Assessing Balance in Adapted Physical Education: Fundamental Concepts and Applications

Abstract

Balance is an integral part of most movement activities, but assessing its contribution to overall movement performance and identifying possible balance deficits poses a complex problem. Although almost all of the adapted physical education textbooks published in the last 10 years include a section on balance, adapted physical educators need a more in-depth understanding of the issues related to the assessment of balance and postural control that presently may be gained only by going directly to the extensive research base that cuts across many fields of inquiry. Thus the purpose of this paper is to (a) provide a brief overview of the current knowledge base related to balance, with an emphasis on balance deficits, and (b) describe the types of tasks used to assess balance, discuss some problems involved in evaluating balance in adapted physical education, and provide some suggestions on how to improve balance assessment procedures in adapted physical education.