Exploration of the Embodiment of Earth Scientific Practices: With a Focus on Field-Based Geological Inquiry

Recently, embodied cognition or the embodiment of cognition has received increasing interest in science education. However, there is a dearth of research on this topic in earth science education even though embodied cognition plays a significant role in earth science among many domains of science. Considering this, the current study aims to provide a theoretical review of the embodied nature of earth scientific practices with a focus on inquiry in geological fields. A volume of literature on embodied cognition and earth scientific practices was reviewed, and the findings were summarized according to the three phases of field-based geological inquiry: perceiving, envisioning, and representing. Perceiving is the process of generating data about the objects of inquiry based on different types of perceptions of the body. The body assumes an important role in envisioning in that bodily experiences provide the content of envisioning and that bodily constraints lead to envisioning beyond the limitations of the human body. Representing also demonstrates the embodied nature of geological inquiry, as it is the process of reenacting the properties of the objects of inquiry or the geologic processes that formed the objects. Finally, the implications of this review for earth science education are discussed.