Embodied experience in educational practice and research
Jan Bengtsson
University of Gothenburg
Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies
Box 300
S-405 30 Gothenburg
Sweden
+46 31 786 21 66
[email protected]
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Abstract
Although experience plays a crucial role in different educational activities as
well as in educational research, it cannot be assumed that educational
practitioners or researchers have an explicit understanding of experience or
even less a theory of experience. The understanding of experience is rather
implicitly assumed in the ongoing practice. However, it is unsatisfactory that
educational practitioners and researchers are unaware of the notions that
their practice is based on and, consequently, unable to discuss them with
other people. The purpose of this article is to offer a theory about experience
in the form of a critique of educational experience in the sense of discussing
the limits and possibilities of educational experience. The article takes its
point of departure in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of
experience, including his criticism of empiricism and cognitivism, and
extends it with a critique of educational experience.
Keywords: experience, educational practice, educational research,
empiricism, intellectualism, cognitivism, embodied experience
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Embodied experience in educational practice and research
What is the place of experience in education? It seems that experience plays a
crucial role in people’s life. The daily life of human beings is to a large extent,
directly or indirectly, based on experience. Most of the time we take it for
granted and are not aware of its crucial role in life before something happens
to it. For this reason we can learn much about experience from
understanding when deficits occur in people’s experience, for instance when
the function of one or more senses are reduced, and how it is to live with
reduced possibility to experience. Irrespective whether experience is reduced
or not, people learn during their entire life by experience. In particular
informal learning is to a large extent based on experience, but not everything
is learnt by experience. People also learn from their parents and other people,
and it could be argued that experience is filtered by our culture. Learning in
school, on the contrary, is very often intellectual or cognitive to its character,
although the learning content is said to be based on experience. In some
educational programmes experience is introduced as the basic principle for
teaching and learning. Rousseau’s philosophy of education is a classical
example of such a programme (Rousseau 1971) and in contemporary
research experiential learning has been defended by for instance Kolb (Kolb
1984).
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Professional activities in different occupations are to a large extent based on
experience. This does not only apply to manual work, but also to professions
that include theoretical knowledge in their work. Within the teaching
profession experience plays a decisive role both in the teacher training and in
the daily practice, but it also includes theoretical knowledge. It seems that
the teaching profession contains a fundamental tension or ambiguity
between experience and theory.
Contemporary educational science can almost not be thought of without
reference to experience. Since the different sciences started in the renaissance,
they have established themselves as empirical sciences – and empirical
science is equivalent to research based on experience. During the history of
empirical research the relationship between experience and theory has
predominantly been understood as a one-way directed movement from
experience to theoretical knowledge. This understanding is not necessarily
expressed as a theoretical position, such as in the epistemology of positivism,
but is more often an implicit position in the scientific practice of the
researchers, that is, a kind of naïve positivism. Although it might be
conceived of as contradictory and excluding the possibility of objective
knowledge, the question arises whether scientific research can and should be
based only on experience.
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Against this background we might draw some preliminary conclusions. First
of all, although experience plays a crucial role in different educational
activities as well as in educational research, it cannot be assumed that
educational practitioners or researchers have an explicit understanding of
experience or even less a theory about experience. The understanding of
experience is rather implicitly assumed in the ongoing practice. However, it
is unsatisfactory that educational practitioners and researchers are not aware
of the notions that their practice is based on and, consequently, unable to
discuss them with other people. An explicit theory is needed. In this article,
the intention is to give a contribution to a theoretical understanding of
experience.
Secondly, a theory of experience for educational practice and research has to
be formulated in the form of a critique of educational experience in the sense
of discussing the limits and possibilities of educational experience. What is
possible to experience according to the proposed theory? What are the limits
for educational practice and research? This article takes its point of departure
in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of experience and extends it
with a critique of educational experience.
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Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of experience is expressed in his book
Phénoménolgie de la perception, published in 1945. The book was translated
into English in 1962 by Colin Smith under the title Phenomenology of
perception. The entire book could probably be read as a contribution to the
theory of experience. I think, however, that this is a narrow reading of this
extensive book (both in relation to its content and number of pages). An
ontological reading would do more justice to the book. In the context of this
article, I have selected two parts of Merleau-Ponty’s book that explicitly
discuss classical theories of experience. They are the introduction, entitled
“traditional prejudices and the return to the phenomena”, and part two,
chapter one, with the title “sense experience”.
