Skill and Physical Activity: A Central Dogma for Kinesiology

Abstract

Kinesiology has a long and storied tradition and history. The growth of our discipline and what might be called our subdisciplines has been the shining achievement of the 1970–2006 era, spurred on by Henry's (1964) call for an academic discipline. In this short thought paper, we argue that we have lost sight of the discipline in a quest to become socially relevant. This social relevance has been to get on the exercise as prescription bandwagon, which has produced a wide chasm between our undergraduate curriculum and our research endeavors. The reason for this chasm is that kinesiology does not have an agreed upon central theme, what we call a dogma. We argue that we need to return to make skill and physical activity the central dogma of kinesiology and to make a new coherent curriculum for undergraduate kinesiology.