Embodied Narratives for Physics Education: Bridging Concepts, Emotions, and Movements

Abstract

Physics is often taught as a purely intellectual subject, disconnected from the body and emotional engagement, particularly in undergraduate STEM courses. In Milan, in the “Preparation of Didactical Experiences 1” course for master’s students in mathematics or physics, we integrated about 20 hours of embodied activities within a semester-long inquiry-based sequence involving 47 students working in small groups. These activities, including scientific representation and music, emphasized the interplay of disciplinary understanding, personal meaning, and emotional involvement. We present an action-research study on the design, implementation, and qualitative analysis of student reflections, identifying themes of enhanced conceptual clarity, affective engagement, and collective learning culture. Our findings suggest that embedding embodied experiential tasks within physics instruction can support deeper learning, better retention of core mechanics concepts (in our case, oscillations and kinematics), and the formation of a learning community, while highlighting practical and methodological limitations of qualitative self-reported data.