Enactive Movement Integration: a didactic model for embodied learning in primary and secondary schools

The workshop presents a didactical model for Enactive Movement Integration (EMI) containing six categories of bodily practices: to mime, dramatise, gesticulate, shape, imitate, and sense. The didactic model is informed by the theory of enactive cognition and developed through action research in Danish primary schools, where teachers and researchers collaboratively developed movement activities in teaching. The activities include, for example, pupils engaging in literature analysis by miming the characters or working with historical periods requiring pupils to become characters and partake in relations with other pupils, using a set of rules established to support specific features. Thus, the bodily practices yield impressions and experiences of a sensory-motor, affective, and intersubjective nature, which provide the opportunity to work with and process complex academic concepts. The didactical model helps teachers plan and conduct Movement Integration in classroom teaching in a way that embraces the pupils’ embodied subjectivity and enactive engagement with the subject matter. The workshop comprises a theoretical introduction to EMI and practical examples of body practices as teaching activities of the subject matter.