Fundamental Movement Skills Research from 2000 to 2025: A Bibliometric Analysis with Pedagogical Interpretation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17309/jltm.2025.6.3.05Keywords:
fundamental movement skills, motor competence, physical education, movement learning, pedagogical intervention, bibliometric analysis, thematic evolution, research frontsAbstract
Background. Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) are widely recognized as a foundation for physical activity, motor development, and sport participation. However, within educational contexts, FMS also represent a core learning domain shaped by instructional design, pedagogical strategies, and learning processes. Despite a rapidly expanding body of research, FMS scholarship remains conceptually fragmented across health, sport science, and educational traditions, limiting the development of coherent, learning-oriented frameworks.
Objectives. The purpose of this study was to examine the conceptual structure, thematic evolution, and contemporary research fronts of FMS research through a bibliometric analysis, with a specific focus on pedagogical and learning-oriented interpretation.
Materials and Methods. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using 1,281 Scopus-indexed publications published between 2000 and 2025. Authors’ keywords served as the primary unit of analysis. Keyword co-occurrence networks, thematic evolution analysis, and clustering of contemporary research fronts were performed using the bibliometrix package in R. Network normalization was based on association strength, and community detection was conducted using the Louvain algorithm.
Results. The analysis revealed a four-cluster conceptual structure encompassing assessment and motor development, health-related outcomes, pedagogical interventions, and performance-oriented perspectives. Thematic evolution analysis demonstrated a shift from outcome-focused themes (e.g., balance, physical activity, overweight) toward competence-based constructs such as motor competence and object control skills in recent years. Three major contemporary research fronts were identified: physical education and training, motor performance, and a peripheral biomedical domain. Mapping these fronts onto six pedagogically relevant roles of FMS highlighted strong alignment with instructional and performance-based frameworks, alongside limited integration of cognitive and professional-functional dimensions.
Conclusions. The findings indicate that FMS research has evolved toward integrative, competence-based, and pedagogically actionable models of movement learning. At the same time, bibliometric patterns reveal underexplored opportunities for integrating cognitive mechanisms and functional applications beyond traditional physical education contexts. This study provides a structured, evidence-based foundation for advancing pedagogically grounded approaches to FMS instruction and future research.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Mykola Khudolii, Olha Ivashchenko, Oleg Khudolii
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