Teaching the moving body with a still pedagogy: body percussion and the coupling architecture of embodied learning in physical education

Abstract

Embodied learning is an influential orientation in physical education and sport pedagogy, but the field lacks agreement on which property of a movement practice does the educational work. Function-based frameworks locate it in the epistemic function that movement performs. This paper proposes one such function for rhythmic group practices: the distribution of influence over a shared timing structure. External entrainment is defined as unidirectional coupling to a source that performers cannot influence, and mutual entrainment as bidirectional coupling in which each participant is at once sound source and receiver. The core claim is that reducing the asymmetry of that distribution widens the range of coordinative solutions a group explores, improves transfer to untrained patterns and tempi, and speeds recovery after perturbation, at a cost in fidelity to the trained pattern. The proposed active ingredient is contingency rather than variability: under mutual coupling a participant's correction alters the target, which an irregular but unresponsive source does not. This contrast supplies the principal test and separates the proposal from contextual interference and constraints-led accounts. The Coupling Asymmetry Index is built from established measures: pairwise phase-correction gains, estimated as in published work on string quartets, are aggregated as the complement of weighted network reciprocity, which makes the index invariant to group size. A mean-field regime, in which participants adapt to the ensemble aggregate, is distinguished and shown to limit the group size at which reciprocity can be sustained. Body percussion is the exemplary case because it is the classroom practice in which coupling architecture is a free design variable. Two further claims follow. Current practice and evidence in body percussion are prescriptive despite an embodied justification, a claim stated as a testable hypothesis with a survey protocol. And this default is an institutional frame factor inherited from the material organization of the classroom rather than a property of any method. The paper derives boundary conditions, an observational framework for practitioners, ten falsifiable propositions and a five-item reporting standard.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2026 · DOI ↗