Physical Literacy as a Foundational Dimension of the Index for Embodied Education: Conceptual Architecture, Assessment Gaps, and Validation Pathway

This conceptual-methodological paper proposes physical literacy as a foundational component of the Index for Embodied Education. Building on physical literacy theory, embodied cognition, ecological dynamics, enactive pedagogy, and school-based research on self-regulated and cooperative learning, the paper develops an operational architecture for assessing how children move, perceive, regulate, understand, narrate, and share embodied experiences. The argument is organised around three aims: to reinterpret physical literacy through an embodied, ecological, and enactive lens; to identify unresolved assessment gaps in existing tools; and to propose a six-domain model for primary-school contexts. The proposed architecture includes motor competence, body awareness, motivation and confidence, knowledge and understanding, reflexive agency, and relational participation. Existing instruments such as CAPL-2, PPLI, PLAYself, and MAIA-2 are considered as partial anchors rather than ready-made solutions, while the domains of reflexive agency and relational participation require new operationalisation. A staged validation pathway is outlined, including expert Delphi review, cognitive interviews, pilot testing, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability assessment, measurement invariance, convergent and discriminant validity, and school feasibility criteria. The paper concludes that physical literacy, rethought through embodied and ecological perspectives, can provide the Index for Embodied Education with a theoretically grounded and pedagogically usable assessment framework.