This is the 9th post in Over a cuppa, a series which offers prompts to reflect on learning and teaching during the time it takes to make and drink a cuppa. I have set myself the challenge of keeping these posts to 300 or so words.
Today’s reflection prompt is: consider the five senses in your teaching.
This morning, I joined colleagues for breakfast and a campus walk guided by the work of an interdisciplinary research team Go Slow for a Mo. As a living lab for evaluating the benefits of spending time in nature, our campus offers an invaluable resource for staff and students. Over the coming months, we will be sharing ways to incorporate this Stress Regulator Trail in your teaching and research practices. I still have grass on my feet and birdsong in my ears.
Last year, I attended two virtual seminars on Learning Through COVID that focussed on embodiment and experiential learning: Why we need our body to learn and work and Rethinking embodied learning. Via Zoom, the presenters prompted participants to use their whole bodies during the sessions (take a look at the pre-readings and videos via the links above).
Over the last couple of years, I have been working on a project that takes a sensory and place-based look at the higher education conference experience. We are drawing on the methods of cultural history research to analyse the experience of conference participation and the themes of place, sociality, embodiment and sensory experience. This led me to pick up Chatterjee and Hannan’s (2015) edited collection Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education which discusses the pedagogies of artefacts, artworks, materials and matter.
Tomorrow, I will be teaching a seminar on the evolution of higher education, and want to engage students across the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains (based on Bloom’s taxonomy for learning and revised by Anderson and Krathwohl). How are you being attentive to the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touch of learning experiences?
Anderson, L., & Krathwohl, D. A. (2001). Taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman.
Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay Company.
Chatterjee, H. J. and Hannan, L. (2015) (eds.) Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge.
Catch up on previous posts in this series
Access previous ‘Reflection’ posts at this link
Share this: