo Fomento a la Investigación 2023 of Panamerican University, Grant ID: UP-CI-2023-MX-11-COM).

The research team (prof. Mindaugas Briedis (head, Mexico), prof. Mariano Navarro (Mexico), prof. Ion Copoeru (Romania), prof. Thea Ionescu (Romania), Regina-Erna Rejtő (Romania) produced three Q1 articles, internet platform, and organized the international seminar dedicated to the spread and future extension of accumulated results.

The founding hypothesis of the project states that embodiment strategies and relevant extending, modifying, and amplifying technologies have an impact on learning process and a positive impact related to learning outcomes. Embodiment offers either a route to more effective learning or a diagnostic tool for measuring conceptual understanding and improving of learning environment(s).

Topics discussed – post-Covid situation regarding learning environment, qualitative and quantitative methods in education, embodied learning and technologically based affordances, affection by learning environment as media ecology, intersubjectivity in and beyond classes, habits, emotional health and applicability of skills during and after the learning process, problems regarding innovation and creativity in relation to education today.

The restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic and the transition in higher education to the online environment were associated with a number of changes in the students’ social life. The majority of students were forced to leave college campuses and return to the ‘family nest’, which meant a loss of independence and lower levels of life satisfaction (Preetz et al. 2021).

a clearer understanding is needed of the tensions and opportunities in the transition from one environment to another,

In order to understand the skills and the environmental factors required for coping with the new normality during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we used a qualitative method: the focus group (see Miles, Huberman, and Saldana 2013). Specifically, we aimed to produce a first-person view of the skills required to cope with the major challenges posed by the pandemic: the abrupt move to online tuition, and then the almost equally abrupt move back to face-to-face schooling.

Based on an analysis of the research on the students’ perceptions of online education and the transitions during the COVID-19 pandemic, we extracted several main themes, which formed the basis for elaborating the guideline questions for the focus group (see Appendix I). Following the development of the questions, participants were recruited for two focus groups with the intention of having a maximum of ten participants per focus group. The participants were recruited from the Master’s programmes of two specialisations: political science and intrnational relations, respectively psychology and educational sciences. One criterion for inclusion was that participants had to be part of the 2019–2022 undergraduate promotion, i.e. they had to have been students in the second semester of the first year of study in March 2020, so that they were at the university level for both transitions. It was also required that they be native speakers.

Focusing on exploring students' perceptions of the experience they went through, namely the transition from the face-to-face learning environment to the online one at the time of the declaration of the state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first aspect we address is the students' reaction to this change and transitioning of skills.

In education, skill’s transferability became a major issue once achieving practical knowledge and professional experience became legitimate aims of the teaching process. This can be acquired if skill is detached from mere instrumental reason (Hinchliffe 2002: 189).

Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) and Dreyfus (2014), relying on Merleau-Ponty, have already identified three different meanings of embodiment, which in fact correspond to three levels at which embodied processes take place: the physical embodiment of a human subject; the set of bodily skills and situational responses that we have developed; and the cultural abilities and understandings that we gain responsively from the cultural world in which we are embedded. The adequate description of their articulation, as the key to understanding skilful performance, requires extended empirical research regarding the transition from one learning environment to another, as well as theoretical investigation into the concept of skill as it is precisely situated at the interface between the learning process and the environment.

The understanding of skills must therefore be broadened in a way that takes into account the social and cultural dynamics in which skills operate while also addressing their internal dynamics. These internal dynamics are detectable not only at the level of the individual agent, but also at that of collective action. From this standpoint, skills enact a world, and, more precisely, a world for virtually each and every one of us. They belong to a system of actions which does not take the existing environment as such; they complexify the agents’ environment and transform it into a plurality of interpenetrated worlds, which are deployed on several levels (physical, cultural, social, normative). Skills are heavily dependent on environmental factors, such as physical space, interactions, and bodily and psychological states. For example, the transition to online learning was dominated by the reaction to a new situation characterized by a restriction of the use of public space and a confinement to limited physical space.

