Sep 20, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
What role does the body play in the production of knowledge? Fresh from Project Zero Classroom 2026, PZ's Louisa Penfold of the Art|Play project and Jessica Baynes, a dance performer, choreographer…
There are three different things that I'm censoring right now that I want to chat about.
And one of those things I just want to say is this article piece, the scholarly piece I read in grad school, and I can't remember the full title, let alone the author.
And, you know, I think about that in relation to like what children are experiencing in a lot of schooling systems around the world.
And over the past like 10, 20 years, there has been a quite pronounced rise in the use of like standardized testing, especially in math and literacy to assess what children are doing.
And these are assessments that are shaped around looking for like cause and effect relationships.
And that's really, really difficult in terms of the arts and creativity, because by nature, these are subject areas that we're really wanting to support and cultivate sitting with uncertainty and experimentation and having outputs that are not predictable.
So I think standardized testing is something that has been, to an extent, it's useful, but it is also really problematic in the sense that it has really marginalized opportunities for the arts to be centered in children's education in school.
And also in terms of thinking about the body and the full kind of sensory system and tactile learning and the important part that that plays in knowledge production is It's really tricky to assess that through like a standardized measurement system.
I think it's really difficult to standardize something like to measure how children create and produce knowledge when the vessel through which they are doing that is different from person to person.
An example of where this idea of standard assessment comes to mind for me is in spaces where I'm teaching students or participants who maybe have different types of physical and cognitive abilities.
So let's say I'm teaching a class for participants with neurodegenerative diseases, which I did a lot in college.
One participant's outputs in terms of what they can execute in a ballet class will look very different from another person, but that has nothing to do with how much or how little they've learned from the curriculum.
And I think that that's a misleading way to assess because the process is where they've gained these tools and skills, even though their output will look different.
There are three different things that I'm censoring right now that I want to chat about.
And one of those things I just want to say is this article piece, the scholarly piece I read in grad school, and I can't remember the full title, let alone the author.
And, you know, I think about that in relation to like what children are experiencing in a lot of schooling systems around the world.
And over the past like 10, 20 years, there has been a quite pronounced rise in the use of like standardized testing, especially in math and literacy to assess what children are doing.
And these are assessments that are shaped around looking for like cause and effect relationships.
And that's really, really difficult in terms of the arts and creativity, because by nature, these are subject areas that we're really wanting to support and cultivate sitting with uncertainty and experimentation and having outputs that are not predictable.
So I think standardized testing is something that has been, to an extent, it's useful, but it is also really problematic in the sense that it has really marginalized opportunities for the arts to be centered in children's education in school.
And also in terms of thinking about the body and the full kind of sensory system and tactile learning and the important part that that plays in knowledge production is It's really tricky to assess that through like a standardized measurement system.
I think it's really difficult to standardize something like to measure how children create and produce knowledge when the vessel through which they are doing that is different from person to person.
An example of where this idea of standard assessment comes to mind for me is in spaces where I'm teaching students or participants who maybe have different types of physical and cognitive abilities.
So let's say I'm teaching a class for participants with neurodegenerative diseases, which I did a lot in college.
One participant's outputs in terms of what they can execute in a ballet class will look very different from another person, but that has nothing to do with how much or how little they've learned from the curriculum.
And I think that that's a misleading way to assess because the process is where they've gained these tools and skills, even though their output will look different.
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