The effects of interdisciplinary teaching between mathematics and physical education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Physical activity provides numerous benefits to physical and mental health, even affecting learning. Despite this, one of the main modern problems is represented by sedentariness. Children and adolescents spend most of their time at school. Therefore, a valid teaching methodology to benefit from the positive effects of physical activity and reduce sedentary moments could be interdisciplinary learning, which integrates physical education into various curricular subjects. Specifically, this paper proposes a systematic literature review of some protocols (n = 11) to investigate whether an elementary school’s integrated physical education and mathematics curriculum can improve learning in the logic-cognitive domain. From all the studies reviewed, the strong importance of interdisciplinary teaching, linking mathematics to physical education, was confirmed to reduce sedentary moments and enable a better attitude toward this discipline, breaking down the many stereotypes that often paint it as a complex and abstract subject.

Keywords

• Physical education
• Implementation of physical education at school
• Mathematics
• Body-based learning
• Interdisciplinary education