In these chapters, Merleau-Ponty criticizes empiricism and intellectualism as
two main approaches to understand experience. The first approach
understands experience by way of sensations and the second approach by
way of intellectual or cognitive activities of the mind. At the time when
Merleau-Ponty discussed empiricism it was both as a classical theory
represented by philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac, Mill,
Mach etc. and a contemporary philosophy represented by logical positivism
(Schlick, Carnap, Neurath etc.), Ayer, Russell etc. Also intellectualism was at
this time known both as a classical philosophical position under the name of
rationalism, for example Descartes and Leibniz, and as a contemporary
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philosophy, in particular among neo-kantian philosophers such as Cohen,
Natorp, Cassirer, Brunschvicg etc. However, Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of
empiricism and intellectualism does not have philosophical theories as his
main target. He mainly discusses psychological theories of experience, which
finally presuppose the philosophical theories. Perhaps it could be said that
he examines the scientific use of the philosophical theories. To the extent that
psychology was once the foundation of empirical educational research, and
education and psychology are still allied with each other around the world,
there seems to be a close relation also to education. Today, we can in Sweden
see a return to psychology. In the report about the proposed new Swedish
teacher education (Franke 2008), psychology is introduced as the most basic
knowledge that teachers need in their work. “A new teacher education need
a firm foundation of scientific based knowledge /…/ Such a foundation
include contributions from modern brain research, developmental
psychology, cognitive psychology, differential psychology, social
psychology, sociology and above all educational psychology…” (Franke
2008, p. 203). In a Swedish context, however, this position is not
uncontroversial. Anyhow, as we will see, the relevance of Merleau-Ponty’s
theory of experience is not limited to psychology, but has an extended
relevance for educational practice and research that Merleau-Ponty himself
did not include in his book.
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I am going to introduce Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of experience in mainly
three steps. I will start by a presentation of his criticism of empiricism,
followed by his criticism of intellectualism and ending up in a presentation
of his own theory of experience. His own theory is, however, already
indirectly visible in his criticism as the background against which his
criticism is expressed. Conversely, the criticized theories give a perspective
to Merleau-Ponty’s own theory.
Empiricist theories of experience
In the theory of experience we find the seemingly immediate and obvious
notion of sensation: I have a sensation of red, blue, hot or cold. However,
nothing could be more confused than this concept, and because of this the
classical analysis of experience missed the phenomenon of experience.
Sensation might be understood as an experience of a state of myself. It would
perhaps come close to the greyness that surrounds me without distance
when I close my eyes. Sensation is in this sense an undifferentiated,
instantaneous and punctual impression. This kind of pure impression,
Merleau-Ponty argues, is not possible to perceive. What we experience is
always part of a field and never absolutely separated and isolated from
everything. A figure on a background is the simplest impression that can be
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given to our senses. An area totally homogenous would offer nothing to
perceive.
Although sensations might not be possible to define as pure impressions, do
we not have to accept that sensations are qualities of consciousness? We
would then know what a sensation is from, for instance, seeing a colour or
hearing a tone. Merleau-Ponty points out that red and blue are not
sensations, but something sensed, and the quality is not an element of
consciousness, but a property of the object. Colour is only determinable if it
covers an area of a certain size, if it is an element of a spatial configuration
and if it is the colour of a particular thing, for instance the red carpet in the
bedroom. Qualities are never immediately experienced and all consciousness
is consciousness of something. Perceptions are made out of the perceived.
Two mistakes are made about quality. First, to make it into an element of
consciousness when it is an object for consciousness, and to take it to be not
communicable when it always has meaning. Second, to believe that object
and meaning are completely filled out and determined by the quality.
Qualities are experienced in a visual field surrounded by a region. The
surrounding region is indeterminate and ambiguous. In classical theory of
experience the world is taken to be an objective world where everything is
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unambiguously determined. When the world is experienced in a confused
way, for example a misty day, it is said that the world in itself is not
confused. It is only confused for us. It is ambiguous only because of our
inattention. Merleau-Ponty concludes that this is an auxiliary hypothesis to
save the prejudice of an objective world.
Also in the physiological theory of perception an objective world is
presupposed. It is assumed that a constancy hypothesis is at work that
guarantee that objective stimuli results in (cause) exact correspondences
(copies) in the perception. The straight lines by Müller-Lyer or the face-vase
by Rubin shows the error of this hypothesis (see figure 1 and 2). If we turn
back to the phenomena, they show us the apprehension of a quality attached
to a complex perceptual context.
Figure 1: The Müller-Lyer illusion
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Figure 2: The Rubin illusion
Merleau-Ponty argues that a science that wants to establish universal
objectification by necessity had to fail to understand experience. This kind of
science cannot do justice to the phenomenal world, but is rather the
expression of a scientific ideal. For experience it is essential to admit for the
ambiguous, the shifting and influences from its context. If we want to
understand what sensation is, we have to explore this pre-objective field.
In empiricism every sensation is independent from other sensations. If all
consciousness is based on sensations, there is nothing left for consciousness
to achieve that the sensations had not already achieved. Sensations coexist
and succeed each other without any reference to each other in opposition to
the experience of the evening that refers to the night.
Empiricism’s explanation of the unity of an experienced thing, for example
the boat that I see from the shore, is the principle of association, according to
which the unity is caused by the proximity and similarity of the sensations.
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However, an impression can never be associated with another impression by
itself. On the contrary, it is because we experience the wholeness of a thing
that we can discern proximity and similarity between its parts. Nor does the
impression have the power to arouse other impressions. Association never
has the force of causality.
Empiricism has sometimes used a theory of memory projection to explain
different experiences. One example is rapid reading. The impressions that
the eyes become of the letters are not complete and the question arises how it
is possible to read the text. This is, then, explained by a memory projection
that complete the words. However, memory can first contribute to complete
the words when we have recognized the words. This implies that in the same
moment as we might recall memories they are not necessary. Thus, the
projection of memories is not part of an intellectual theory, but a
consequence of empiricism, concealing phenomena instead of elucidating
them. The theory is based on the postulate of the deduction of what is
experienced from what is furnished by the sense organs. Experience is built
up with states of consciousness in the same way as a house is built with
bricks, and a mental chemistry is evoked to fuse the materials into a compact
whole. However, perception is not the experience of a multitude of
impressions accompanied by appropriate memories that may complete them.
Perception is not to remember.
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Empiricism is a thinking that ignores itself as thinking and install itself
among the things. Consequently, empiricism is not possible to refute by
descriptions of phenomena. It does not see the role of life in experience and it
reduces the content of experience. “The physicist’s atoms will always appear
more real than the historical and qualitative face of the world, the physicochemical processes more real than the organic forms, the psychological
atoms of empiricism more real than perceived phenomena” (Merleau-Ponty
1962, p. 23). When cultural objects and human faces with their physiognomy
and magical power are understood as transference projection of memory, the
human world has meaning only by accident. In this impoverished theory of
experience perception becomes a pure knowledge operation, a progressive
registration of qualities, and the perceiving subject stands in front of the
world as the scientist in front of his/her experiments. Also nature is reduced
in the theory of empiricism and is understood as a collection of stimuli and
qualities.
An intellectualistic theory of experience
On the opposite side of empiricism we find its intellectualistic antithesis.
Intellectualism is represented by the neo-kantian tradition, in the social
sciences exemplified by Piaget and Weber. Both of them take the objective
world for granted and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in
which perceptive consciousness constitutes its object. Intellectualism
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explains the objective world by the deduction of the necessary cognitions for
its possibility and empiricism by the reduction to its basic elements.
Both theories have a distance to experience instead of keeping close to it. This
can be shown by the concept of attention. Let us start by empiricism.
Although what we perceive does not correspond to the objective qualities of
the impression (for instance the straight lines by Müller-Lyer, see figure 3),
the constancy hypothesis forces us to admit that there exist “normal
sensations”. They must then be unperceived and the attention is ascribed the
function to reveal them in the same way as a searchlight illuminates objects
already existing in the dark.
Figure 3: The Müller-Lyer illusion
The notion of attention in intellectualism has a more productive function. In
attention I experience an elucidation of the perceived object. From this,
intellectualism assumes that the experienced object must already contain the
intelligible structure that is revealed. If consciousness finds a geometrical
circle in the circular form of a plate, it is because it is already there. On the
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other hand, an inattentive experience is obscured by unclear concepts or by
being half asleep. Compare with Kant’s idea that intuition without concepts
is blind.
Both empiricism and intellectualism are looking for a different and more real
object than the experienced object and the function of attention is to reveal
the real object. Both in empiricism and intellectualism this task is impossible.
Empiricism is too poor; it does not know what it is looking for. Intellectualism is too rich; it already knows what it looks for. This is a variation of
Plato’s learning paradox in Meno (Plato 1985). “Empiricism cannot see that
we need to know what we are looking for, otherwise we would not be
looking for it, and intellectualism fails to see that we need to be ignorant of
what we are looking for, or equally again we should not be searching”
(Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 28). Both theories see the object as an objectiveabsolute object and fail to see the experienced object, which is incomplete as
well as a part of the life and knowing of the subject.
According to Merleau-Ponty attention is creative. The first operation of
attention is to create a perceptual or mental field, within which an object is
noticed as invariant among the various sensations that are experienced. For
example, within the field of my own body attention brings out a tap on my
left shoulder, perhaps even a friendly tap, among all sensations far down in
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my left arm. To pay attention is not to elucidate pre-existing data, but to
bring about a new articulation of them. Attention is the active constitution of
a new object, which make explicit and articulate what was until then
presented within an indeterminate horizon.
Intellectualism introduces judgment to overcome the basic difficulty in
empiricism, that is, to explain the surplus of perception compared with
sensation. In intellectualism perception is not the mirroring of objective
things, but judgement, predication of qualities or conceptual content.
Merleau-Ponty criticizes intellectualism for being the antithesis of
empiricism, for living by the refutation of empiricism. Hence, intellectualism
does not try to reflect perception as it is, but offers a construction that is the
opposite of the empiricist construction.
Also intellectualism fails the original meaning that precedes and is
presupposed by every judgment. Intellectualism fails to differentiate sensing
from judging, seeing from thinking one sees, and is not capable to
understand illusions, because, like empiricism, it assumes an objective world,
which the judgments are supposed to express, but in the illusion (for instance
Zöllner’s illusion or Rubins face-vase, see figure 4 and 5) two judgments are
contradicting each other.
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Figure 4: The Zöllner illusion
Figure 5: The Rubin illusion
Phenomenology of embodied experience
As the opposite of empiricism intellectualism replaces sensation by thinking.
Just as little as empiricism intellectualism reaches the concrete phenomenal
world and its exploration. Instead of concrete reality and concrete
consciousness respectively one posits absolute objectivity on the one hand
and absolute subjectivity on the other.
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The claims of absoluteness find its legitimacy in the natural attitude, where
object and subject are given in absolute evidence. But instead of taking this
evidence for granted, we have to explore it and ask for its origin. In this
exploration, all claims on the absoluteness of reflection must be abandoned,
that is, in the sense of absolute thinking or self-thinking. The intellectualistic
reflection fails to reach the living density of perception because it looks for
the conditions of the possibility of absolute being. Instead it is forced to
postulate an absolute subject and absolute thinking. Merleau-Ponty insists
that reflection has to be understood in a concrete way, that is, situated and
never completely transparent, because it is tied to human existence.
Reflected in a concrete phenomenological way, perception does not appear
as a conceptual submission of the given, but as a source of insights where
concepts originate rather than the opposite. By focusing on what appears in
lived experience we will find something very different than general meaning
or punctual sensation. Instead, we will find lived reality that in its
concreteness and incompleteness is the basis of the subject and the object as
well as the origin of experience.
The perception of distance with intermediate objects (in painting known as
the “central perspective”) can neither be explained by empiricism (for
instance by the constancy hypothesis) nor by intellectualism (for instance by
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a conclusion from the apparent size of the objects). The sensed qualities do
not furnish perception with the necessary causes or premises in order to
explain what is perceived as effect or conclusion respectively. Merleau-Ponty
appeals to us to abandon our ideas of absolute being and to return to the
appearance of things in experience. By this turn, pre-objective and prereflexive consciousness becomes available. In this consciousness we are not
forced to choose between cause and reason (on the contrary, these notions
have their origin here), but the notion of motivation applies.
