=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2730/paper2
|storemode=property
|title=The BBC project - Body based classrooms
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-2730
|authors=Francesco Ianì,Teresa Limata,Monica Bucciarelli
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/Iani20
}}
==The BBC project - Body based classrooms==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2730/paper2.pdf
The BBC project - Body Based Classrooms
Francesco Ianì1, Teresa Limata1 and Monica Bucciarelli1,2
1
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Torino
2
Centro di Logica, Linguaggio, e Cognizione, Università di Torino
Abstract. Despite growing strands of evidence indicate that learning pro-
cesses can be fostered by making learners cognitively and bodily active, too often
school considers learners as passive receivers of knowledge and tends to ignore
the role of the body, thereby providing disembodied and too abstract teaching
methods. We present a project in which experimental evidence on embodied cog-
nition and active learning is used to devise a training for learning from text in
primary school children. The evidence-based training, which exploits body and
sensorimotor information, involves learning of information technology and can
be easily incorporated into teaching settings and procedures. Both learning in
presence and distant learning in Covid era can benefit from bringing the body
back into the learning process.
Keywords: Active learning, Body, Cooperation, Text comprehension,
Information technology, Primary School
1 Introduction
Psychological and neuroscientific studies highlight relevance of active learning (e.g.,
[1]). Metcalfe and Kornell’s [2] study is one of the most representative. The task of the
participants was first to learn a series of words (targets) associated with their definitions
(e.g., “negotiate”: discuss with someone to reach an agreement). Later on, in the second
phase of the experiment, they were assigned to two groups. Group 1 simply re-read the
word to be learnt (target) along with the definition, both for 6 seconds, whereas for
Group 2 the target word appeared only after 3 seconds from the definition appearance.
Hence Group 2, compared to Group 1, received the correct information (target + defi-
nition) for a shorter period (3 seconds). However, as the results revealed, Group 2 out-
performed Group 1 on a subsequent learning test. A plausible interpretation is that par-
ticipants in Group 2, during the 3 seconds of delay between definition and target word,
generated the desired learning by themselves. This simple experiment shows that the
mere and passive reception of contents is not an effective method to foster knowledge
construction. Hence, making learners cognitively active should be a main goal of good
learning practices.
Initially, active learning was exclusively conceived in cognitive terms. For instance,
studies revealed that being forced to draw inferences while reading a text, as compared
to a passive reading condition, improves comprehension and learning from text as well
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Com-
mons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
2
as reading motivation [3]. Further, interacting with peers having different perspectives
[4,5] is an active and effective method to improve learning processes: the cognitive
conflict experienced by learners enhances their falsification ability, which is central to
reasoning and learning.
More recently, several studies have pointed out that mind and body are not two on-
tologically distinct entities: they influence and intertwine each other. On this line of
argumentation, those studies have suggested that learning may benefit also from active
bodily involvement. Memory traces underlying learning should be understood in terms
of “sensorimotor encoding”: they store information on the neural states underpinning
the perception of our body and our movements [6]. In this perspective, learning and
memorization processes take place through the body. Learning consists in creating
mental simulations that contain bodily format information stored in modality-specific
brain regions, and memory is tantamount to a covert re-enactment of these sensory and
motor states [7]. Consistent with this theoretical framework, it is possible to foster
learning by reinforcing bodily and sensorimotor information at encoding. For instance,
simple movements of arms and hands may have beneficial effects in several domains,
such as narrative [8] and scientific texts comprehension [9], math abilities [10], and
even foreign languages acquisition [11]. These effects hold also during the retrieval
phase [12]: if memories are sensorimotor simulations, then triggering those components
at recall should speed up the retrieval processes. Still consistent with the embodied
view, the use of body-based strategies may allow young learners to express ideas not
yet verbalized [13]. For example, children can express through gestures concepts that
they are not yet able to express in words [14]. Conversely, sensorimotor simulations
may be blocked by a concurrent task involving the same sensorimotor resources [15,16]
or by inhibiting motor areas [17], thereby inhibiting the learning process.
