Teaching a motor skill in physical education involves the teacher's visual and verbal demonstration (Ryan et al., 2016). This often accompanies physical contact from the teacher to the learner (Choi and Kim, 2015). For example, imagine a classical ballet lesson where the teacher teaches the beginner learner how to stand correctly. First, the teacher stands correctly and verbally explains how to position the body. Next, the teacher touches the learner's body and corrects their alignment and form. When teaching other techniques, some teachers push the body part of the moving learner and change their movement trajectory. Thus, for teaching motor skills, touch often occurs from the teacher to the learner, and its primary role can be described as a mechanical effect on the learner's body.

In this article, however, we contend that touch has cognitive significance for learners, that is, the embodiment of the teacher's words from the perspective of cognitive and movement sciences. Among many physical contacts, we will focus specifically on learner-to-teacher touch, for example, when the learner pushes the teacher's arm to ascertain the stiffness of the joints. We discuss that without it, the problem of the symbol merry-go-round is likely to occur.

Learners (especially beginner learners) often encounter several problems in ballet lessons. Learners must learn how to subtly control muscle tension and engagement levels; however, for several reasons, it is difficult to estimate the state of muscle activity by watching the teacher's kinematics (e.g., the trajectory of movement, velocity, and acceleration). First, the adjustments in the level of muscle activity do not always accompany kinematic changes. For example, when adjusting poses or techniques for expressive nuances (e.g., lightness vs. strength), the kinematics do not change much, but muscle tension and engagement levels do. Second, the skill requirement of ballet is high. Warren and Cook (1989, p. 30) state, “The hand must appear relaxed at all times.” Note that they do not say that the hands must always be relaxed, instead, it must always “appear” to be so. This requirement implies that the better the teacher's movements are during the ballet, the more confused the learner will be about the muscle tension and engagement levels.

Moreover, as the level of muscle tension and engagement is difficult to convey through kinematics, the teacher is compelled to describe it verbally. This is when the problem of the symbol merry-go-round (Harnad, 1990) is likely to arise. This problem has been pointed out in embodied cognitive science, which regards human cognition as being formatted in sensorimotor experience (and the neural systems used for it) rather than independent of the body and behavior (Glenberg, 2015; Fincher-Kiefer, 2019). Harnad (1990) and Glenberg (2015) illustrate this problem with the example of learning Chinese from a Chinese/Chinese dictionary. Imagine that someone who does not speak Chinese lands at an airport in China and would like to know the meaning of a Chinese word on a signboard. They look up the meaning in their Chinese/Chinese dictionary; however, the word is rephrased in other Chinese words, and they have to search further for its meaning in the dictionary. However, repeating this makes no sense to them, as the symbols are simply rephrased. This means that symbols divorced from something outside the symbol system (e.g., sensorimotor experience) do not provide meaning.

Consider a specific example where you will understand the word “love” only using an English/English dictionary. In the dictionary (Merriam-Webster, n.d.), love is defined as “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties”. Then, you search “affection” and find that it is defined as “a feeling of liking and caring for someone or something”. No matter how often you repeat this process, it will not lead to an understanding of the meaning of love, unless some words in the dictionary are connected to your sensorimotor experience.

Fincher-Kiefer (2019, p. 84) points out the possibility that experts have a rich sensorimotor experience of their skills. Therefore, the language they use to express these skills are more embodied than in a novice. This suggests that the more experienced the ballet teachers are, the richer variations of embodied words they use in the lesson. Beginner ballet learners may receive many words from their teachers, but the words can easily cause a symbol merry-go-round because learners may have little bodily experience associated with them. Conversely, beginner learners may require relevant sensorimotor experiences to embody the teacher's verbal instruction.

Although this article covered a limited situation in ballet lessons, it has provided an essential perspective for beginner learners to step off the symbol merry-go-round and embody the teacher's words by dynamic touch. We consider this to be significant in two ways. First, while the positive effects of physical contact in dance pedagogy have been often discussed (Assandri, 2019; Hermans, 2021), the use of dynamic touch from learner to teacher has not been discussed. This may be partly because touching teachers is culturally and socially discouraged. However, learner-to-teacher touch has some substantial benefits for skill learning, as explained in this article. How dance educators can incorporate this into the field must be thoroughly discussed elsewhere.

Note that the learner-to-teacher dynamic touch is not the only solution for the symbol merry-go-round problem. The teacher-to-learner touch can also act on the learner's sensorimotor experience. However, dynamic touch is significant in enabling active and exploratory information acquisition. In ballet lessons, because teachers tend to give information unilaterally to the learner, active information acquisition is considered essential from a pedagogical perspective (Culp et al., 2020). Active learning in physical education needs further study, and this article provides insight into it.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.