Empirical research into embodied meaning making suggests specific
sensorimotor experiences can support children’s understanding of abstract
science ideas. This view is aligned with enactive and grounded cognition
perspectives, both centred in the view that our ability to conceptualise emerges
from our experiences of interaction with our environment. While much of this
research has focused on understanding action and action processes in
individual children or children in pairs, less attention has been paid to affective
dimensions of young children’s group interaction, and how this relates to
meaning making with body metaphors. Indeed, Gallagher describes how no
action exists in a vacuum, but rather revolves around a complex web of
affective-pragmatic features comprising a ‘Landscape of Interaction’ (2020,
p.42).
This research project addresses gaps in research in understanding young
children’s affective engagement from an enactivist cognition perspective. It
takes a Design-Based Research approach with an iterative design orientation
to examine young children’s interaction with multisensory body-based
metaphors through an embodied participation framework. A series of empirical
studies with young children, aged 2-7 years, comprising of experiential
workshops, build iteratively upon each other. A novel theoretically informed
method, Affective Imagination in Motion, is developed involving several
purpose-built multisensory body metaphors prompts to enable access to
dimensions of young children’s affective engagement.
This research makes theoretical and methodological contributions. It extends
the theoretical notion of ‘affect’ from enactive and grounded cognition
perspectives through identifying key interactive processes in young children’s
engagement with multisensory action metaphors. In addition, the novel
method offers a contribution as a way of ‘looking’ at affect within a group
situation from affective-pragmatic and social embodiment perspectives.
Finally, the research contributes to embodied learning design frameworks
offering a guideline for designers wishing to inform their work from enactive
cognition perspective.