Despite converging evidence on the relevance of body-based practices, the school
setting has remained almost unchanged during the 1900s; teaching exploits complex
forms of reasoning in too formal and abstract ways [18]. Covid emergency urges a
quick reconsideration; distance education limits learner’s active role, as well as body
use and interactions between peers. If several areas of research point to the importance
of using the body in traditional teaching and learning settings, embodied learning may
play an even more critical role in distance education. Covid emergency also highlights
the necessity to integrate traditional learning settings with new technologies. In line
with this consideration, the European Commission works on several policy initiative to
modernise education; most relevant, it provides funding to promote digital technologies
used for learning and measures the progress on digitization of schools. There is a gen-
eral agreement on the fact that computer science should be part of general education
from the earliest stages to teach young people how the computer works, to introduce
them to computer science and to increase thinking skills. In particular, the use of social
platforms, besides being relevant to learn to use computers, may be relevant for a two-
fold reason. First, it allows teachers to easily create and/or share files, videos, and im-
ages that promote engagement in the learning process [19] and sensorimotor experi-
ences [20]; second, it enables children possibly remote connected at home to learn ac-
tively with teachers’ support and to socially construct contents through conversation
3
with peers [21]. Some platforms more than others seem to facilitate peer communica-
tion and allow students to create a group with other children to collaborate at the same
project; teachers can monitor the information shared by children and they can com-
municate them both individually and collectively [e.g., 22,23]
We present a project whose aim is to foster learning from text through active partic-
ipation, body involvement and the use of computers. In particular, the focus is on learn-
ing from history and science texts in third-grade children of primary school.
The project involves the collaboration of the Department of Psychology with the
Cooperativa Sociale Terzo Tempo and Istituto Comprensivo Tommaseo of Torino. The
school board will allow educators of the cooperative: 1) to initiate co-planning with the
teachers involved in the project, 2) to support those teachers in the realization of the
project, both in the first and in the second phase of the project. The details of the first
phase are described below; the second phase foresees the actualization of the project in
several third-grade classes of primary school. Indeed, the project aims at devising a
training for effective learning to replicate on a large scale. Further, the development of
the project foresees seminars whose aim is twofold: first, to engage parents in their
children’s learning process, second, to foster a strong school-family alliance favourable
to children’s wellbeing.
2 Learning from Texts in Body Based Classrooms
A deep comprehension of a text is tantamount to the construction of an articulated
mental model [24] or situational model [25] of the text. Readers build such models
integrating the information contained in the text, their previous knowledge and all the
inferences they draw from the text. The training rests on five main evidence-based as-
sumptions:
1. Readers take advantage from interventions that focus on teaching words mean-
ing, above all of connectives that express causal relationships; they enable
learners to construct and organize a cohesive text mental representation [26].
2. Readers benefit from questions designed to prompt causal connections be-
tween different parts of the text, such as “How does this sentence relate to
something you previously learned in the text?”: self-questioning urges readers
to adopt an active role in processing text contents thereby favoring reading
comprehension [27].
3. Readers who mentally simulate sensory and motor information contained in
the text, incorporating them into the mental model achieve a deeper text com-
prehension [28].
4. Gestures produced during reading favour such mental simulation of the text
[29]. Further, gestures at times convey information that are not conveyed in
speech thereby revealing unexpressed thoughts.
5. Argumentations (one or more statements that are used to provide support for
a conclusion) foster learning: both reasoning and comprehension abilities im-
prove when children may know another person’s point of view [30].
4
General Setting
The subjects of the project are either learners connected in remote from home, or
learners physically at school, or both. Teachers and educators create an account on a
social platform and organize the classroom page to facilitate children’s navigation of
webpages. Subsequently, teachers explain to the class how to use the platform and how
to share contents, in line with the modules of the project. In this phase, teachers may
take the opportunity to teach children how to behave responsibly on online social plat-
forms. Finally, because of the peculiarity of the training, teachers and educators verify
that children have the freedom to produce gestures/movements deemed congruent with
the text to be learnt, which will be projected on the wall of the children’s classroom and
displayed on the computer screen for online learners.
Modules 1 and 2: vocabulary knowledge
Module 1: Understanding causal connectives
Children will be trained to actively generate sentences containing causal connectives
(e.g., “why”, “although”, “therefore”, “anyway”). To improve generation effect, teach-
ers will create on the social platform one post for each connective and children will be
encouraged to comment on these posts with sentences involving the connective and
based on their daily activities. In the following modules, whenever they encounter such
connectives in the text, children will comment on how the phrase connects with previ-
ous parts of the text.
Module 2: Understanding words meaning
The module introduces the meaning of words referring to names and actions that the
child will encounter in the following lessons (e.g. chapter of history or science). Teach-
ers and educators will identify the words in the text supposed to be unknown or unfa-
miliar to the children. Each word will be written on a cardboard, and placed in a jar.
