The original article was published in German by Heike Kölln-Prisner.

In my blog post “Exercise and education”, I tried to illustrate the benefits of physical activity in adult education. However, it is not simply a case of introducing exercises into the classroom, but also about movement in a broader sense ‒ because movement also offers the prospect of departing from a particular location or perspective, and of seeking out new opportunities and places. The holy father of adult education, Hans Tietgens, has also described adult education as a “search movement”. How right he was! In his fascinating article Stichwort: Bewegung und Erwachsenenbildung [Keyword: Movement and adult education], Prof. Henning Paetzold demonstrates the diverse connections (including linguistic) between exercise and learning. (1)

Plus, Dragan Pinjuh drives home the point on EPALE that our environment and our living conditions are making us “sedentary” and that we should take every opportunity to bring exercise back into our everyday lives. (2) The term ‘movement literacy’ is a familiar one in the debate on basic education, i.e., the knowledge of and ability to perform simple everyday movements that are beneficial to health. (3)  

That’s why today we are looking at examples of how physical activity can help adults learn. The examples I would like to illustrate are modelled on the image of expanding rings (see blog on EPALE).

Here’s a reminder:  

The purple circle represents movement in the room: 

• Active breaks in the classroom: Short exercise breaks or ‘brain breaks’ during lessons help to refresh or improve concentration and attention. These breaks can include simple exercises such as stretching, walking around the room, dancing or light aerobics. (4) Standing desks or easy-to-move furniture in classrooms and libraries allow students to move around while learning and to form new groups. This can help to reduce fatigue and boost mental alertness.

   

• Integrated movement games: Learning games that involve physical activity, such as relay races or vocabulary scavenger hunts in language lessons, combine movement with cognitive tasks and make learning more interactive and engaging. (4) Examples of these activities include hidden object games, four-corner games, ice-breakers that require students to move around the room and switch conversation partners, gallery walks and much more. If you are looking for something like this, you can find it at eBildungslabor (5), for example. Activities that are actually designed for children and young people can also be used for adults, with a few modifications. 

   

• An entire industry has grown up around the term ‘movement technology’: the use of technologies such as Wii Fit, Kinect or other movement-based learning platforms, which integrate physical activity into the learning process and thus promote both physical fitness and cognitive skills, have been popular for many years. These examples demonstrate how exercise and education can be combined to promote learners’ physical and mental health and to improve learning overall. (6) 

But are there also limits? Does it make sense to continue including elements of movement in education after a certain age? There is a clear plea from Marcus Palmén on EPALE. No, there are no limits, but there is a need to adapt. (7)

Widening the circle: the yellow ring

• Conquer the building! A group of learners went down to the basement of their educational establishment to attend a reading for a literature course. The participants were seated closely together and there were a few new noises (from the heating!), but otherwise no windows. The literature for the reading, in this case by Isabel Allende, made what we heard sound different.

   

• Climb the stairs: Exhibitions in stairwells offer an opportunity to combine education (in this case art or photography) with exercise. Or have your English students roam through the building, naming everything they know and looking up unfamiliar objects/facilities in the dictionary (or on their phones). Do you know what a heating pipe is in Italian?

   

• The building from the outside: You can also gain new views from the outside. Take a walk around your educational establishment, draw the façade, calculate the number of windows, try to figure out how many cubic metres the building has, e.g., for heating requirements. I’m positive that you can incorporate “out of house” activities into any course.

Out in the neighbourhood: the red ring

• Walk and talk: An interesting example from a company I know: twice a week they offer the opportunity to take a longer lunch break (extended for the purpose) for a walk with colleagues to talk about new experiences or what they have learnt. I think this is a good example of peer learning and innovative in-company training. A very similar idea is what’s known as “District Strolls”. This involves going for a walk through the side streets of a particular neighbourhood, during which colleagues in alternating pairs exchange ideas about new developments in their area and then, if necessary, draw up tailored cooperative offers from them.

