Embodied Learning: How Movement Improves Memory and Creativity – Brian J. Birdsell
April 26 @ 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM
KIOXIA AIINA – Rm 602 (Google Maps)
Embodied Learning: How Movement Improves Memory and Creativity
I always think of him as one of the first to employ his legs as an instrument of philosophy.
โ Rebecca Solnit (referring to William Wordsworth)
This presentation discusses topics from a recently published book by the presenter entitled Moving Bodies, Wandering Minds: How Movement Enhances Creativity and Language Learning.
Excessive sedentary behavior has become a widespread problem across all age groups, driven by modern lifestyles and reinforced in schools where students spend much of the class day sitting. This persists despite wide-established evidence that physical activity (PA) improves cardiovascular health, lowers cancer risk, and supports mental health. More recently, research has highlighted cognitive benefits of PA, such as improvements in working memory, cognitive flexibility, creativity, and attention. In the first part of this presentation, I review this research alongside my own work examining how PA and physical enactment enhance foreign language vocabulary retention. This approach is part of โembodied learning,โ an education framework based on the idea that cognition is grounded in bodily experiences and that movement can actively support learning at any age. Additionally, drawing on creativity research and my own current research project, I present how movement may enhance creative thinking.
In the second part, I share practical activities I have used to increase student movement both in and outside the classroom, including walking for creative writing, teaching abstract concepts through movement, and speed presenting. Weโll close with discussion and idea-sharing, inviting participants to ask questions, reflect on their own classrooms, and share any movement-based activities they might employ for language learning.
Brian J. Birdsell received a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham, UK and currently is an Associate Professor in the Institute for the Promotion of Higher Education and Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hirosaki University. His research interests include metaphor, embodied cognition, creativity, and CLIL.
ยฅ1000
Free for JALT members.
