Learning with objects, an object lesson

At a time when adult education is being digitized at breakneck speed, a counter-trend is asserting itself: that of a return to the body, to materiality and to objects as living supports for learning.

In this context, Object-Based Learning (OBL) is establishing itself as a pedagogy of presence and a sensitive relationship with the world. Originating in British museums and universities (Chatterjee & Hannan, 2016; Hooper-Greenhill, 2007), it is now finding a growing place in vocational training, cultural mediation and lifelong learning schemes.

Yet this orientation is not foreign to French educational culture: the leçon de choses, very much in vogue at the end of the XIXᵉ century, was already proposing learning by observing, describing and manipulating everyday objects. The idea of knowledge that passes through the hand and the senses was central to it; it prefigured contemporary pedagogies of embodied learning.

More than a century later, the rediscovery of this historical continuity sheds light on current practices: learning with objects means reconnecting with a form of concrete attention to the world.

The thinking body: situated cognition

OBL starts from a simple observation: we learn best when the experience involves the whole body. Handling a tool, artifact or specimen mobilizes perception, balance, gesture and memory. This approach ties in with theories of embodied cognition, according to which thought unfolds through action and sensation. The object then acts as a thinking partner, a mediator between matter and representation.

In industrial safety training, for example, handling a helmet or fire extinguisher enables learners to feel the weight, resistance and tension of the gesture before any theoretical explanation. Kinesthetic experience precedes and illuminates conceptual understanding: knowledge is inscribed in movement.

Dierking and Falk (2019) emphasize that embodied learning "articulates awareness of the self and awareness of the world". The body thus becomes a space for reasoning, and the object a form of cognitive mirror.

Objects as catalysts for emotions and narratives

Objects activate the senses and emotions: they attract, intrigue, reassure or disturb. This affective dimension encourages memory retention and creativity (Chatterjee, 2008).

In a career transition workshop, participants can be invited to choose an object (key, pebble, rope, feather) to represent their approach to change. The word then emerges from the contact: the object becomes a storytelling medium, revealing tacit experiences.

The Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle has been experimenting with this approach with environmental mediators: handling a bird skull, a fossilized seed or a volcanic stone helps them to put into words the emotions associated with nature. The object reconnects adults with their sensory and symbolic intelligence, reminding them that understanding the world also means feeling it.

From manipulation to symbolization

In OBL, the object is not limited to an illustrative function. It opens up a space for symbolization: learners project meanings onto it, formulate hypotheses and compare them with those of others. This plurality of readings stimulates reflexivity.

At the University of Geneva, adults in teacher training manipulate old teaching tools - abacuses, writing boards, wall maps - to analyze how objects have shaped educational practices. By reconstructing gestures, the body makes the historical continuity of knowledge perceptible.

Similarly, France's National Heritage Institute trains its restorers to "listen to the material": observe cracks, feel the density of pigment, hear the brushstroke. Sensory contact becomes a method of investigation and an act of ethical care towards the object.

Which objects encourage embodied learning?

Not all material things lend themselves equally well to embodied learning. OBL research and recent French work (Objets pour apprendre, objets à apprendre, ISTE Éditions, 2021) highlight several criteria of pedagogical fruitfulness.

1. Manipulability: a good object involves the hand, weight and balance. Tools of the trade, natural materials or mechanical parts encourage physical involvement, while objects that are too fragile inhibit participation.
   
   
2. Narrative density: a rich object bears traces of use, a visible history. It links past and present; a rusty key, a handmade mold or a field notebook spontaneously awaken the narrative.
   
   
3. Interpretive ambiguity: the most instructive object is not the one with an obvious function, but the one that forces us to hypothesize and compare points of view.
   
   
4. Sensory and emotional charge: texture, temperature, color or smell provoke an affective reaction that anchors the memory. A feather, a heated metal or a polished stone immediately evokes a lived experience.
   
   
5. Moving from the concrete to the abstract: a spring to think about resilience, a compass to explore career orientation, a sponge to evoke listening: these embodied metaphors help us to conceptualize.
   
   
6. The collective dimension: some objects - maps, models, dismantling machines - require coordination and cooperation. Here, the object becomes a social mediator and a catalyst for collective intelligence.

In this way, the educational value of an object lies not in its rarity or beauty, but in the relationships it makes possible: it is fruitful when it stimulates exploration, dialogue and shared interpretation.

Learning together through objects

OBL is also an art of the collective. In workshops at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, trainers use the same artifact - a votive sculpture, for example - to provoke an exchange of interpretations between professionals from different backgrounds. Each person projects his or her own viewpoint, culture and sensibility, and the ensuing discussion helps to develop a common meaning. The object acts as a neutral mediator, allowing disagreement without conflict, and linking individual learning to a shared understanding.

In companies, this approach inspires training programs centered on "business objects". At Airbus, obsolete aircraft parts are used for problem-solving workshops: each team tells the "story of the part", identifies its weaknesses, then imagines improvements. The object brings bodies and minds together around a shared technical memory: it links learning, transmission and innovation.

An ecology of embodied learning

Object-Based Learning opens the way to an ecology of knowledge: to learn is to enter into a sensitive relationship with the forms of the world. Where digital pedagogy sometimes tends to abstract the relationship with reality, OBL restores the depth of experience: knowledge emerges from contact, gesture and dialogue with matter.

This approach encourages a double shift: from the virtual to the tangible, and from the cerebral to the sensory. It rehabilitates the role of the hand, the eye and movement as channels of thought. In this way, it is part of a French humanist and pragmatic tradition that, from the leçon de choses to OBL, links learning and attention to the world: learning means inhabiting reality with the whole body.

Object-based teaching, far from being a mere legacy, responds to a contemporary need: to reweave the links between knowledge, emotion and materiality. It reminds us that all lasting learning is rooted in lived experience. In the silent dialogue between body and object, the birth of meaning is replayed time and again.

References

Chatterjee, H. (2008). Touch in Museums: Policy and Practice in Object Handling. Berg Publishers.

Chatterjee, H., & Hannan, L. (2016). Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. Routledge.

Dierking, L. D., & Falk, J. H. (2019). The Museum Experience Revisited. Routledge.

Fredéric Durieuz - Thot Cursus - Making and repairing: the intelligence of the hand
https://cursus.edu/fr/11514/fabriquer-et-reparer-lintelligence-de-la-main

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (2007). Museums and Education: Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance. Routledge.

ISTE Editions. (2021). Objects for learning, objects to learn (Coll. Ingénierie des connaissances). London: ISTE Group.

Wikipedia https://fr.wikipedia .org/wiki/Le%C3%A7on_de_choses - Lesson

Paris, S. G. (2002). Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.