HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MOVEMENT EDUCATION

What is Movement Education?

- Movement Education is instruction in the improvement of a person’s motor skills
through physical movement.
- Movement education is instruction that teaches children how to improve their motor
skills by using physical movement. As part of physical therapy, movement education is
often used to help students and children gain a better understanding of the body’s
motion and improve their ability to move in daily activities.
When did movement education originate?
- Movement Education in the 1800s to Early 1900s. The early pioneers of movement
education were influenced by the idea of the body being an expression of movement.
Three of the most historically influential individuals were Francois Delsarte, Liselott
Diem, and Rudolf von Laban.
Why was it popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s?
- Whereas Laban and his colleagues were concerned with the inner attitude of the mover and the
function of each movement (Stanley, 1977), those who came after them provided a way of
regarding movement and applying this perspective to the teaching of physical education. The
intent of those working at this time was to provide a framework that teachers could use to apply
these movement concepts broadly in the following three learning domains:
• Cognitive • Psychomotor • Affective
- The 1960s and 1970s witnessed a growth in the field of movement education.
Gilliom (1970), Kirchner (1977), Logsdon and colleagues (1977, 1984), Maulden and Layson
(1965), Maulden and Redfern (1969), Russell (1975), Stanley (1977), and many others brought
movement education to the forefront of elementary physical education.
Stanley (1977) and Logsdon and colleagues (1984) identified the four major movement concepts
such as body, space, effort, and relationships.
 Logsdon and colleagues (1984) suggested that how much children gain from their
physical education learning experience is related to how well the teacher is able to
understand, interpret, and implement the movement content. They suggested that the
teacher’s goal should be to develop enough knowledge about movement.
 Fitness Overshadows Movement Education. The fitness boom of the 1970s resulted in a
base of research that contributed a solid scientific basis to the study of movement.
Movement education was not getting this kind of support and therefore was not met
with the same level of enthusiasm in this era. As other curriculum models were
introduced that were easier to understand and appealed to the fitness and activity focus
of the time, movement education faded from popularity.

Who should know the movement education framework (MEF)?

 - The MEF is clearly not a new idea. As ideas developed, the framework for movement education
became more and more complex. Professionals began to disagree about the use or exact
meaning of terms. As a result, the concepts of human movement and early presentations of the
MEF sometimes became intimidating and difficult to use in practical settings. This may have been
one of the reasons movement education lost momentum and was by and large replaced by
other curricular frameworks over the years. Critics might say that movement education, which
was popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s, is now passé.
- One of our objectives is to revive this most basic approach to teaching physical education
because we believe that it provides not only the basic framework for physical education, but also
the basics all educators—both physical education and classroom teachers—are searching for to
provide the foundation for teaching physical education.
- One of the primary goals of this text is to present a revised MEF that is easy to follow, easy to
use, and meaningful for physical educators, classroom educators, and most important, children.
We do this by focusing on the movement concepts, movement categories, and particularly, the
movement elements, and their application to what we are calling the core content areas:
educational games, educational gymnastics, and educational dance.
- All physical educators want to provide lessons that foster success. The MEF, however, focuses on
not only fostering motor success, but also developing cognitive knowledge about movement.
Movement education is about developing a very wide base so that students develop skill in
executing many types of movement. To establish this wide base, the movement education
approach uses a specific framework for classifying movement and encourages learners to build a
movement vocabulary that they can apply to all subsequent movement content.
- The MEF is adaptable to students of all ages and developmental stages. It serves as a thread that
runs through all movement in all situations. As Logsdon and Barrett (1984) noted, “Movement is
the content of physical education. Teachers can continually incorporate vocabulary from the
framework into lesson introductions, feedback during a lesson, and lesson closures. Similarly,
children can communicate with the teacher and with other children about their movement, thus
creating a wonderful learning environment for all.

Who were the contributors to the beginnings of movement education.

- DELSARTE - One of the first people to articulate ideas of movement was Francois Delsarte, a
Frenchman who lived in the 19th century. This era was influenced by Romanticism, which
emphasized the notion of expression of thought and emotion. Delsarte developed what he
termed applied aesthetics (Brown & Sommer, 1969) and focused his work in the arts, where he
contributed critical ideas of connections among the mind, body, and spirit. He also saw
movement as a union of time, space, and motion. Delsarte suggested that the combination of
movements toward and away from the center of the body was critical to all other movements.
Delsarte believed that expressive movement should relate to the emotion that inspired that
movement. In addition, he introduced the idea of parallelism in movement—the simultaneous
motion of t wo body parts in the same direction and in succession. His nine laws of motion
referred to altitude, force, motion, sequence, direction, form, velocity, reaction, and extension.
These ideas gave rise to much of what was to come in the field of movement education.
- LISELOTT DIEM - In the mid- to late 1930s, Professor Liselott Diem and her husband, Carl,
founded an internationally known college in Germany, Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, to train
teachers in sport and physical education. The college taught a “natural approach to teaching
children to move effectively in all kinds of situations” (Brown and Sommer, 1969, p. 62 ).
Children were encouraged to explore movement freely in their own way and according to their
unique stages of development. The teacher’s role was to provide an environment that supported
and fostered this focus. The teacher would use simple equipment such as balls, wands, ropes,
boxes, and benches to allow children to develop a wide variety of movement responses
individually, with partners, or within small groups. Diem’s approach centered on learning to build
movement skills and balance. Teachers were encouraged to challenge children by asking
questions such as “Who can do this?” and “How can this be done differently?” They would then
guide the children toward improving their quality of movement. Diem’s focus for older children
was more on developing an awareness and analysis of muscular force as well as how to move in
time and space.
- RUDOLF VON LABAN - Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958) is considered by most as the true pioneer
of movement education. A critical contribution was his theory of movement, focusing specifically
on the concept of effort. Laban believed that the body was an instrument of expression and
made a distinction between this expressive movement and movements that serve a purpose in
everyday life (functional movement). Expressive movement communicates ideas in dance or
other forms of artistic expression. Functional movement has a purpose in addition to helping
with the tasks of everyday life, such as sports and games. The four factors of movement that
Laban identified (weight, space, time, and flow) became the bedrock of what became known as
movement education.