Body, Mind and Culture: Basic Approaches to Education

Professionalised knowledge has become an increasingly important topic in modern education. School teachers and other educators are thus expected to be informed and aware of intentions and results of their specific efforts. This symbolic approach mostly accompanies a parallel and often shadowed dimension of practical knowledge and practical mastery in educational enterprises. Social inheritance of both educators and educated, bodily experiences and capacities, as well as bodily mediated processes of learning has in that regard been offered less attention. This outline thus points to tensions between conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious dimensions of education. Keeping in mind that educators are themselves educated throughout their whole life span, the course explores these questions from a broad scope of theories and research: the concept of civilisation, the body-mind dualism, body language, body and gender, body and sports, social class, critical theories of education and the ways social interactions are mediated bodily, as well as expressed in rituals. Through these approaches it becomes possible to investigate the important and by the same token quite unnoticed cultural practices in everyday life in families, institutions and in leisure life.

The course renders skills and general competence on formulating and discussing topics within educational sociology. The course renders knowledge about and theoretical perspectives on:

• The relationships between bodily and mental dimensions of culture and education.
• The tensions between conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious dimensions of education.
• The relationships between pedagogical interactions and contextual conditions.

Teaching methods and activities: Up to 2 hours of lectures per week, 1 hour seminar per week. Lectures and seminars may be concentrated in specific periods during the term. The lectures can be organised as a combination of lectures and text reading seminars.