Progress as of February 25, 2011

These past two weeks my focus has been on going back through my articles and clarifying why I chose them. Under each article (in the comment section) I have written a post with a short summery of the article, and another post with quotes that I am interested in and brief information on the author.
Here is a list of some of my short summaries (if I end up deciding to keep the articles I will go into greater detail):
• Interesting Article # 1: Facilitating Preschool Learning and Movement through Dance
This article shows how physical activity has been shown to help Preschool-aged children. Many Preschools have adopted more movement-oriented learning experiences into their curriculum and it has proven beneficial. ***The reason that I like the views of these authors is because while one of them is a dancer, another is a scientist
• Interesting Article #2: Physical Education and Implications for Students with Asperger’s Syndrome
What I focused on most in this article were the lists for “Instructional Implications of Emotional and Behavioral Characteristics” and “Instructional Implications for Physical and Gross Motor Development” because I think that they not only apply to children with AS, but with children in general. ***One of the reasons that this article interested me was because one of the authors has AS and had a difficult time with physical activity. He provides what he thought would have been beneficial to him as a student
• Interesting Article # 3: Why We Should Not Cut P.E.
This article helps to demonstrate how movement is an important part of the learning process. ***This author has written many similar papers and is cited in many of the articles that I have come across in my research, I plan to studies these authors further.
• Interesting Article # 4: Learning games through understanding: New jobs for students!
This article shows how through games and sport children can acquire new learning skills ***These authors are very creative in their approach to movement and learning. (look into separate work)
• Interesting Article # 5: Relationship between Academic Learning Time in Physical Education and Skill Concepts Acquisition and Retention
This article both seems to support and attack the ideas of my former articles ***These authors were very good at bringing in both "sides" of the research into their experiment, it may be good to read other studies supported by these authors
• Interesting Article #6: Exercise Seen as Priming Pump For Students' Academic Strides
This article tells about studies where quality physical activity programs have been shown to increase cognition in children. ***I see Debra Viadero as being a credible source for my research because she has a lot of experience with controversial topics and education (she is an assistant managing editor for Education Week)
• Interesting Article #7: Differences between Slovenian Pupils Attending Sport Class and Those Attending a Regular School Programme
This article shows statistical data collected from several studies done on school children. The main body of the article focuses on how children who took physical activity related classes along with schoolwork compared to children who didn’t take physical activity related classes along with their schoolwork. ***One of the things I found most interesting about this article was the people cited at the end, I plan to look into some of those individual articles as well.
• Interesting Article # 8: Quality Physical Education: Why the Sport Requirement Can't Do It Alone
This article focuses on how when physical activity is only approached through sport, some people feel uncomfortable or are left out. This is the reason that I am offering movement experiences through not only sport, but also games and creative movement ***Amanda D. (STEWART) STANEC is the author of many other articles relating to similar topics (such as testing in schools through Physical Education).
• Interesting Article # 9: Children's Health & Academic Performance: Elevating Physical Education's Role in Schools
This article tells about four specific studies that have shown how physical activity can improve cognitive development. I plan to go into each of these studies in depth with future articles. *** G. C. LeMasurier has written many articles from a movement analyst’s perspective. Some of his other articles may be useful in my project.


Information on the specific parts of each article that I would like to focus on are listed in the comment section under each article. Because I started collecting articles before our “google talk” I got most of these from the library database; but since the “google talk” I have been able to find more articles by these same authors that I may not have been able to find on the library database.