Learning with Body, Mind and Heart: Teachers’ Perceptions of an Em-bodied Education Pathway in Early Childhood Education. An Explo-ratory Case Study
Parole chiave:
Embodied Education; early childhood education; creativity; art education; inclusion.Abstract
This article presents a predominantly qualitative exploratory case study of a year-long art project carried out in a pre-school in the province of Ancona, Italy. The framework combines Embodied Cognition, Embodied Education, atelier culture, and Universal Design for Learning. The data set consists of eight semi-structured questionnaires completed by eight teachers, comprising fifteen Likert-type items and three open-ended questions. Closed-ended data were analysed descriptively, whilst narrative responses underwent deductive-inductive reflexive thematic analysis. Teachers’ evaluations converged on participation, creativity, peer collaboration, inclusion and professional learning, with greater variation observed in relation to verbalisation and individual differences. Five themes emerged: bodily-material ecology; creative agency, error and confidence; multimodal meaning-making; inclusion and intersubjectivity; and the primacy of process and teaching professionalism. The discussion interprets the findings through the ten principles of the Grammar of Embodied Education.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Giulia Cesaroni, Anna Borrasi, Michela Cardillo Stagno, Annamaria Gentile, Antonio Cuccaro
Questo lavoro è fornito con la licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.
