Kinesthetic learning

Kinesthetic learning is a teaching and learning style in which learning takes place by the student actually carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or merely watching a demonstration. Building dioramas, physical models or participating in role-playing or historical reenactment are some examples. Other examples include the kindergarten practice of having children perform various motions from left to right in preparation for reading education.

Movement has long been used as an aid to mnemonics, as with the right-hand rule in physics. Pedagogical theorists such as Howard Gardner, however, assert that understanding of space and motion well is a distinct kind of intelligence in itself, useful in such various fields as engineering, database design, and athletics such as sport, martial arts or dance.

Some proponents of kinesthetic learning see it primarily as a way to increase association through repetition, but some proponents of "educational kinesthetics" such as Brain Gym asserts that certain physical motions increase the density of neurological networks within the brain itself, especially when practiced by growing children.

The ability to maintain awareness of one's own physical position in space is sometimes called proprioception.