Motivation is a living force that orients and forms the flow of phenomena in
the sense that one signification may provoke another signification and in this
way constitute a uniform signification of the experienced without the
interference or supervision of an ego. The movements of the lived body form,
with its sense organs and the external phenomena, such a well-connected
system that when the eyes turn links the sight of a new position in space
appears before the eyes have arrived at the position. Merleau-Ponty says that
this mode of existence of the lived body is an annex of our body scheme (we
will return to the notion of the body scheme). In this way it is also possible to
understand the perception of distance. The experience of distance is
motivated by intermediate objects, which can neither be conceived of as a
context of causes nor as a context of reasons. Instead, it is a pre-objective
context of motivation.
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All experiences are tied to our own lived body. Merleau-Ponty gives an
example from visual perception in the introduction to the second part of
Phenomenology of perception. “When I walk around my flat, the various
aspects in which it presents itself to me could not possibly appear as views of
one and the same thing if I did not know that each of them represents the flat
seen from one spot or another, and if I were unaware of my own movements,
and of my body as retaining its identity through the stages of those
movements” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 203). All abstract formulations of space
are finally referred back to lived space. Without a psycho-physical subject
there is no direction, no outside and no inside.
External perception and the experience of one’s own body vary with one
another because they are two aspects of one and the same act. This
interdependence constitute the body scheme. In the hallucination called
“heautoscopy”, when a person sees herself outside herself, she has the
double experience that life escapes her and that the substantiality of the body
disappears. This example shows how inner experience of one’s own body
implies certain external experiences. Conversely, external experience also
implies certain inner experiences of one’s own body. Stratton’s famous
experiment by inverting the visual field of his subjects confirms this insight
(Stratton 1897). The subject is at first helpless in the world: the implications
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of the external objects for the experience of one’s own body did not
correspond with each other. But already on the third day, the subject could
manage in the world. External perception and inner experience of one’s own
body had been coordinated with each other into a functioning system.
Merleau-Ponty concludes that the theory of the body scheme is, implicitly, a
theory of perception. If we experience with our body, we also have to
conclude that the body is a natural self and the subject of experience.
Empiricism ignores the subject of experience. It describes the world in terms
of sensations conceived of as mental things and does not include a subject in
the descriptons. The empiricist thinker does not observe that he/she
perceives or thinks and, in this way, is a subject.
Intellectualism has certainly found a subject, the transcendental ego, but it
only reverses empiricism. The whole system of experiences is subordinated
to a universal thinker, who, as the condition of the possibility for all
experiences, including the empirical self and one’s own body, exists beyond
the system of experience. In intellectualism it is senseless to say “I saw it with
my own eyes”, because the eyes as well as the senses belong to the world of
objects and could not be called subject. The transcendental ego is, in
principle, not possible to experience. It is a metaphysical thing in a similar
way as the objective things in themselves.
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This opposition between empiricism and intellectualism has to be overcome
if the subject of experience is going to be available.
Every sense has its own space and they cannot experience each other. Let me
use two of Merleau-Ponty’s examples to illustrate this. When I open my eyes
in the concert hall again, the visual space seems small compared to the
auditory space, which the music filled out. A blind person who is operated
and for the first time sees marvels at the visual space to which he/she has
gained access. The surprising and hesitant attitude of the person shows that
the visual space is not identical with the tactual and/or auditory space.
Every sense organ explores the object in its own way. Nevertheless, the
senses coexist and a communication between them is possible. This is clearly
showed by the example of the operated blind person. Before the operation
he/she may have had a conceptual understanding of the visual world, but
intelligence can only be a substitute for a real inter-sensorial communication
and cannot replace the real visual world. The recently operated person,
therefore, experiences the world differently than he/she had expected. For
the operated person, to whom a new sense is opened up, the new sense has
to be brought into communication with the other senses on a sensuous basis.
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Consequently, the senses are distinct from each other and from intellectual
understanding in so far as each of them contains a never completely
transformable structure of existence. The senses are not identical, but they
communicate with each other. This is possible to recognize, because the
Kantian space formalism is rejected (there is not only one single space in
which a sensuous multiplicity is presented) and replaced by the lived body
as subject of experience.
“Music is not in visible space, but it besieges, undermines and displaces that
space/…/The two spaces are distinguishable only against the background of
a common world and can compete with each other only because they both
lay claim to total being” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 225). The natural perception
is achieved with our whole body all at once and it opens up a world of
interacting senses. In fact, in every sensuous experience are the other senses
represented. A sensuous object contains qualities from the visual, hearing,
tasting, smelling and tactual senses experienced in the object itself. Hence,
synaesthetic experience is not anything extraordinary: the tinkling sound of
the glass is in the seen glass.
The basis for the unity of the senses is movement understood as a project
towards movement, that is, being-in-the-world of human beings. The lived
body is a system of equivalents and transpositions between the senses. With
the notion of the body scheme it is not only possible to understand the body
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in a new way, but also, through this notion, the unity of the senses and the
unity of the body. Merleau-Ponty says that the experiences by the different
senses are “pregnant one with the other” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 235), and
continues “my body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at
least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my
comprehension” (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 235).
When I perceive the table in front of me, the act of perception occupies me so
much that I do not perceive myself perceiving it. This classical formulation of
the phenomenological theory of intentionality, Merleau-Ponty extends by his
theory of the lived body. According to his theory, the act of perception is
embodied in the sense that I perceive with my body and my senses, and
therein is included my habitual knowledge of the world, which can also be
described as an implicit or sedimented body of knowledge. The person who
perceives is not spread out before him-/herself as a consciousness, but has
historical density, takes up a perceptual tradition and is faced with a present.
Embodied experience in education
When experience is embodied, experience is relative to the individual body
that experience, that is, to the lived body as subject. Thus, children with
small bodies have a different perspective of experience than adults. The
world is not only seen from a lower perspective, but it is felt in their bodies
when they use different things such as chairs and tables, when they walk
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inside or outside of buildings, etc. Children’s experience of the world is then
not the same as the world of adults. In the education of children, it seems
important to take the embodied experiences of the children into
consideration.
Compared to other human beings in different ages small children have,
through their bodily existence, a typical way of acting in the world and of
relating to other children of their own age and to adults. Their bodies are
supple and vigorous, the distance to the ground is short, and in their familiar
surroundings (at home or in kindergarten) they have a spontaneous and
unhesitating way of moving and encountering peers. This particular way of
bodily existence give small children corresponding experiences, which are
clearly different than adult or old peoples experiences. This typical style of
bodily existence has been described as toddling by phenomenological
researchers (Løkken 2004). Phenomenological research has showed that
toddlers have an extensive social life with each other, communicating their
feelings, values and intentions by way of bodily gestures, actions and
vocalisations (Johansson 1999, Johansson 2007, Johansson 2008, Løkken 2000,
Greve 2007).
This kind of research on small children was earlier prevented by
intellectualistic or cognitivistic approaches, which assumed that social
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experiences were possible first with the development of cognitions and
language that served as the basis for communication. Moral relations
between children were excluded on equal grounds. In Piaget’s study on the
morality of children (Piaget 1932), he understands morality from a Kantian
point of view as the ability to take responsibility for one’s actions, and this
demands a self-reflexivity that small children do not have. In Piaget’s theory,
small children are simply amoral.
Children’s experiences are different than adults’ experiences not only
because of the different size of the body, but also because their lived bodies
have not yet sedimented a tradition in their way of seeing, acting, feeling, etc.
However, the children’s experiences do not lack meaning and they do not
need to wait for the proper cognitive development to have meaning. The
point is that the experienced content of children has a meaning relative to
their short history of experience. The continuing experiences will certainly
lead to a sedimented tradition with historical density that will give the
experienced content particular meaning, but nothing in this development
will guarantee the same development for all children around the world nor a
continuing and linear development during the whole lifetime of a person.
This is due to the fact that development is based on embodied experiences in
a human world and not on the necessary cognitive development that will
secure the objectivity of the world.
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This experiential understanding of human development implies the
acquisition of a world of things, other people, language, values, etc. that is
taken for granted in a natural attitude or in the form of a habitualized way of
being. The world is in this sense everything that is possible to experience and
do. Moving to another place, changing school or work, having an education
or a new hobby may give the world a new direction. In this way, it is not
only the individual that develops, but also the world. The life of the
individual and the world are interdependent. It is a life-world. Experience is
thus always worldly and the world experienced.
