RESEARCH Now VALIDATES

MOVEMENT-BASED LEARNING

Paul E. Dennison, California, U.S.A.

In1975, after eight years in Los Angeles as a publi boolteacher of grades K-6 and six years as a reading specialist, Icame to a fork in the path of my career in education. I could

now become a school principal, or I could pursue a callingthat seemed to me even more exciting and fulfilling: that ofshowing the academic breakthroughs made possible the use

of intentional movemenLIn the thirty-five since

I made the choice to dedicatemy life to teaching throughmovement, I have rkedwith thousands of challengedlearners, created a languageof movement with my wifeand partner, Gail Dennison,written or coauthored morethan fifteen books and manualsthat have been translatedinto forty-some languages,

Paul E. Dennison and founded the EducationalKinesiology Foundation, with

representatives in more than twenty countries on six continents.I have realized my dream, and am now seeing education throughmovement as an expanding, worldwide reality.For years, a growing body of research has related vestibular

balance to school-readiness. Most recently (in 2005),researchers Stoodley, Fawcett, Nicolson, and Stein found animpaired balancing ability in dyslexic children. The One LegStand (Schrager, 200 I) has been incorporated into a moreextensive test battery to identify children who have, or are atrisk of having, ADHD, dyslexia, and other specific learningdisabilities. Balance beams and balance boards are being widelyused by special education teachers, for the ability to keep one'sbalance is known to be highly correlated with brain integrationand reading-readiness.Kinesiologist and biomechanist Katy Bowman, developer of

the Restorative Exercise Program, emphasizes that, to the extentthat balance is lacking, the brain, visual system, and vestibularsystem have to work harder to compensate. In Edu-K we findthat the integrity of the moving physical structure provides acontext for the cognitive function necessary for focal attentionand new learning.Movement creates intelligence; the fields of neuroscience

and neuroplasticity daily demonstrate that intention andpurposeful movement creates those neuropathways necessaryfor all new learning to occur. Pathways are created duringphysical interaction with the environment, through play and theimagination, or through our expression of feelings and desires.If learning is a search for structure, then structure provides a

context for meaning. Dynamic focus is what directs the learnerto a balanced state of concentration. In the attentive state, she isable to see or create the meaning needed to engage in the taskat hand, and able to access enough peripheral information tosustain and expand her attention over time.In A User sGuide to the Brain, clinical professor of psychiatry

at Harvard Medical School John Ratey, M.D., informs hisreaders that " ... the brain's motor function affects so muchmore than just physical motion. It is crucial to all other brainfunctions-perception, attention, emotion-and so affects thehighest cognitive processes of memory, thinking, and learning."Researchers such as Ratey also equate intelligence with theability to read new situations, interpret feedback, and modifybehavior in response to a fast-changing environment.

LEARNING Is TASK-SPECIFICParents and teachers, along with all who want to learn with

more ease and pleasure, must concern themselves with theconcepts of attention, concentration, and comprehension.An understanding of attention provides insight into all kindsof achievement and failure-whether in sports, business,academics, or general participation in life. In fact, it's thefocusing system that can, on a continuum, inhibit action orgenerate the next step with boldness, fluidity, and ease.Educators have long recognized the importance of attentional

behavior; no true learning occurs without it. Not all teachershave realized that each learner adopts task-related attendingstrategies-each way of attending becoming a habit (and notalways an effective one) for a given task.For example, noticing how one reads provides an excellent

mirror for noticing one's attentional behavior. The ways thatpeople read and attend reveal the most ingrained humanbehavior patterns. Do you read without comprehending, sayingthe words without thinking through the intent of the language?Or, conversely, does your awareness of the "nuts and bolts" ofthe words that you're reading prevent you from going directly tothe meaning of the material? Are you thinking creatively aboutwhat you read, planning ahead to what you'll write, say, or readnext? These questions are directly concerned with attention.True learning has a physical component and is often completed

in a matter of minutes. The Brain Gym activities create this kindof readiness for learning. A skilled teacher offers a few minutesof activities, followed by a related lesson, creating a teachablemoment. He recognizes the learner's "aha" experience andallows each learning unit to come to closure, neither belaboringthe lesson nor jumping prematurely into a new topic, butallowing ample time for assimilation of the input.

Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., of ventura, California, teachesinternationally. He is a pioneer in the field of kinesiology andmovement education and an authority on the breakthroughattainment of cognitive and academic skills. In the I 960s, Dr.Dennison began the seminal research into reading achievementand its relation to brain development that would form the basisfor the Brain Gym work. ••.

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