In summary, we can say that a variety of skills helped students to cope and readjust during the two transitions. Organizational skills, such as planning, time management, and information seeking were indicated as being very useful in this context. Likewise, selfefficacy, striving, and determination (the desire to finish university) helped students to be more ambitious and engage in school and extracurricular activities for self-development. Social skills—namely, ‘the ability to make friends’ (FG2, P1) 2 as one participant statedalso played an important role. At the same time, resilience was noted as a skill that helped students to readjust—the idea of ‘taking the situation as it is’ (FG2, P6).

Skills

The exercise of skills usually involves complex situations, in which social interaction generally plays an important role. Here we may speak of ‘cognitive ecologies of skill’ (Sutton and Bicknell 2022: 4) presupposing the cognitive, emotional, social, cultural, technological, and technical (Sutton and Bicknell 2022: 4). The skilled performance can be seen ultimately as a form of flexible, embodied, and collaborative intelligence. The success of a skilled action is highly dependent on the attention that is given to changes and the capacity to see new opportunities for action and to rapidly shift the course of action. There also appear to be certain necessary stages of adaptation. The immediate reaction can be typified by the phrase ‘focus on myself’, and this was followed by a rediscovery of others. Hence, the dimensions in which skills emerge and are configured are as follows: (a) operative resources: emotional (with positive or negative valence), social, cultural, technological (involving the use of equipment), technical (a kind of dexterity); (b) the background or the setting in which they are operating: normative (again, with positive or negative valence), physical, and social; c) a movement of scale between personal (self-care in our case) and inter-personal (intersubjective).

Because of the pre-reflective nature is hard to grasp embodied kills verbally. Moreover, it is why it is hard to explain and teach the, that's is why metaphors and gestures distinct great instructors.

Drawing on John Elliot’s (1993) model of situational understanding, Hinchliffe drafts an approach deemed to ‘cover any situation that requires an interpretative understanding allied to a series of actions—a performance—orientated to producing a publicly defined outcome or process’ (2002: 194).

His exposition of the concept of skill involves the following aspects:

i) ‘The exercise of a skill is dependent on the interpretation of context by the practitioner’.

ii) ‘In any complex situation it is likely that a range of possible skilled performances will meet criteria of adequacy: there can be no simple checklist approach to assessment’.

iii) In the course of exercising a skilled activity, the theory emerges as interpretation.

iv) ‘A skilful performance is not (necessarily) a seamless execution of technique’.

v) ‘Whilst a novice may need to learn a set of techniques, a practitioner will have certain capacities whereby those techniques can be deployed. It is these capacities which ultimately need developing’ (Hinchliffe 2002: 194–5).

Re-Action and Re-Adaptation to Change

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first aspect we address is the students' reaction to this change. Following the thematic analysis, we observe a distinction between the experiences associated with the academic environment and the students' personal experiences. At first returning home was perceived as “a holiday”, a return to the comfort of the parental nest: “I added an extra year to my childhood.” (P1_8, male, 24 years old).

But later for many participants, this stage, in which they returned home and continued their studies online, was on the one hand a disappointment and, on the other, a stagnation in their development.

From the participants' experiences it seems that carrying out learning activities from home has meant more disadvantages than advantages. On the one hand, there is the limited opportunity to socialise and have peers as role models. On the other hand, doing more than one activity learning, relaxing, working - in the same space, and sharing the space with family members meant a number of distractions and challenges.

Conclusions

Traditional education programs today still rely on theories that are mentalistic, i.e., they do not take into account the grounding provided by the body for cognition, thus greatly reducing the possibilities for embodied creativity generated by the conceptual apparatus of embodied cognition and new technologies. However, with the advent of embodied cognition and creativity, mentalism has been challenged. Recent research in embodied cognition and creativity provides an alternative to this approach. Theories of embodied cognition suggest that the mind is not an abstract and isolated entity but is rather deeply embedded in the body’s sensorimotor systems, which opens up new possibilities for the creative appropriation of learning environments and their technological mediation, as well as the motility of the human body and its prosthetic amplification by technology. Hence, embodied creativity includes creative strategies that emphasize or are generated by the sensori-motoric, affectional body schema in a technologically mediated and intersubjectively distributed environment.

