Embodiment in physics learning: A social-semiotic look

• Main Authors: Elias Euler, Elmer Rådahl, Bor Gregorcic
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2019-05-01
• Series: Physical Review Physics Education Research
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.010134

In this paper, we present a case study of a pair of students as they use nondisciplinary communicative practices to mechanistically reason about binary star dynamics. To do so, we first review and bring together the theoretical perspectives of social semiotics and embodied cognition, therein developing a new methodological approach for analyzing student interactions during the learning of physics (particularly for those interactions involving students’ bodies). Through the use of our new approach, we are able to show how students combine a diverse range of meaning-making resources into complex, enacted analogies, thus forming explanatory models that are grounded in embodied intuition. We reflect on how meaning-making resources—even when not physically persistent—can act as coordinating hubs for other resources as well as how we might further nuance the academic conversation around the role of the body in physics learning.