Movement as a learning resource in primary education classrooms: a descriptive study

Body movement can be a relevant educational resource in classrooms, either because it is inherent to the human being himself, or because of the benefits associated with the mere act of moving. The aim of this study was to determine the presence or absence of body movement as a learning resource in primary education classrooms, and the evaluation of this resource among teachers of this stage in the classroom. For data collection, an ad hoc questionnaire was prepared and applied to a sample of 160 teachers working in the Autonomous Community of Galicia. The results obtained reported that 86,9% of the teachers used movement in the classrooms and 81,9% gave a very high rating to the importance of movement in different learning situations. The teaching staff who used movement in the classrooms scored higher than the teachers who did not use it (scale 1-5) in the value they gave to aspects such as the influence that movement has on improving performance in different areas. of learning (4,4 vs 3,8), in the acquisition of concepts (4,3 vs 3,7), in the improvement of attention and memory (4,3 vs 4,0), as well as face to the motivation of the students (4,6 vs 4,2); all of these differences in scores reached statistical significance. It seems important to encourage the presence, in initial and continuous teacher training, of strategies that favor the presence of body movement in the classroom.