Jaco van den Dool: Sensual learning: investigating the role of the senses in musical learning

The body and the senses as tools for learning have been largely ignored in education (Powell, 2007). For centuries already, progressive theories ranging from Rousseau’s (1726) empirical findings on the child as a mini scientist, to Montessori’s (1967) educational system in which the child can develop its mind through movement, and more recently, the findings of Kátaj a.o. (2008), demonstrate that embodied approaches to cognitive learning enhance the acquisition of knowledge. Despite convincing data on the essential role of the body in learning, embodied learning still does not crystalize into sensory educational systems in the classroom. The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate a sensory model that highlights the role of the body and the senses as learning tools in musical learning. I will argue that young musicians acquire musical knowledge by sensing the other, through a complex network of ‘intersensory’ experiences and through musical interaction with other bodies.

Jaco van den Dool

Jaco van den Dool holds a professorship on ‘Blended Learning’ at Codarts and is a lecturer/PhD‐candidate at the department of Arts and Culture Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He obtained a BA in music education at Codarts and his MA in musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He taught general music, private piano lessons and enthusiastically led several big bands and musical productions at high schools in the Netherlands. He is currently involved in a training program for Nepali musicians. In addition, Jaco is the director of School of Performing Arts Kathmandu, founded in 2011.

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