From Club to Symbols: An Ethnographic Method for Developing a Notation System for Arnis

Physical education (PE) teachers who teach arnis often have to augment their live demonstrations with textual instructions and postural images that hardly capture the fullness of each strike or movement. To date, no widely accessible, easy-to-use, and intuitive instructional manual exists for teachers to use in arnis instruction. This deficiency can be remedied by a notation system that can concisely and intuitively describe each movement yet remains simple enough for PE students to understand. This paper outlines the methods and processes that culminated in a proposed, albeit preliminary and rudimentary, notation system for arnis. Data for the notation were collected through ethnographic methods, especially participant observation and immersion, in conjunction with personal interviews, video recording, photography, journaling, and note-taking. Four grandmasters of a well-respected arnis club provided the observational data converted into notation using the proposed symbol set. A total of seven grandmasters validated the final output.