Kinesthetic Learning

Last reviewed: February 2017

Abstract

Kinesthetic learning refers to a teaching methodology in which the instructor stresses strategies that engage students’ basic motor skills. It involves a variety of targeted hands-on exercises to make the lesson material more easily learned and ultimately more easily memorized. Although the approach is not without its critics, the theory of kinesthetic learning is grounded in a widely-accepted theoretical framework for education that dates back to the mid-1980s, which suggested that individual students learn through different methods. To date, there is no empirical data that supports better learning through tactile engagement, and introducing physical activity into a lesson plan risks disrupting the class.

Overview

Traditionally, education centered on how teachers taught, that is, would-be teachers were expected to study pedagogies, methods for presenting information. The focus was on the teacher. Beginning in the late 1970s, education theorists began to question how material is presented in a classroom and whether traditional assumptions about the presumed effectiveness of delivering material in a classroom setting actually benefitted the widest number of students. Traditional education theory suggested that an instructor sections off a bit of manageable material and, using chalkboard help and/or worksheets as supplemental aids, moved the students class by class, week by week, month by month through the assigned material, stopping periodically for cumulative examinations that helped assess which students were paying attention and which students were not.

Teachers on the whole presented the material in much the same manner—although teacher to teacher presentations would change according to a variety of factors including personality type, articulation and communication skills, age, length of time on the job, and even the part of the school year. Studies in the 1950s and 1960s regularly showed that teachers, by the time summer was within weeks, tended to flatline in terms of class presentation and enthusiasm.

The assumption behind such a basic educational model was that students pretty much all learned the same way. If one student in a class scored lower on an examination or on a paper, that student would be cautioned to pay closer attention, have their seat moved closer to the front of the room, or given extra assignments as practice. If struggling students fidgeted or looked out the window or doodled during lessons, teachers would often single them out, reprimand them, and remind them to pay attention. In extreme cases, such students would be targeted for remediation, remanded to special counselors who would try to “fix” the problems with attention span and fidgeting before the student could be successfully returned to the classroom, thus further stigmatizing the student as a problem. By the same token, students who scored high on such assessment exams or on papers were credited not as good listeners but rather as good or smart students. Those students were rewarded with higher grades and were widely acknowledged as the most promising students in a class and often were targeted for higher education in college.

Researchers began to question whether an instructor presenting material with only limited help from visual aids or handouts was in fact making learning far more difficult for some of students. People learn by hands-on techniques as infants and toddlers, and for centuries education was conducted in trades through apprenticeships in which a person learned by doing. “[R]epetitive, tacit, sensory, practical learning” had been the historical model for learning a trade (Dowling, 2012).

The Fleming Paradigm. In the early 1980s, a landmark education paradigm emerged that suggested that students in fact learn in very different ways and that teachers needed to understand how complex the process of mastering new information actually was. Neil D. Fleming, a career teacher and a professor emeritus of education theory at Lincoln University in New Zealand, first formulated a teaching concept that, building on more than a generation of conjecture within the academic community, suggested there were in fact four different ways to learn and that students tended to excel at one or two at the expense of the others. The Fleming paradigm, which became an educational model around the world, quickly became known by the acronym VARK: V (visual) A (auditory) R (reading and writing) and K (kinesthetic).

Fleming conjectured that from kindergarten to second grade students learn best kinesthetically, that is, through hands-on instruction and by being given the opportunity to regularly move around physically in a classroom. Teachers needed to open up the traditional row by row classroom floor plan to provide some free space (Riordan, 2006). If the instruction for the day was about the sun, for example, students would be given time to cut colored paper suns and paste them onto blue paper or simply go to the window or step outside to feel the sun; or if story-time was about King Midas, students would get to pass around a statute made of gold (or at least gold plated). In addition, teachers at that level would understand the importance of breaks, giving students a chance to move around the room, to stand up and just shake their hands or stretch their necks—any meaningful exercise that would break the routine of sitting still and listening.

By grades 4-8, students had begun to develop listening skills, and educators could introduce the visual. Concepts, terms, ideas would be presented visually. For example, teachers might integrate a photo of a rain forest into a geography lesson or show a science class a video of a volcano eruption. The visual element would make that material more accessible and more easily retained. In addition, at this level, students would begin to respond to textbooks, reading new material before being engaged with it in the classroom. Students were expected, in turn, to respond in writing as part of assessments or even as homework. For example, if an eighth grade class reviewed the Doppler effect, students might be expected to explain that phenomena of sound in writing.

