| Summary: | Enactive Teaching in Higher Education is a narrative exploration of embodied teaching in the
university classroom based on the enactive view of cognition described by Francisco J. Varela,
Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. On the surface, their philosophy is a heavily theoretical
critique of epistemological dualism. More profoundly, it is an imaginative proposition for
reinventing ourselves as human beings by acknowledging the participatory nature of perception,
how reflection-as-experience implicates us in relationships that determine our most fundamental
senses of identity.
Enactive philosophy is pervasively ecological. It asks us to consider not only how body, mind,
and spirit are interconnected, but how subjective senses of self are disrupted and transformed by
interactions with other people. It is a view that extends Hannah Arendt's embrace of human
togetherness. For this reason, enactive philosophy raises questions about what it means to be and
become a dynamic, well-balanced educational participant.
My curiosity is how enactive philosophy informs personal and collective senses of participation
and identity in adult and higher education specifically. I focus this interest around two teaching-related
questions: (a) What do embodied views of cognition reveal about adult learning and self-development?
and (b) How do adults' embodied perceptions of themselves and others support
holistic understandings of teaching? My inquiry draws on three data sources: (a) a critical
literature analysis of embodied pedagogy, (b) a field study that documents perceptions of
embodied teaching and learning in a graduate seminar, and (c) reflections on my journey as an
elementary teacher preparing to become a university instructor. I present my findings thematically using narratives to bridge theory and practice. The themes
offer a framework for enactive teaching. My senses of narrative, like my senses of teaching, are
guided by enactive philosophy. The significance of this view is to trouble instrumental and
prescriptive views of education while accentuating a connection between embodied knowing and
pedagogies of possibility. === Education, Faculty of === Graduate
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