   

• Outdoor education, whether as nature trails or urban walks, offers learners the opportunity to get out and about in nature or the city while learning about biology, geography and environmental science, history or politics. This method promotes practical learning and physical activity. An example from my own experience: a city tour in Prague, led by homeless people. Seeing things differently, through the eyes of people looking for a safe place to spend the night, revealed new perspectives. 

   

• But even moving ‘away’ from the actual place of learning, e.g., taking public transport to another town or district and then having to walk some way, offers a new learning experience. Suddenly, there are new conversations between people who hadn’t sat next to each other before; different topics come up; there’s a new view of things ‒ and your perspective shifts or broadens. Such exploratory walks are often used in ‘German as a foreign language’ courses to test newly acquired language skills at the post office, town hall or supermarket. 

Did you know that there are people in Hamburg-Billstedt, for example, who don’t leave their neighbourhood for a whole year (for whatever reason)? 

The world is your destination: the green ring

• Academic travel is a type of programme that many universities and schools have adopted. (8) It’s the experience of combining an (academic) field of learning with a trip (near or far) and thus promoting learning through all the senses. Here’s another personal example: my husband, a professor of mathematics, regularly makes his ‘academic journey’ to the Swiss mountains to “measure” them, drawing inspiration from the book Measuring the World, by S. Kehlmann.  

   

• Educational holidays can also enhance learning:  Learners move around in new environments almost naturally ‒ perhaps using other languages, exploring the sights or the history/architecture of a place, engaging with fellow learners they don’t know. In addition to getting plenty of ‘cognitive’ input, they sometimes also learn about their own limits, in more ways than one.

   

• Erasmus+ mobilities. The ultimate in movement, right? Time and again, people who have taken part in a European mobility programme talk about their experiences and movements in a new environment. There is so much to learn, to grasp, to scale, to experience, to discover. Of my own visits to other project partners (from a mobility point of view, of course!), I remember two in particular: climbing the Acropolis at 32 degrees, and pushing a pram with a two-year-old child up the steep streets of Lisbon’s old town. What do you think of when you think of your travels? (If you have experience of mobility.) Which movement sticks in your mind?

EPALE often reports on how sport (as the main activity) supports many educational goals in adult education. For example, sport is particularly helpful in integration work, as described in the article “Sport against Racism” or in the EPALE article “Match: Migration and Sport”. (9) and (10)

However, sport is also a good way to develop an ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ and a sense of initiative. This has been demonstrated by the EU-funded ENTOS project. (11) 

Conclusion 

With a little ingenuity, movement activities can be incorporated into all adult learning activities ‒ as always, creativity and perhaps courage are important! 

Now it’s your turn: Share with us your example of physical activity in adult education and win an attractive package of EPALE goodies! YES, you read that right! This time there’s a prize to be won. Simply log in, share your experiences in a comment and you’re in the running! We will be checking your contributions regularly until the end of August, after which the draw will be held. So let’s go! 

1. Prof. Dr. Henning Pätzold: Stichwort Bewegung und Bildung, DIE Magazin I/2011, p. 22ff
2. Sport is a MUST | EPALE (europa.eu)
3. Can learning in sports be lifelong? | EPALE (europa.eu)
4. Academic Travel Program - TASIS Switzerland
5. Sport Against Racism Ireland | EPALE (europa.eu)
6.  “MATCH Migration and Sports” project: social inclusion through sports | EPALE (europa.eu)
7.  The Project - Entos 
8. Johannsen2019_Article_FoodMoveLiteracyInDerErwachsen.pdf (bzfe.de)                         
9. References: Mahar, M. T., Murphy, S. K., Rowe, D. A., Golden, J., Shields, A. T., & Raedeke, T. D. (2006). Effects of a classroom-based program on physical activity and on-task behaviour. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 38(12), 2086‒2094.
10. eBildungslabor | Impulse, Beratung und Unterstützung für gutes Lernen in einer digital geprägten Gesellschaft von Nele Hirsch
11. Nutzung der Nintendo Wii zur Bewegungsförderung (lehrer-online.de)