Where Merleau-Ponty Meets Dewey
Habit, Embodiment, and Education
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10801013 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Malcolm Thorburn (0000-0001-6738-6583, Education Scotland, corresponding author), Steven A Stolz (0000-0001-5900-0329, The University of Adelaide) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 599-615 |
| Publication date | 2023-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Philosophy and Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0039-3746 • E-ISSN: 1573-191X |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11217-023-09897-1 |
| OpenAlex | W4386568921 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 38 |
This paper utilises selective writings by John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the conceptual basis for considering how an enhanced synergistic focus on habit and embodiment could support practice gains in schools. The paper focuses on Dewey’s belief that established habits can help students to incorporate experiences into evaluations of educational progress and Merleau-Ponty’s spotlight on the body-subject, and how it provides a holistic way of conceiving relations that avoid over privileging abstraction and cognition and under-representing the centrality of the body in human experience. We then evaluate the role of language and reflection in relation to habit, embodiment, and education before discussing some of the general educational practice considerations which might improve the quality of students learning experiences. In conclusion, we consider the possibilities for Dewey’s pragmatism to function as a theoretical bridge to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and the nature of experience. We argue that while it is important to recognise points of difference, in relation to philosophical treatments of habit and embodiment, it is also important to consider the overlap and new connections between Merleau-Ponty and Dewey which are valuable to take forward in contemporary education
Centrality · Criticism · Epistemology · Habit · Higher education · Pedagogy · Perception · Phenomenology (philosophy · Philosophy of education · Pragmatism · Relation (database · Sociology · Subject (documents · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity
The Teacher as Choreographer
Creating, framing, reflecting—dance as embodied reflective practice in professional development for physical education teachers
Understanding greenhouse gas emissions and life cycle assessment of clothing
The Romantic Cosmic Meaning of Life
Rethinking higher education
A narrative approach exploring phenomenology in education and educational research
Intersubjectivity, embodiment and enquiry
John Dewey and American Democracy
John Dewey and the high tide of American liberalism
Reconstruction in philosophy.
Embodied Cognition
Body Consciousness
Embodied cognition and its significance for education
Experience and Education
Reflective interventions
Contemporary education and guiding pedagogical principals
Thinking avant la lettre
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
Neuropragmatism
Embodied learning and school-based physical culture
Articulating a Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of physical education
Divisive Concepts in Classrooms
John Dewey's Philosophy of Value
Embodied Learning
Dewey's Conception of Interest and its Significance for Teacher Education
Why Should Scholars Keep Coming Back to John Dewey
Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus
Emphasising an Embodied Phenomenological Sense of the Self and the Social in Education
Reconstructing Dewey
The Embodied Mind
| Citations per year | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |