Methodology, The BodyMind Problem and Experiential Education Associate Professor Phillip Payne, Dr B

1
Methodology, The Body-Mind Problemand
Experiential Education Associate Professor
Phillip Payne, Dr Brian Wattchow, Dr Trent Brown.
Project Summary Outdoor, environmental and
physical education are, potentially, examples of
the slow pedagogy movement offered to educators
through an approach to learning and teaching
called experiential education. Typically, much
experiential education occurs actively, via the
body and mind outside in authentic social and
wild open spaces. Experiential education
offers a valuable alternative to the inside
classroom of contrived learning and taming of
the mind. It, potentially, overcomes the chronic
problem of the mind and body split that fuels the
theory practice gap, both of which are major
impediments to learner engagement and pedagogical
development.
Yet there is insufficient research evidence about
the effectiveness and values of the active
learning by doing that is fostered in
experiential education. Existing research
methodologies and their methods tend to focus on
what the learner knows or has attitudes to,
or beliefs about, or their understandings.
There is an assumption that what the brain or
mind knows can be measured and predictions can
then be made about outcomes for learners and
their behaviours. Such research claims risk
becoming disembodied and decontextualized. Yet
it is the learners body that is the active site,
in numerous lifeworld settings, where he or she
perceives, senses, acts, interacts and
communicates relationally in that everyday
lifeworld. Recent developments in cognitive
science, phenomenological philosophy,
physiological psychology and cultural studies
have identified the active bodys central role in
learning and language. Experiential education,
via environmental, outdoor and physical
education, provides a key in the real world of
the primacy of practice (Archer, 2000) to test
these recent developments. But existing research
designs, methodologies and measures cannot
adequately capture and represent the wholeness
and complexity of the body-minds relational
knowing and doing. New research designs,
methodologies, procedures, means of data
collection and its interpretation and
representation are required if experiential
education is to prove, qualify or withdraw its
claims for greater student engagement and
learning, better pedagogies and the advancement
of education. Payne (1995, 1997, 1999, 2003,
2005a,b, c) and colleagues Wattchow (2005, 2006)
and Brown (2007) in the Movement, Environment
and Community (MEC) research group are
establishing a theoretical and empirical basis in
the social sciences and humanities literature
that recognizes the vital relationship between
methodology, the body-mind, their mutual
pedagogies and experiential education. MEC aims
to further the cause and legitimise the place of
experiential education in education policy and
curriculum and pedagogical development.