From high school through college, students could be relied on to listen—that is, to learn through auditory instruction. Here the teacher, assisted by visual elements, dominated the presentation of information because students by that time could be expected to be accustomed to the dynamic of the classroom. Lectures delivered clearly and helpfully would move successfully the new information. What extra-assistance an instructor would bring to the material, the core instruction assumed the auditory model was the most effective and the most reliable.

Applications

Kinesthetic learning, within this initial frame, was largely associated with the youngest learners. It was largely conceived as a stage students necessarily grow out of as they evolve into mastering more complicated material in later grades. Education theorists began to suggest as early as the mid-1990s that any one student was in fact a complex of these learning strategies, in which case instructors at all levels needed to gauge the presentation of material to make sure the material would reach the widest range of students (Wright & Stokes, 2012).

Kinesthetic learning presented the biggest challenge because it had long been associated with teaching small children. The idea of having high school students or college students move around in a class seemed childish and patronizing. Advocates, however, argue the importance of kinesthetic learning particularly at the college level (Mobley & Fisher, 2014). The idea of the body being tied to the mind and its activity output was really not that unusual. After all, a person who has a particularly thorny day at work may go for a run in the evening and begin to more clearly, seeing solutions that were not evident before. Even taking deep breaths has been shown to physically ease tension and anxiety. Advocates for kinesthetic learning point out that if there is an activity to learn, such as shooting a free throw in basketball, for example, or playing a scale on a flute, talking students through the activity even with pictures is not as helpful as actually getting the students to do the thing.

Kinesthetic Learners. Education studies have suggested that somewhere in the range of 10 percent to 18 percent of students across the curriculum, that is from kindergarten to college, succeed in the classroom best through kinesthetic learning. Kinesthetic students excel at a number of particular classroom protocols. For example, they are strong in labs, the hands-on application of principles of the hard sciences. They are exceptionally gifted in the creative curricula that demand physical expression, such as art or dance or band or theater. They learn sports more quickly and perform athletic endeavors more confidently and competently. They develop hand-eye coordination more quickly; they are generally more comfortable with computer technology; they demonstrate an ability to respond more quickly to dilemmas or real-time problems. For example, kinesthetic learners have less difficulty executing fire drills or exiting from an assembly or moving from class to class, even early in the school year.

However, in the day to day routine of classroom instruction, kinesthetic learners can be at a distinct disadvantage, particularly in higher grades where attention spans are expected to encompass entire class periods and where emphasis is placed on auditory skills or reading and writing. Indeed, these students have traditionally been singled out as problems. Because it is possible that nearly 20 percent of students learn better through kinesthetic learning, teachers and education theorists have begun to model more activities in the classroom to optimize the opportunity these students have to excel.

Strategies for instruction that allow kinesthetic learners to engage critical motor skills while learning include having students work their hands quietly at their desk without disrupting the classroom environment, pulling and stretching a rubber band, for example, or tying and untying a paper clip or twirling a pen or pencil. Kinesthetic students can be seated where distractions are minimized. Sitting quietly at their desk, kinesthetic learners can perform isometric exercises; they can simply tighten and untighten muscles, turn their head side to side, clench and unclench a fist, curl and uncurl toes or simply cross their legs and swing a leg. Kinesthetic students can be encouraged to pay particular attention to note taking and even during lapses in material can be encouraged to doodle in the notebook margins to maintain critical muscle engagement. When they study at home, kinesthetic learners are encouraged to highlight material in brightly colored highlighters.

Teaching Kinesthetic Learners. Teachers, for their part, can provide in each lesson some kind of group activity geared to help teach the day’s lesson. Kinesthetic learners thrive in group formations and in animated discussion without the restraints of the traditional classroom. Teachers can schedule field trips. Teachers can provide objects to display in class or to pass around. If teachers are aware of kinesthetic learners, teachers can even provide quick stretch breaks where all the students can stand and stretch at their desks. Teachers can permit students some limited snacks at breaks. Teachers can supplement auditory presentation through handouts, worksheets, videos, or even colored note cards. Leopold (2012) outlines specific activities for kinesthetic learners in writing classes that include note cards and colored paper as prewriting tools. In addition, teachers can use the vast technology available through the computer to create attractive and eye-friendly websites where students, kinesthetic or not, can visit and review the material from the class.

In more creative approaches, innovative instructors can incorporate movement and physical motion into a class—for example, teaching how crystals form by having students interlocking their arms or using limited dance movements to explain electron motion. “The use of games and other activities may actually tend to keep the learner more focused on the concepts being learned even though the games and activities themselves have very little or basically nothing to do with the concepts being covered” (Moyer & Savino, 2015).

