Children’s Movement in an Integrated Kindergarten Classroom: Design, Methods and Preliminary Findings

According to the abstract of this study of kindergarten children: "Contemporary neuroscientific evidence indicates that unrestricted movement and gestures are necessary for optimal cognitive and communicative development." [Footnotes are removed by the editor. Please access the full document for these references.]

This paper documents an interdisciplinary, ethnographic study designed to capture children’s interactions with the physical features of an integrated (i.e., disabled and non-disabled children) kindergarten classroom. "Describing the ways school environments enhance or inhibit movement may optimize all children’s health, social abilities and cognitive development." This study details theoretical and methodological approaches: "Children’s bodies were conceptualized according to 'what they could do,' and classrooms were conceptualized as being inherently 'discoverable.' Preliminary findings indicate that certain environmental features trigger children to move in dynamic, non-habitual ways."

From the perspective that children engage with physical environments to "learn about their properties, and selectively enter places to learn from, benefit and modify the functional opportunities they offer," researchers studied movements of children at the Integrated Kindergarten Program (IKP) at Bloorview School Authority, University of Toronto, Canada. "IKP teachers emphasize movement as an integral part of learning. Movement-related activities such as music/expressive arts, adapted physical education, aquatics and outdoor play take place in centrally located, accessible spaces beyond the IKP classroom." The primary researcher "'moved alongside' the children in minimally intrusive ways during these sessions. At appropriate times, she asked specific children to show, teach and/or explain how and why they were moving in particular ways....Interviews with individual children took place in the pretend center while the remaining children attended library, art or music classes in another room." Pages 15 and 16 contain charts of spacial usage according to activities devised by the children.

"...[T]hose [spaces] that elicit children’s 'flexible potentialities' warrant particular attention. Our findings about classroom affordances suggest that open pathways and social affordances elicited regular, diverse and non-habitual movements in most children. Interactions were characterized by changes in rhythm (e.g., running or galloping), playfulness with gravitational forces (e.g., suspending and gliding), and the testing of physical limits of what young bodies with a range of abilities 'could do.' It appeared that non-prescribed classroom areas such as the pathway offered children the freedom to move, mimic and trigger other children to move in idiosyncratic and non-habitual ways...", for example, running, gliding, crawling, and walking backwards.

The research analyses the use of open pathways in relation to disciplinary rules, to social interchange, and to triggering disabled children to move in similar and/or non-habitual ways. The study suggests that: "Hence, children’s cognitive development may be better understood in terms of the total environment constituted by groups of children, and characterized by the interdependence of physical, social and personal features....Ultimately this knowledge could be used to optimize: 1) environments that support children’s fundamental right to access and move freely within them; 2) the development of their physical, social, and cognitive capacities; and 3) environmental, educational and rehabilitation interventions that encourage children to explore, navigate and shape their everyday environments."