Moving Prose
Barbara Tversky on why actions speak louder than words
What are thoughts made of? Not words, asserts Barbara Tversky, Professor of Psychology & Education, in (Basic Books 2019). Rather, spatial cognition enables us to draw meaning from our bodies, surroundings and actions 鈥� and actions underlie language鈥檚 structure and meaning.
Tversky says spatial cognition enables us to draw meaning from our bodies, surroundings and actions, which underlie language. (Photo: Deborah Feingold)
Mind in Motion 鈥渦pends everything most of us think we know about thinking,鈥� says 鈥淭hink Again鈥� podcast host Jason Gots. Nature says the book transports us from 鈥渢he 鈥榳orld in the mind鈥� to the 鈥榤ind in the world.鈥欌�� And the Wall Street Journal鈥檚 takeaway is that 鈥渢he fact that our brains are in bodies shapes how they think.鈥�
Education, too, must recognize that visuals, from diagrams to comic books, communicate more directly than symbolic words. 鈥淭he naming game with babies itself depends on joint attention and gesture,鈥� Tversky argues. 鈥淭here鈥檚 so much more to say, but that would be another book.鈥� 鈥擩oe Levine
鈥淎鈥� is for 鈥淎gency鈥�
Seeing preschoolers as authors
Souto-Manning mentored a pre-K teacher who guided her students in editing recorded narratives based on their daily play. (Photo: Bill Cardoni)
They weren鈥檛 yet reading books fluently, let alone contemplating publishing them. Yet the children of the Pre-K East classroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts, became authors. Pre-K Stories: Playing with Authorship and Integrating Curriculum in Early Childhood (51吃瓜网 Press 2019), by their teacher, Dana Frantz Bentley, and her mentor, Mariana Souto-Manning, TC Professor of Early Childhood Education, describes how Bentley helped the children edit recorded narratives based on their daily play and create 鈥渞eally real鈥� (OK, some were typed and stapled) volumes: The Whole Pre-K East Book (stories with drawings); The Book of Paper Airplane Experts (a how-to, with photos); A Book of Family Shares (families鈥� stories of the children鈥檚 homelives); All of the Seasons Square: A Season World (poetry accompanying the children鈥檚 classroom mural); and The Pre-K East Life Book, memories to help others 鈥渒now how to be in our class.鈥� Deciding on the kids鈥� curriculum would have been easier but 鈥渃urriculum needs to be co-constructed with them,鈥� Bentley writes, adding, 鈥渢eaching the development of humanity.鈥� 鈥擯atricia Lamiell