Body Mapping to Facilitate Embodied Reflection in Professional Education Programmes

Reflective practice has become well established as an important dimension of professional education and practice over the last 30 years, with the major emphasis on enhancing cognitive, as opposed to bodily, knowledge. In this chapter, I discuss indications that body mapping, an innovative and emerging method, may be a suitable pedagogical approach to encourage not only cognitive reflection but also embodied reflection. Linking to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of embodiment, I describe a synopsis of the body mapping process. As a college nursing professor, I describe my own use of body maps as a means of reflection and discuss the powerful impact it has had on my own pedagogy. The body mapping method highlights strong connections between one’s own history and contextual situations as a learner and one’s current practices as an educator. Through the body mapping process, my own embodied knowledge was uncovered, and my ideas about curriculum evolved in new directions. I gained a stronger sense of my own positionality as a teacher, greater awareness of the importance of sharing power with students, and increased recognition of the need to attend to teachers’ and students’ bodies in the teaching-learning process. The potential affordances of body mapping as a means to inquire into teachers’ and students’ embodied knowledge in professional educational programmes are discussed.