Teaching Movement Education

Karen Weiller Abels, PhD, is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of North Texas in Denton. She has more than 25 years of teaching experience, including teaching elementary physical education. She has developed and taught many courses at the collegiate level that focus on teacher preparation, particularly in movement education.

Dr. Abels coauthored selections of the Children Moving ancillary materials and helped shoot, edit, and design 20 live-action video analysis activities covering all four developmental levels. She also codeveloped the flip ’n’ fold movement education document that serves as a quick reference for teachers and children.

She has coauthored many articles related to teaching elementary physical education and served as the Southern District representative for the Council on Physical Education for Children.

Dr. Abels enjoys running, weightlifting, spending time with her family, and taking her two dachshunds for walks.

Jennifer M. Bridges, PhD, is a professor of kinesiology in the College of Health and Human Services at Saginaw Valley State University in University Center, Michigan. For more than 20 years she has taught motor development, motor learning, movement fundamentals, and dance to preservice majors in physical education teacher education. She also held the ACSM health fitness specialist certification for 15 years.

Dr. Bridges has coauthored portions of the well-known Children Moving ancillary materials, which involved shooting, editing, and designing 20 live-action movement analysis activities covering all four motor development levels for the online interactive ancillary video set. In addition, she developed the electronic, animated Movement Analysis E-Wheel based on the handheld manipulative wheel she adapted from the early work of Dr. Graham. This work led her to codevelop the manipulative document, presented in this text, called the flip ’n’ fold, which presents the movement education framework as a practical reference for teachers and children.

In her leisure time, Dr. Bridges enjoys being active with her family in a variety of outdoor pursuits, playing competitive badminton, and developing innovations.