WHAT IS KINESTHETIC LEARNING ANYWAY?

A learning style encompasses many characteristics, but researchers have widely identified three main essential perceptual preferences: visual, auditory and body/kinaesthetic. While kinesthetic is recognized as a learning style, it is one of the most undervalued in schools. Many students seat in the classroom for the entire school day without experiencing any form of physical activity that can possibly lead to meaningful learning. Given this sedentary nature of today’s classroom, and my interest in gesture recognition programming, I decided to explore this perceptual preference that is often not recognized by instructors.

Experienced teachers recognize that students learn in different ways. Students show differences in how quickly and easily they receive and process various kinds of stimuli. For example, a teacher might admit that one student achieves a deeper level of understanding if the class material is presented with images while another student does great by just reading plain text. Although we all have certain things in common, everyone learns and process new information in their own individual ways. The individual differences in the way one approaches the task of learning is call learning style. Psychologists and educators have created this concept to help identify, classify and implement student’s preferences in the classroom and address their learning needs. An awareness of learning styles are important for teachers because if a particular approach to learning is encouraged by a teacher, there is a possibility that some pupils will work and learn less effectively than others in the class.


Theoretical Background
For those who like me cannot dive into a topic without reviewing the literature behind, well here is a small synthesis of well-established research by Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory, first introduced in Frames of Mind in 1983. An awareness of Gardner's MI concepts is important to validate kinesthetic learning activities in the classroom before even thinking about technology.

Gardner’s investigations specifically addresses a bodily/kinesthetic classification. During the 1980s decade, Garner theory was very significant since it disrupted established educational paradigms of what is intelligence. Garner recognized that his theory of intelligences would offer an alternative to the theory of intelligence as indicated by an intelligence quotient (IQ) score. In contrast to an IQ score, MI theory has the ability to identify the talents and skills of the whole individual, rather than just his or her verbal mathematical skills. Garner “hypothesized that human potential also encompasses spatial, musical, and kinesthetic, as well as interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences” (Fogarty & Stoehr, 2008) He has since added two more intelligences, the naturalist and the existentialist. IM theory does not signify that a person is only intelligent in a single mode, but that a couple of intelligences work together. In terms of our focus, Garner defined bodily-kinesthetic intelligence as:

A characteristic of such an intelligence is the ability to use one’s body in highly differentiated and skilled ways, for expressive as well as goal-oriented purposes… Characteristic as well is the capacity to work skillfully with objects, both those that involve the fine motor movements of one’s fingers and hands and those that exploit gross motor movements of the body (Garner, 1983)

There are obvious examples of some individuals, who course excell in this intelligence: We know of great athletes, dancers, mimes, musicians, surgeons, etc. However, Garner notes that bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is not widely developed in our culture. It seems that “outside of sports, it is not highly valued, especially as a form of expression” (Griss, 1998)The result of Garner’s concepts in education signified that intelligence and learning go beyond the verbal/linguistic and mathematical/logical spheres, which provides a well-rounded holistic approach to education.


Finally, coming from neuro-linguistic programming, one of the most common and widely used frameworks of the various types of learning styles is Fleming's VARK model. The VARK model consists of visual learners; auditory learners; reading-writing preference learners; kinesthetic learners or tactile learners. Compared to Gardener investigations, Fleming provides a straightforward connection between learning and perceptual preferences. According to the VARK model kinesthetic learners prefer to learn through experience which includes moving, touching, and doing.

References

Fogarty, R. & Stoehr, J. (2008) Integrating curricula with multiple intelligences: teams, themes, & threads. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic Books.