Embodied creativity research has opened up the way and suggested methodologies to reflect on and expand the impact of embodied activities on creative thinking, stimulating the development of new techniques dedicated to amplifying creative output in return. As such, embodiment offers a valuable paradigm for a more effective learning and for sharing the results of a learning process, as well as a diagnostic tool for measuring conceptual understanding and improvement of learning environment(s). This embodied approach has the potential to increase personal engagement and motivation both inside and outside of the learning environment. Finally, these conceptual and methodological changes bring us closer to explaining how something new emerges within traditionally established (educational) environments.

The exploration of embodied skills in learning environments highlighted the complexities of skill transferability, particularly in the context of transitions between different educational settings, such as the shift from in-person to online learning and back. This necessitated a deeper theoretical and empirical investigation into the nature of skills, their situational dependencies, and the implications for educational practices in a rapidly changing landscape. The paper emphasised that the integration of cognitive, social, and cultural factors is essential for understanding skilled performance, as it highlights the dynamic interplay between individual capabilities and the socio-cultural environment. A more comprehensive approach is needed in order to underscores the importance of adaptability and collaboration in skill execution, particularly in response to changing contexts.

The empirical study highlighted the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' social and academic lives, revealing that the transition to online learning and subsequent return to in-person education led to increased loneliness and stress, while also emphasizing the importance of various skills—such as organizational, social, and emotional abilities—in helping students adapt to these changes. In our view, the findings are revealing the necessity of understanding the interplay between emotional responses and adaptive skills in navigating the challenges posed by such unprecedented circumstances. The theoretical and empirical investigations pointed to the idea that skills are not only a product of agents’ mastery but are dynamically constructed and influenced by the surrounding circumstances and emotional states experienced during these transitions.

On this basis, we draw the conclusion that the understanding of skills must evolve to encompass both the social and cultural dynamics in which they operate, as well as their internal complexities. The con ept of skill has therefore to be built in the theoretical framework which is able to describe the articulations of heterogenous components and to highlight the importance of contextual interpretation in skill deployment. This broader perspective reveals that skills are not merely individual competencies but are embedded in a network of interactions and resources that shape their execution and effectiveness.

Conclusions of the students

As a final element, participants were asked to share a conclusion they have about the transitions they went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, which "had its pluses and minuses" (P1_1, male, 24 years old). From the experiences shared by the students, on the one hand, an assumed realism emerges, which helps them to cope with the dynamic and complex environment in which they live, in which they do not have everything under control and which demands adaptability: "It seems to me that this whole period has had a contribution in bringing us back to our feet. To see that at any time things can happen in our lives, in the world, and totally turn our lives upside down. And to be prepared not to be taken by surprise because the environment is dynamic, anything can happen." (P1_5, female, 23 years old).

On the other hand, some students note that they are left with certain psychological problems (difficulty in maintaining attention, memory problems), which they relate to online learning: "I really feel that I've got some imbalance there because I used to be a very, very focused person and now I can't pay attention at all. And that's how it started. And with the memory I feel like it's messed up pretty badly too." (P2_4, female, 24 years old); "It also ruined my memory" (P2_1, female, 23 years old). Journal of Philosophy of Education

Another element, which several students mention, when expressing their opinion on the whole experience they went through as students in the pandemic, is loss. The loss of the experience of being a student ("It seems to me that it ruined my studenthood. I mean the experience of being a student. (...) And it seems to me that it affected a very important period in our lives, when we could have made friends or who knows what..."; P2_4, female, 24 years old) and the feeling that their wings were clipped ("I felt that my wings were clipped and somehow I also lost interest in college"; P2_2, female, 23 years old) are the most striking. One participant concludes the experience of the pandemic as following: "I feel like the pandemic stole memories I never had" (P2_1, female, 23 years old).

In conclusion, with regard to how students experienced the return to the face-to-face learning environment, there are discrepancies in their approach to the situation - anticipation or reluctance. At the same time, this period involved, in addition to the joy of returning, given by reconnecting with peers and new opportunities to live the student life, a number of stressors. The main feature identified by the students as facilitating their readjustment was human interaction. Although initially the presence of others seemed "unreal", their physical presence and interaction with them helped students in readjusting to the face-to-face education.