Enhancing Motor Coordination: An Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN) Perspective

The article integrates multi-layered learning and its potential for human development in parallel domains—psycho-motor, cognitive and social-emotional—while focusing on the complex motor coordination that is involved in mastering literacy skills. It presents Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation (EWMN) and the coordination phenomena that are based on this method and supported by pilot study on the impact of learning EWMN on the development of coordination. The present pilot study provides proof of concept both for its assessment tools and the idea that EWMN may facilitate coordination. Objectives: to examine improvement in coordination during an intervention program. Participants: 45 dance department students, 12 to 14 years old, in 3 separate age groups. Procedure: A five-month intervention based on learning EWMN was executed. Pre- and post-tests were given to 15 randomly chosen dance students from the research group (5 participants from each age group, every 3rd student in an alphabetized list of names). Results: The before and after assessments of the intervention program indicate that there was significant improvement in level of coordination among the participants (range—in the first variable: -3.57, p\u3c .01 to the second variable: -10.58, p\u3c .01). All participants significantly improved their coordination. Recommendations: (I) Increasing the number of subjects in future studies in order to obtain more significant conclusions, using relevant parametric statistics and check for normally distributed data using Shapiro-Wilk test or a Kruskal-Wallis test. (II) Employment of scientific tools such as inertial sensors in order to investigate the potential for enhancing coordination using large spaces of movement and time dependency against a gold standard and enable testing the sensitivity of the research tool during an intervention program. (III) Employment of retention test after a non-practicing period in order to assess change in motor learning patterns