A class focused on exploring history through hip-hop, part of the MIT Project on Embodied Education led by Professor Jennifer Light.
Thinking on Your Feet
Fall 2024 CAST Cross-Disciplinary Class
Exploring the potentials of embodied education through dance
About
In Jen Light’s cross-disciplinary course Thinking on Your Feet: Dance as a Learning Science, students explore the pedagogical possibilities of dance across the academic curriculum.
Ancient wisdom and modern science agree that our bodies in motion are vital to cognitive processes and powerful media for learning—and yet today’s K-college faculty and students spend much of their class time sitting still. In an era when so much educational innovation is organized around technology, this class explores the untapped capacities of the bodies that we already bring to school.
Course readings span scientific studies of bodies and movement in cognition and learning, qualitative and quantitative assessments of dance as an instructional method in disciplines from computer science to literature, and research into the history and anthropology of education and school reform. Ultimately, class participants work together to choreograph curricula that stretch students’ bodies and minds.
Schedule
Upcoming Events
STS.024/CMS.524 Thinking on Your Feet: Dance as a Learning Science
Offered Fall 2024
Exploring the past, present, and future of dance as a learning science, the class combines readings and discussion with experiential learning. Readings span the science of movement and learning, studies of educational dance, and research on school reform. Lab exercises led by guest artists introduce the rich possibilities of dance for teaching subjects across the curriculum. For their final project, students choreograph a lesson on a topic of their choosing. This is an introductory class; no dance background is required. Limited to 20 students.
Collaborators
Professor Jen Light’s teaching and research aim to close the gap between the growing body of research on movement and the learning process and the pedagogical strategies that educators use, finding ways to integrate physical activity and academic instruction at all levels. Light’s published work explores the history of science and technology in America over the past 150 years, and the value of history for thinking through present-day issues. She is the author and editor of four books as well as articles and essays covering topics including the history of experiential learning, female programming pioneers, early attempts to organize smart cities, the racial implications of algorithmic thinking in federal housing policy, and the history of youth political media production.
Biography: MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Website: MIT Project on Embodied Education
Guest artists to Thinking on Your Feet in fall 2024:
Johnny Blazes, Esh Circus Arts and Pluto Return Dance
Cassandre Charles, Black Arts Sanctuary
Dr. Reba Rosenberg, Boston Circus Guild, Esh Circus Arts, and Harvard University, and Morgan Kelley, Commonwealth Circus Center
McKersin, MIT Theater Arts and Lakai Dance Theater
Dr. Benita Comeau, MIT
Andrea Olsen, Body and Earth
Guy Steele PhD ’80 and Clark Baker SM ’80, Callerlab
Lewis Hou, Science Ceilidh
Yamilee Toussaint ’08, STEM from Dance
Credits
Supported by a Cross-Disciplinary Class Development Grant from the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST).