E37. Embodiment, intelligence and putting the body back into education with Guy Claxton and Emily Poel

I’m joined by Guy Claxton (Emeritus Professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester's Centre for Real-World Learning) and Emily Poel (a Berlin-based embodiment practitioner and trainer). Their new book, Bodies of Learning: How Embodiment Science Transforms Education, is now available.The book makes a serious, scientific case for putting mind and body back together - not as a wellbeing add-on, not as a few movement breaks in a long sit-down day, but as a different starting point for thinking about what learning is, and what schools are for.In this conversation, Guy, Emily and I talk about:Why the mind-body split, traceable from Plato to Descartes, still shapes what schools believe intelligence is.The 4Es of embodied cognition: enactive, embodied, embedded, extended.Why doing might be more primary than knowing.The "body-mind".Resilience as the willingness to stay intelligently engaged with something difficult.Epistemic safety in the classroom, and what it asks of teachers.Embodied leadership - not just as slowing down, but as nuance, discernment and options.The question they want every reader to sit with: what would an education at which everybody could win actually look like?Bodies of Learning is available from 26 May - https://www.bodiesoflearning.org/