Synopses & Reviews
When we look beyond lesson planning and curriculaand#151;those explicit facets that comprise so much of our discussion about educationand#151;we remember that teaching is an inherently social activity, shaped by a rich array of implicit habits, comportments, and ways of communicating. This is as true in the United States as it is in Japan, where Akiko Hayashi and Joseph Tobin have long studied early education from a cross-cultural perspective. Taking readers inside the classrooms of Japanese preschools,
Teaching Embodied explores the everyday, implicit behaviors that form a crucially importantand#151;but grossly understudiedand#151;aspect of educational practice.
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Akiko Hayashi and Joseph Tobin embed themselves in the classrooms of three different teachers at three different schools to examine how teachers act, think, and talk. Drawing on extended interviews, their own real-time observations, and hours of video footage, they focus on how teachers embody their lessons: how they use their hands to gesture, comfort, or discipline; how they direct their posture, gaze, or physical location to indicate degrees of attention; and how they use the tone of their voice to communicate empathy, frustration, disapproval, or enthusiasm. Comparing teachers across schools and over time, they offer an illuminating analysis of the gestures that comprise a total body language, something that, while hardly ever explicitly discussed, the teachers all share to a remarkable degree. Showcasing the tremendous importance ofand#151;and dearth of attention toand#151;this body language, they offer a powerful new inroad into educational study and practice, a deeper understanding of how teaching actually works, no matter what culture or country it is being practiced in.and#160;
Review
andldquo;Teaching Embodiedand#160;is well written and clearandmdash;a delight to read. It does a beautiful job of illustrating, persuasively, culture as tacit, embodied, and intercorporeal.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In the wonderfuland#160;Teaching Embodied, Hayashi and Tobin remind us that teachers have bodies and that those bodies are formed in and are expressions of culture. Teaching is a cultural activity, but explorations of teaching remain abstract, disembodiedandmdash;more mind than body, or heart. Any preschool teacher, as I was for a dozen years, understands the physicality of teaching. Hayashi and Tobin take the reader inside this wonderfully physical world. In this watershed study, they make visible what every teacher knows implicitly. The body is integral to understanding teaching.andrdquo;and#160;
Review
and#160;andldquo;Hayashi and Tobinandrsquo;s study is an exemplar in contemporary psychological anthropology that builds upon and expands Tobinandrsquo;s classic video ethnographic methods to paint a compelling portrait of teaching and learning in Japanese preschool classrooms as embodied, collective, and intercorporeal. The book offers a welcome antidote to overly rationalized efforts to quantify and manualize the daily lives of children and teachers in preschool classrooms.andrdquo;
About the Author
Akiko Hayashi is a postdoctoral fellow in education at the University of Georgia.
Joseph Tobin is professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia and the author of several books, including Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited, also published by the University of Chicago Press.