Movement, Art, and Child Development Through the Lens of an Innovative Use of the Kestenberg Movement Profile

Abstract

In this work, based on a doctoral dissertation in the field of education, the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) was innovatively used for data analysis to assess group or gestalt (“non-individual”) movement of children in a public preschool. The choice of inquiry was driven by the author’s belief that freedom of movement and expression are foundations for natural learning processes and should therefore be included as core structures in school learning. Through an ethnographic, emergent research design, the KMP was used to demonstrate the relationship between movement and expressive parameters in different classroom activities. Three profiles of group or gestalt movement were constructed based on three movement activity categories that emerged from the research data for 14 children. In the formal activities, there was a high degree of external control of how the children moved their bodies and expressed themselves. In the improvisational movement/dance and art-making activities there was a low degree of external control of how the children moved and expressed themselves. Comparison of the three activity profiles showed that how the children of the study moved their bodies and expressed themselves influenced important learning and developmental processes.