Viewpoints

The theory that students learn effectively by engaging the body as well as the mind is not without its critics. Certainly, designing classroom instruction that includes physical motion can lead to disruptions and classes getting out of the control of the instructor. The lesson itself can be lost amid what might be perceived as playtime. Fourth grade students who use a Mr. Potato Head, for example, to learn parts of the body are likely to remember the game not the body parts. Because kinesthetic learners make up a relatively small percentage, other students can view such exercises, particularly in the high school and college levels, as somehow not serious learning. Not disciplining kinesthetic learners to work with more sophisticated methods of instruction can send mixed signals when those students leave education and head into the workplace. At the core of these objections is the object that no research can quantitatively validate that a student is one kind of learner or another. Education theorists are inclined to conceive of a student as a complex of all four learning capabilities—to emphasize one over the other is to do education and the classroom itself a disservice.

Emerging studies, however, have begun to suggest that all students benefit from more hands-on learning protocols, that tactile learning enhances the mind’s ability to focus and ultimately to retain information. “[E]verything . . . is an experience, but experiential education relies on distinctive experiences. Faced with the unexpected, the novel, or the dangerous, students achieve a heightened awareness of the subject matter and its value” (Zimmerman, 2002). At the most basic level, advocates point out, a person learns more from following a recipe than from reading a recipe. Listening and watching an instructor, what is termed passive learning, can create adults who hesitate to think boldly or analytically and who are far more likely to maintain the status quo. “[T]he addition of the kinesthetic aspect can make the concepts involved both easier to comprehend and easier to access once learned” (Richards, 2012). Kinesthetic learning as part of an education curriculum can enhance long-term, indeed lifelong learning skills.

Terms & Concepts

Auditory: Skills having to do with listening.

Isometric Exercise: Any strengthening and/or stress-relieving exercise that pits one muscle group against another, as for instance pressing the palms together.

Kinesthetic: Having to do with motion or action.

Paradigm: A model held up for imitation and/or critique.

Pedagogy: A method, concept, and/or approach to teaching and classroom conduct.

Remediation: To remedy an action by enforcing its opposite.

Stigmatize: To characterize, most often unfairly, an action or a group of people based on limited data.

VARK: An acronym used to identify the four types of learners: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic.

Bibliography

Dowling, C. (2012). The hand: Kinesthetic creation and the contemporary classroom. International Journal of Learning, 18(8), 51–66. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=83812735&site=ehost-live

Leopold, L. (2012). Prewriting tasks for auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners. TESL Canada Journal, 29(2), 96–102. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=89250935&site=ehost-live

Mobley, K., & Fisher, S. (2014). Ditching the desks: Kinesthetic learning in college classes. Social Studies, 105(96), 301–309. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=98354537&site=ehost-live

Moyer, M., & Savino, A. (2015). The role of kinesthetic learning style and prompted responses in teaching management courses. Global Education Journal, 2015(1), 85–104. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=109021783&site=ehost-live

Riordan, D. (2006). Kinesthetic learning and interpersonal learning: A compendium of “hands-on” and “person-to-person” projects for teaching international accounting. Journal of Teaching in International Business, 17(1), 49–62. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=23476273&site=ehost-live

Richards, T. (2012). Using kinesthetic activities to teach Ptolemaic and Copernican retrograde motion. Science & Education, 21(6), 899–910. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=75062912&site=ehost-live

West, T., Nam, R. S., & Benckhuysen, A. W. (2016). Kinesthetic language learning: How an accident led to a revelation. Teaching Theology & Religion, 19(4), 378–384. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=118669280&site=ehost-live

Wright, S., & Stokes, A. (2012). The application of VARK learning styles in introductory level economics units. Issues in Educational Research, 25(1), 62–79. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=102382768&site=ehost-live

Zimmerman, V. (2002). Moving poems: Kinesthetic learning in the literature classroom. Pedagogy, 2(3), 409–412. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=7446714&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Kuczala, M. (2015). Training in motion: How to use movement to create engaging and effective learning. New York, NY: AMACON.

Odisho, O., Aziz, M., & Giacaman, N. (2016). Teaching and learning data structure concepts via Visual Kinesthetic Pseudocode with the aid of a constructively aligned app. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 24(6), 926–933. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=119356550&site=ehost-live

Osler II, J. E., & Wright, M. A. (2016). Neuro-holistic learning: An integrated kinesthetic © approach to cognitive learning using © collaborative interactive thought exchange in a blended environment to enhance the learning of young african american males. Journal of Educational Technology, 12(4), 1–9. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=115096647&site=ehost-live

Wagner, E. E. (2014). Using a kinesthetic learning strategy to engage nursing student thinking, enhance retention, and improve critical thinking. Journal of Nursing Education, 53(6), 348–351. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=102116162&site=ehost-live