Challenges and Solutions in Young Children's Representation of Movement: Examples From a Long-Term Study

• In Event: Exploring Students’ Sociocultural and Sociopolitical Practices and Identities Through Multimodality and Embodiment

Abstract

This study explored challenges and solutions involved in inventing, interpreting, and enacting movement representations of the three facets of human movement – body, space, and time. A curriculum was developed to teach movement concepts and presented the gradually escalating representational tasks. Sixteen girls were video recorded while inventing and correcting representational scripts. Analysis of the recordings, the scripts’ sign choice, and their spatial arrangement provides insights into generating a primary notational system. Core challenges of movement representation were identified, along with relevant graphical solutions. Findings showed that girls this age were capable of representing a 3D complex movement, while developing groups' individual registers, based on a culturally influenced adaptation of conventional signs and arrangements, as well as inventing new ones.

Authors

• Shlomit Ofer, Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts

• Billie Eilam, University of Haifa