Teaching 8th grade math using the body

About 15 years ago when I lived in London, I had the opportunity to experiment with teaching curriculum subjects like mathematics and biology and English through dance and creative movement. Even at the time this way of integrating movement with curricular subjects as a pedagogical method was new and exciting. I would work alongside the subject teacher, say a biology teacher, and together we would design the lesson plans such that students learned biology topics through working creatively and expressively with the body. There were many debates at that time regarding the intrinsic value of dance, which would be the value of dance as an art form, and the instrumental value of dance, which would be using dance to teach something else.

Over the years I have thought a lot about this debate between the intrinsic value and the instrumental value of the arts in the context of education. And I have come to the understanding that this is a binary that does not serve us well. Through movement we learn about many things. We learn how to move, we learn what it means to move. But we also learn what it means to work collaboratively, to creatively iterate an idea, to communicate. So my question then became why can't we on other things as well? Such as how numbers related to each other, or how to manipulate quadrilaterals to form other shapes. The instrumental argument is that movement is being used to teach mathematics. But what if, because we use movement, we understand or relate to mathematics differently? Can the inclusion of embodied pedagogy in math teaching actually change the way we relate to math and the way we understand math itself?

This last week feels like culmination of sorts for all these questions and curiosities around how embodied pedagogy impacts the teaching of what we call curricular subjects. This is because as part of my PhD research I have had the opportunity to design a module to teach standard 8 mathematics using embodied pedagogy. I had the opportunity to trial this module with a group of very engaged and curious 8th graders. It was very exciting to be able to finally systematically and rigorously study something that I have been working with for these past 15 years.

I am very much looking forward to the next steps of analysing the data and writing up the findings of this first phase of the research.

Hegemony of Narrative Ontology - reserach insights from Open Invitation

Open Invitation_Field Research

A post by Abhinav, who came along on a field trip to record sounds of the rocks!

Artists Locked In: Note to Self

This is something I wrote on the request of Aastha Gandhi, for Studio 155 Artist Collaborative, in Delhi.

Note to Self.

What (the f***)?

We have discussed ad-nauseam the positives and the negatives of this pandemic, the social distancing and the isolation. An international tour is cancelled (boo!), a webinar with folks from remote parts of the world is attended (yay!). We all take a moment to acknowledge the hectic pace of our lives and appreciate this enforced break. We dutifully do some inner work, some journaling, and make some meaningful comments on the nature of our life, or if we are feeling slightly more generous, on life in general.

Then what?

We try to reinvent ourselves for the current times, make our work relevant, explore the digital space. Do the dishes. Go for a walk, try to stay away from social media (because it’s toxic, duh!) but can’t. Post. Check. Wash a few more dishes. Check again. Am I still relevant? Is the world still interested in me?

So what?

We realise we are stuck. Stuck in this weird time-space. In limbo. Unable to do the things we used to do. The things we love. The things we were good at and known for.

Now what?

Now I have to say something meaningful, cool yet off hand. Something so simple it was obvious all along, and yet changes lives profoundly, because I’m an artist who continues to be relevant in the pandemic after all.

Here it is – I try not to disappoint!

Is art really relevant? Are we as artists relevant? Do we have to take on this burden of making a difference? What if we give ourselves a break? A real break. And stop trying to prove that we matter. And instead we wait. Without knowing what we wait for. When it will appear. What it will feel like. But wait anyway, until we are sure. Sure in our bones, in our blood, that it is time, and we are ready, to act again.