Then, every child will randomly pick a cardboard and will be invited to say the mean-
ing. Once the correct meaning will be identified, the teachers will assist children into
the construction of plausible phrases containing these words.
Modules from 3 to 8: they apply to each portion of the learned text
Teacher and educator bring out pupils’ expectations about the topics that they will
have to deal with, highlighting their previous knowledge about these issues. The ex-
pectations analysis is important because it shows to learners how the concepts they
already possess are linked to those that they will acquire, thereby inducing an active
knowledge construction rather than a passive knowledge reception.
Module 3: What I think I know
5
This module aims at introducing the topics that will be studied in the following les-
sons. Starting from the reading of titles and paragraphs, children will be invited to say
what they know and what they imagine about the topics, making a way to favor the free
expression of their thoughts. The teacher, along with the educator, will write on the
blackboard and differentiate what is consistent with the addressed topics from what is
not related, clarifying the connections with the subject of learning. Teachers will upload
a map on the social platform and will encourage children to express their doubts about
these concepts and the links between them. Teachers will clarify that any doubt ex-
pressed on the social platform should be solved by classmates rather than by them-
selves; they will just give feedbacks about what is correct and what is wrong. Finally,
teachers and pupils will discuss together to verify that all doubts are dissolved.
Module 4: Let’s do detectives
In this module, children will be asked to pretend they are detectives looking for
clues: they need to find hints about what they already know in the text.
Module 5: Let's make a mental movie
Starting from the reading of the single concepts, children will be encouraged to men-
tally simulate the states of affairs described in the text. This will be presented as a train-
ing to personify “the film director”, where they will be asked to use their senses to
create a mental movie of the events described, as if they were the movie’s character. In
this way, children will learn to use multisensory experiences to build a mental simula-
tion able to facilitate deep text comprehension. Subsequently, children will be encour-
aged to share their mental movie on the social platform to favor peer interaction about
their sensorimotor experiences. In this way, children could re-experience sensorimotor
features starting from different points of views.
Module 6: Embodying concepts
Children will be invited to represent with gestures and body movements the concepts
in the text. Each child will be invited to individually read portions of text many times
and to accompany reading with gestures and movements congruent with the concepts
in the text. Children should feel free to take the time they need to complete the task.
Module 7: Take care of steps
To favor a deep processing of the text, children will be invited to make inferences
about the learnt concepts at the end of each mini paragraph. Furthermore, in order to
facilitate comprehension of the links between learned concepts and those contained in
the next paragraph, teachers will provide a series of verbal clues that make explicit the
main concepts that they will have to deal with on the social platform. Before the begin-
ning of the new paragraph, children will be encouraged to write down what they know
and what they imagine about these concepts, and their possible links with what has been
6
previously learned. In this way, children will produce the content to learn by them-
selves, drawing a series of knowledge-based and text-based inferences.
Module 8: Let’s put pieces together!
Children actively co-participate in making a written summary of the text. Children
will utilize the social platform to cooperate in the construction of the meaning of the
text. A child will generate the first sentence of the summary; then another child will
generate the second sentence starting from the first, and so on until children believe that
the summary will be complete. At the end, teachers will verify the correctness of the
summary and will discuss with children regarding the wrong concepts.
Experimental validation of the training
The assumption according to which our training may improve learning abilities will
be experimentally validated. Two third-grade classes will participate in the validation
process. While studying the same text, one class will participate in the critical training
(experimental group) whereas the other class will receive school’s regular instructions
(control group). The two classes will be randomly assigned to the experimental and the
control groups. At the end of the training phase, both groups will be tested to evaluate
their knowledge about the studied text. Further, the validation foresees a pretest-posttest
control group design: 2 weeks before and after the training, both groups will be tested
for their ability to learn from a text; we shall use two texts concerning the same school
subject (e.g., history or science). This procedure will enable us to ascertain whether our
training may have a beneficial effect on the ability to learn from a text (the process
involved in knowledge construction), rather than just on the acquisition of text contents.
3 Conclusions
School can do more and better in making learners active and deeply involved in the
learning process. The Covid emergency forces us to rethink the school learning process
urgently. In the light of scientific evidence, we have developed a training for learning
from school texts. The training was developed for third graders and is feasible both in
case some pupils of a class are physically present in the classroom and others remotely
connected via computer. Its relevance relies in making pupils active also through bodily
involvement and use of information technology.
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