In a similar way as the world of small children is not the same as the world
of adults, the worlds of adult people with different experiential background
are not identical. Their earlier experiences do not have the same sedimented
tradition and they act and understand situations differently. This is similar to
small children to whom the experienced world has a different meaning than
to adult people. The consequence of this view is that we, in different
educational situations, have to take into consideration that the worlds of
different generations, genders, ethnical and religious groups, etc. are not
exactly the same. If we believe and act as if we shared one and the same
objective world, it will be the world of the person with the relative strongest
power position that will define reality.
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In any occupation, the practitioners acquire not a whole world, but a regional
world. Such a world is part of the life-world and people move between
several regional worlds in their daily life, for instance from the home in the
morning to the working place during the day and to some recreation activity
in the evening. In every occupation, the practitioners need to learn what is
demanded from the occupation, for instance what is necessary to see, hear,
feel and do together with other people. Different tools that are used have to
be integrated with the professional’s own lived body. The hammer cannot be
just any kind of thing for the carpenter, but has to be integrated with his/her
own body as an extension of it. This is one essential difference between
things that can be described by their visual qualities and tools that are
known by their qualities of use. It also clearly illustrate that knowledge is not
only external to practice, but can be an integrated part of practice. Heidegger
argues that practice should not be understood as atheoretical. It has its own
sight (Heidegger 1927). Intelligence is in this sense not limited to the head,
but finds its expression in the hands as well as other parts of the lived body.
Also professionals that include theoretical knowledge in their work, such as
teachers, can be understood in a similar way as the carpenter’s integration of
the hammer with his/her lived body. The theoretical knowledge that is part
of the teacher education has to be integrated with the teacher’s body as an
extension. When the knowledge has sedimented in the body as a way of
28
seeing, talking, listening, feeling, acting and thinking, the knowledge has
become a tool for the teacher. As long as the knowledge is not a tool for the
teacher, it is only an intellectual object whose theoretical qualities can be
discussed and compared with other theories.
Learning in everyday situations is normally experiential and pre-reflexive
and pre-cognitive and takes place in a world. Learning can thus not be
identified with reflection or be assumed to presuppose reflection. But, of
course, learning can be motivated by obstacles in daily life that demand
reflection. Exceptions can, however, not be used as a measure for
understanding learning. In school contexts, however, reflexive and cognitive
learning seems to a large extent be the dominant mode of learning.
Consequently, learning has to be understood pre-reflexive and pre-cognitive
as well as reflexive and cognitive depending on context, but it is always
situated in the world of the learning subject.
If we are changing focus from educational practice to educational research,
we have, first of all, to notice that the empirical researcher of education
always presupposes his/her own lived body. It is impossible to step out of
the lived body and become a disinterested observer of reality. The body is
always with us, even if we do not notice it because of our engagement in the
object of study or because we, for ideological reasons, do not want to accept
29
its epistemological consequences. We experience with our bodies or, more
exactly, our bodies experience. Without our lived body, there are no
experiences upon which our empirical research could be based. The lived
body, however, cannot be understood as an objective body existing in an
objective world. The lived body is first of all and most of the time an agent,
living in a human world together with other people. There is
interdependence between the life of the lived body and the world. The one
does not exist without the other. Empirical research thus precedes by and
presupposes not only the lived body in isolation, but also its world, that is,
the life-world.
In daily life, sedimented experiences give direction and meaning to our
present experiences. Experience is thus impregnated with meaning, but this
meaning is implicit and has not been the object for critical examination and
discussion. In empirical research, however, the basic assumptions in the
process of acquiring knowledge have to be made explicit, that is, they have
to be explicitly formulated in the form of a theory. Empirical research can
never start from an atheoretical point of departure. It starts either from the
implicit and sedimented assumptions of everyday life or from an explicitly
formulated theory. However, it has to be noticed that not only the
assumptions of everyday life presuppose the embodied existence in the
world, but also the conditions of reflection and theoretical formulations arthe
30
same. The results are thus relative to the embodied position in the world. If
empirical research starts with an explicitly formulated theory and if the
theory is going to have a real function in empirical research, it has to be
integrated with the researcher’s experience, thinking and action, that is, it has
to be transformed into a tool for the researcher. Some of the basic notions
that the empirical educational researcher need are a theory about the
embodied and worldly existence of educational activities, which is the object
of educational research, as well as a theory about experience, which is the
means of empirical research. The two theories are interrelated to each other.
One theory of this kind has been discussed in this article.
31
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