ELLA researchers have had the honor to hold keynote lectures at recent international conferences in language, physical, and dance education. Principal investigator of the ELLA project Professor Eeva Anttila gave her keynote “More than movement: The potential of embodied learning to support pupils’ holistic growth” at the AIESEP 2024 International Conference “Past meets the Future”, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 13–17 May 2024. ELLA’s post doc researcher, university lecturer and associate professor Sofia Jusslin was keynote speaker at the conference Exploring Language Education (ELE), Åbo Akademi University, 21–23 May 2024, Vaasa, Finland. Her keynote was entitled “Thinking and doing literacies and languages otherwise: Texts, bodies, and arts in language education”. In addition, Anttila held a keynote lecture focusing on “Embodying hope through dance” at the daCi – Dance and the Child International Conference, 7–12 July 2024, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her daughter dancer Suvi Honkanen joined her on stage performing the contents through dance.

Read more about the keynotes in the abstracts below:

“More than movement: The potential of embodied learning to support pupils’ holistic growth” by Eeva Anttila

During her presentation, Anttila outlined the notion of embodied learning and its theoretical foundations. She discussed the so-called embodied turn that has roots in phenomenology and art philosophy and is currently advanced by several fields, including neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Recent research supports the view of cognition as embodied. This means that the brain, body, and environment are entangled, and that cognitive and motor systems are united in perception and action, as well as in learning and knowing. An increasing number of educational scholars attest to the significance of mind-body integration in education. Embodied learning can be broadly defined as a conception of learning where learners are holistically engaged and intertwined in their social and material surroundings. Bodily engagement is a broader notion than just physical activity. A view of embodied learning articulated in arts education and dance pedagogy underscores that embodied activity goes beyond visible, bodily activity to also account for inner bodily sensations, experiences, and physiological changes. Thus, embodied learning extends beyond learning through movement. In embodied learning non-symbolic sensations generated by physical action and/or multisensory engagement become interconnected with symbolic knowing, and lead towards complex meaning-making processes within the social and cultural world. Through this process movement, emotions and thoughts become connected. Reality and imagination may intertwine in these meaning-making processes, and the borders between science and art may become blurred.

Anttila’s keynote at the AIESEP conference was supported by percussionist Jarmo Hovi. Photo: Mariana Siljamäki

“Thinking and doing literacies and languages otherwise: Texts, bodies, and arts in language education” by Sofia Jusslin

Inspired by the conference theme of breaking boundaries for language education, this talk raised questions and provocations regarding how literacies and languages can be thought and taught otherwise. Jusslin approached these inquiries from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Recently, posthumanist and new materialist theories have entered the fields of literacy and language education, radically shaking how literacies and languages are understood. These theories move beyond human-centered understandings, emphasizing literacies and languages as relational, embodied, and material processes (Toohey et al., 2020). While embodiment and materiality have been addressed in other theories, posthumanist and new materialist theories take a step further by emphasizing the entanglement of bodyminded humans with materials in the doing of literacies and languages, and researchers have identified this as a paradigm shift (Kuby, 2017).

In this talk, Jusslin traced the movements of this ongoing paradigm shift, from sociocultural and multimodal theories towards posthumanist and new materialist theories. Against this theoretical scene, there are several pedagogical implications for literacy and language education. These theoretical approaches to pedagogy encourage us to re-think what counts as literacies and languages in education and how we teach literacies and languages. To illustrate how this might be enacted in educational practice, Jusslin offered examples from her research where she has explored boundary-breaking practices involving texts, bodies, and art forms in doing literacies and languages otherwise.

Jusslin speaking at the ELE conference. Photo: Ida Rebers

“Embodying Hope through Dance” by Eeva Anttila & Suvi Honkanen

In this presentation, Eeva Anttila and Suvi Honkanen explored hope as an embodied phenomenon and illuminated how hope may be ignited and sustained through dance. They focused on hope from the perspective of sensing, of the living body, and viewed hope as action and affect. Affects are energies that move across human and non-human bodies, animating shared spaces. From this perspective, hope takes place in the present moment, without the need to focus on future outcomes, benefits and aims. This way, it is possible to sense meaningfulness here and now. Seeing hope as affect and action challenges the psychological view of hope as a form of human motivation connected to a desired outcome or future goal.

        Understanding dance education as pedagogy of hope seems important in developing the field during these challenging times. Pedagogy of hope connects the mind and the body. It is grounded in practice and involves action. Instead of “instilling” hope in learners, it aims to evoke hope and give it guidance. Hope as action and affect defies gravity and makes it possible to sense lightness, connectedness and an animated sense of life. Dance education also has great potential in re-imagining processes related to constructing identities. Acknowledging that young people’s identities are fluid and evolve through non-binary modes allows for bending norms. Through exploring boundaries in a safe environment, young people can find new forms of embodied expressions.    

During these times of cri ses, it is important to appreciate the significance of art in igniting and sustaining hope in children. Experiencing meaningful moments here and now may ignite hope even when the future is uncertain, as it is for many children. Dance educators and artists also need to be animated and mobilised by hope in order to counter disengaging and immobilising forces in society. The presentation included examples and insights from Eeva’s past and present research within diverse and vulnerable communities, including the on-going research project on Embodied Language Learning through the Arts (ELL             A).

Honkanen and Anttila at the daCi conference.
Photo: Mirjam Lamut