The M-BOD scenarios sketched out above differ from those described in the EL section in that the former take seriously the role of desire in student learning. In the M-BOD scenarios, students resource their creative and dramatic selves to become their own guides in working out the meaning(s) of History, ethics, bullying, etc. This learning is “deep” because it involves the body in several ways:
Sometimes bodies actually get up and move through space (i.e., the walking dance or doing field research)
Students are prompted to respond to situations more than follow directions; these situations require them to “read” other people and multiple texts and contexts
Students’ formal presentations (their strategic, other-directed productions) elicit actual responses from people, which (whether good or bad, or a mix) then require some expression and reflection
Back to Discussion of "Situating M-BOD"
Preface
One: Situating Embodied Learning
Two: Case Study: Oliver
Identity and Learning: “Follow What I Am Doing: Do The Rules That I’m Doing: It’s Very CoM-pli-cated”
Improvisational/Feedback "1,2,3...16, 17,18, NineTEEN"
Innovation: “I Can Look At Your Cards”
Producelike Behavior: "Why Do The Make Queen Better Than Jack?"
Conclusion: "The Bricolage, The Music, The Movement"
Three: Implications for the Literacy Autobiography Assignment
For example, Mel Riddile points out that when one conditions on various measures of poverty, instead of trailing other nations, the U.S. actually comes out on top! He concludes that "when it comes to school improvement, it's poverty not stupid." Poverty causes educational deficiency. Now, I like to actually have data to play around with, in part because people have been known to lie about politically charged issues and in part because I like to have nice graphs (which are not provided by Riddile). Anyway, it turns out that international poverty data is pretty hard to come by and fraught with interpretational difficulties. On the other hand, the National Assessment of Educational Progress provides test data for most of the states in the U.S., and the U.S. Census Bureau provides data on the percentage of people in poverty by state. I took the NAEP data for 8th grade science achievement and regressed on the percentage of people below the poverty line for the measured states. The two are negatively associated: as poverty increases, science achievement scores decrease according to the relationship in the plot below. (Alaska, Kansas, Nebraska, and Vermont did not meet NAEP reporting guidelines and are not included in the plot above.) The association is highly significant (p=9.98*10-6). I also took pilot NAEP data for 8th grade mathematics achievement and regressed on the percentage of people below the poverty line for the measured states. (Evidently, the NAEP has only just started testing for mathematics achievement, and only eleven states were included in their pilot.) Again, the two are negatively associated. The slope of the relation turns out to be almost exactly the same as for science achievement. The association is not as significant, but it is still significant (p=0.0186). (My guess is the association is less significant in this case because fewer states were measured.) Clearly there is an association between poverty and achievement in science and mathem
