Movement and Learning: What Does the Research Actually Say?
Can movement help children learn? Research provides encouraging evidence, but the useful answer depends on the activity, the learning goal and how progress is measured.
For schools, it helps to distinguish a movement break from a lesson that incorporates physical responses, and from a gesture that represents the meaning of an idea. These approaches should not be treated as interchangeable.
What a classroom trial found
A 2016 cluster-randomised trial involved 499 children across 12 primary schools. Classes received either regular lessons or physically active mathematics and spelling lessons over two school years. The active lessons took place three times a week during 22 weeks of each year.
The intervention group made greater gains in mathematics and spelling. The researchers found no difference on the reading test. This supports the potential of that sustained teaching approach while showing that benefits were not uniform across the subjects measured. [1]
What vocabulary research found
Andrä and colleagues studied foreign-language vocabulary learning in eight-year-old children. Their experiments compared learning supported by gestures or pictures with learning without that enrichment.
Both gestures and pictures supported vocabulary test performance, with benefits observed up to six months after training. Gestures did not show a clear advantage over pictures in this age group. [2]
The finding supports giving children meaningful ways to experience new words. It does not mean that every movement activity will produce the same result.
What this means for choosing activities
Begin with a specific learning objective. An action can provide a way to answer, help represent an idea or create an opportunity to practise. Ask which role it serves in the activity you are choosing.
Then check learning through appropriate tasks. Excitement and participation are useful observations, but children also need opportunities to recall, explain or apply what they have learned.
How this relates to Eduzo
Eduzo gives children ways to interact with learning content through movement and other response formats. Its activities and reports connect participation with practice and assessment.
The studies discussed here evaluated other interventions, not Eduzo. They inform the wider educational rationale; a school pilot helps assess how Eduzo fits a particular classroom and its learning goals.
Research references
[1] Mullender-Wijnsma, M. J., et al. (2016). Physically Active Math and Language Lessons Improve Academic Achievement: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial. Pediatrics, 137(3), e20152743. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-2743
[2] Andrä, C., et al. (2020). Learning Foreign Language Vocabulary with Gestures and Pictures Enhances Vocabulary Memory for Several Months Post-Learning in Eight-Year-Old School Children. Educational Psychology Review, 32, 815–850. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09527-z
Keep learning. Keep moving.
Explore what purposeful movement could look like in your lessons. Contact Eduzo to discuss a demonstration built around your learning goals.
