Educational Neuroscience & Movement: An Exploratory Study of Nonlinear Pedagogy in Primary School Physical Education

Educational Neuroscience has increasingly highlighted the importance of embodied learning experiences in promoting cognitive development during childhood. In this perspective, Physical Education (PE) can be understood not only as a context for motor skill acquisition, but also as a powerful learning environment capable of supporting higher-order cognitive processes. Drawing on ecological-dynamical systems theory, Nonlinear Pedagogy (NLP) proposes a learner-centered approach to teaching that emphasizes variability, exploration, and self-organization through the manipulation of task and environmental constraints. This doctoral thesis investigates the effects of a PE intervention based on selected principles of Nonlinear Pedagogy on motor competence, divided attention, and visual processing speed in primary school children. The exploratory study involved a sample of di 165 children (mean age = 7.21 ± 0.93 years), assigned to an experimental group and a control group. Over a 16-week period, the experimental group participated in PE lessons structured according to NLP principles, while the control group followed traditional, linear PE instruction. Overall, the results indicate that the adoption of Nonlinear Pedagogy principles in Physical Education may offer a promising framework for exploring the relationship between motor learning and cognitive development in primary school contexts. While the findings should be interpreted with caution, they suggest that Nonlinear PE environments may support attentional and perceptual processing during primary school age, warranting further investigation across broader and longitudinal research designs.