Embodied Learning and Cognitive Experiences Amongst Visually Impaired Students: A Patchwork Ethnographic Study in Odisha, India

Abstract

This article examines embodied learning among visually impaired (VI) students attending residential Schools for the Blind in Odisha, India. Grounding in patchwork ethnographic fieldwork across three institutions, the School for the Blind at Banpur NAC, Bhima Bhoi School for the Blind, and Louis Braille School for the Blind in Bhubaneswar, the study challenges the ocularcentrist assumption that vision plays a primary role in formal education. Drawing from extended classroom observations, the research explores how students engage with language, geography, and mathematics through multiple senses involving touch, sound and spatial memory. The insights from embodied cognition theory, phenomenology of the lived body and sociocultural framework of cognition help to argue that cognition is not just a brain-bound process but rather emerges through dynamic engagements between bodies, environments and practice. Braille learning kits, tactile maps and tactile geometry kits are examined not only as assistive devices but also as generative epistemic tools that construct alternative forms of knowledge. The findings help to reframe visual impairment as a perceptual and cognitive reorganization rather than a deficit, contributing to disability studies scholarship by foregrounding the ontological richness of non-visual knowing. Lastly, it discusses implications for inclusive pedagogy, curriculum design, and educational policy in the Indian context.