Transforming Learning Through Tangible Instruction: The Case for Thinking With Things

Transforming Learning Through Tangible Instruction offers a transformative, student-centered approach to higher education pedagogy that integrates embodied cognition into classroom practice. Evidence across disciplines makes clear that people learn with their bodies as well as their brains, but no previous book has provided evidence-based guidance for adopting and refining its practice in colleges and universities. Collecting findings from cognitive science, educational neuroscience, learning theories, and beyond, this volume’s unique approach―radical yet practical, effective yet low-cost―will have profound implications for higher education faculty and administrators engaged in teaching and learning. Seven concise chapters explore how physical objects, hands-on making, active construction, and other elements of body and environment can enhance comprehension, memory, and individual and collaborative learning.

Sarah Kuhn is Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA. Before beginning her thirty-year teaching career, she received a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Social Psychology from Harvard University. She is the author of numerous articles, including several on aspects of learning with things in interdisciplinary, studio-based, and community settings.