Embodiment in my Research

Identity: For my Masters project, I examined film footage, photographs, songs, and narrative of the camp's directors from 1921 to the present. From these data sources, and based on the theory that discourse and practice reveal cultural models -- a community's construction of truths (Gee, 2001; Holland, 1998), I identified and crosschecked evidence of cultural models to answer the question: what does it mean to the owners and directors of FML to be a Flying Moose Camper?

Present Research: At this time in my ever-shifting research, my interests are to continue looking at Identity and Community Discourse, but to broaden the scope of community to include "virtual" communities. Since Identity Discourse is rooted in what Judith Butler (1990) calls performativity -- a very physical system of action and social enforcement (and reinforcement), I must also look at the role of embodiment in Community Discourse systems -- an interesting angle, I think, in virtual communities, that I am approaching from 11 years' involvement in Adventure/Outdoor Education.
A predictable way to investigate this is through technology tools such as video games and computers, especially in carving out identities in the vast "anonymity" of the internet. The methodology that currently holds my interest is Design-Based Research, which I understand to be most similar to the way I tend to approach life: research -> design -> trial -> error -> reflection -> redesign -> etc.

Games: I think the huge focus on classroom learning in education is pretty narrow-minded. In mind, it's akin to focusing only on hospitals in medicine. My focus continues to be on education and learning that takes place outside of the classroom. There are plenty who study what happens inside the classroom, and while it's important to study because, for better or worse, that's the system "traditional schooling" has left us, and it will take some time before we can get past that mindset, I'll leave that to others.
I contend that most of what we learn in childhood, as in life in general, takes place outside of school curriculum. It happens in our interaction with family, friends, peers, and strangers. We learn from these, and from the media: newspapers (less and less), books (less and less), magazines, television, radio, computer/internet, etc. Some of these are more compelling than others. They grasp and hold our attention better than others. We can try to bring these things into the classroom (and we have), but we can also study the in their own element, because for some reason, once you bring something into the classroom it tends to immediately be "less cool" -- and therefore less compelling.
Games have always been employed in teaching -- even as recitation and tests (these often less fun than other forms) where one performs, is judged, and rated. So what would happen if we merely bent the Discourse (Martin 2004) of testing -- its design, format, and attractiveness -- in order to rethink our acceptance of games in learning?

Where's Embodiment? Good question. But before I can answer that, I think I need to clear up in my mind the different definitions of embodiment. In cognitive science, it appears to have a different meaning (or at least focuses on a different perspective of it) than that which I was casually using. So let me try to lay out my understanding of it (or perspective of interest in it).
When I think of embodiment, I come from a very physical place (e.g. Flying Moose Lodge), where embodiment is not bits and bytes of data or language, but is something larger that is embedded in muscle memory (or nerve memory). It's still very poetic for me, so while cybernetics and artificial intelligence are interesting on a peripheral or metaphorical level, they do not yet help me in my own perception of embodiment. Perhaps this is a naive understanding. I admit my newness to the AI and cybernetic understandings. My hopes are that this semester my Educational Psychology Independent reading on Embodiment will at least bring me up to speed in different definitions or understandings of the term, so I can talk about it in different discourses.