Teachers' Embodied Presence in Classroom Teaching and Its Educational Implications: An Inquiry Based on Somatic Phenomenology

In the teaching field dominated by vocal instruction, the body, as the starting point of teachers' professionalism, is being "unconsciously forgotten", with its value marginalized in education. Based on the theory of Somatic phenomenology and adopting the methodology of "suspension-description-interpretation", this study investigates teachers' bodies in classroom teaching. It is found that teachers' bodies show a state of predicament in the dimensions of mind-body relationship, temporality-spatiality, verbality, and distance, and their educational value is dissolved. Teachers' bodies should be the integrated existence of body and mind in teaching, a limited response to institutional discipline, and the fundamental carrier for the occurrence of classroom teaching. To this end, it is necessary to clarify the value root of teachers as "embodied beings" (ontology), balance the tension between institutional discipline and teachers' bodily freedom (epistemology), and ultimately aim at constructing the "bodily presence" path for teacher development (methodology), so as to realize the return of teachers' bodies, clarify the implication and value of teachers' bodies in classroom teaching, and help teachers achieve the clarity, liberation and freedom of their own bodies.