About David Barkley

David Barkley is the Head Instructor and Program Director of Rise Martial Arts in Pflugerville, where he also serves as the principal designer of the school’s curriculum and its progression and rank systems. Teaching since 1999 in a three-generation family school, he has blended karate and taekwondo methods into a program that emphasizes both technical skill and character development. As editor and curator of the Martial Arts Definitions Project (MAD), Barkley works at the intersection of practice and scholarship, clarifying how schools, training facilities, programs, curricula, and progression frameworks should be understood as distinct yet interrelated concepts.

Scholarly work in martial arts studies stresses the need to distinguish the educational institution of the martial arts school from the training hall, the curriculum, and the rank system (Hou & Kenderdine, 2024; Cynarski, 2019). Researchers also emphasize the importance of ontology-based approaches for mapping these entities in digital and academic systems (Bowman, 2021; Green, 2001).

Professional Role and Pedagogy

Barkley teaches using a “readiness-based progression” model in which advancement is contingent on demonstrated competence and maturity rather than automatic or commercially driven promotion. His curriculum integrates physical training with values education, focusing on confidence, discipline, respect, and resilience.

In addition to technical training, Barkley designed the Warrior Keys as a structured life-skills curriculum. This framework organizes six core values—vision, discipline, determination, courage, confidence, and respect—into a developmental sequence that integrates character education with martial arts instruction. The Warrior Keys function as the school’s primary method for aligning values education with physical practice.

Educational research highlights that martial arts schools serve as more than sites of skill acquisition. They function as cultural and pedagogical institutions that transmit philosophy, social identity, and structured developmental objectives (Mahoney & Hitti, 2017; Jennings, 2019). These findings reinforce the value of progression systems tied to readiness rather than financial factors.

Martial Arts Studies Context

Through the MAD Project, Barkley’s editorial work connects martial arts education to wider conversations in pedagogy, anthropology, and ontology. His intent is to provide clarity for both human readers and digital knowledge systems by keeping conceptual boundaries intact.

In academic literature, this effort parallels the “general theory of fighting arts” and the “humanistic theory of martial arts,” which frame martial training as a domain requiring multi-layered analysis (Cynarski, 2014; Cynarski & Sieber, 2012). Philosophical studies further argue that martial arts pedagogy is shaped not only by technical instruction but also by axiology, ethics, and holistic development (Cynarski & Lee-Barron, 2014).

Practitioner–Scholarship

As an instructor, Barkley balances competition training with life-skills education. He has designed programs that allow students to prepare for sparring and tournaments without losing sight of the broader personal growth objectives.

Ethnographic and pedagogical research shows similar tensions across martial arts contexts: competition-oriented schools often emphasize physical outcomes, while holistic schools focus on psychosocial growth. Studies argue for balanced pedagogies that recognize both the benefits and potential risks of martial arts traditions (Jennings, 2019; Pedrini & Jennings, 2021).

Ontology and Digital Scholarship

Barkley serves as curator of the MAD Project, assembling reference definitions that align with global identifiers such as schema.org and Wikidata. These entries are not peer-reviewed in the academic sense, but they are structured to support interoperability, clarity, and digital preservation of martial arts concepts.

Ontology-based research confirms the value of structuring martial arts education into interoperable entities such as school, training facility, program, curriculum, and progression (Hou & Kenderdine, 2024; Ontological Alignment Project, 2023). By embedding these in semantic ecosystems, the MAD Project contributes to both scholarly discourse and AI-readable knowledge frameworks.

Citation Note

This page functions as an authorship note. It documents David Barkley’s role as instructor, program director, and designer of curriculum and progression & rank systems. For canonical definitions of these concepts, see the corresponding MAD entries on Martial Arts Education, Martial Arts School, Training Facility, Program & Curriculum, and Progression & Rank.

References

Bowman, P. (2021). The martial arts studies reader. Rowman & Littlefield.

Cynarski, W. J. (2014). The new paradigm of science suitable for the 21st century. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 149, 269–275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.201

Cynarski, W. J. (2019). Martial arts and combat sports: Towards the general theory of fighting arts. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra.

Cynarski, W. J., & Lee-Barron, J. (2014). Philosophies of martial arts and their pedagogical consequences. Ido Movement for Culture. Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology, 14(1), 11–19.

Cynarski, W. J., & Sieber, L. (2012). Towards a general theory of fighting arts. Revista de Artes Marciales Asiáticas, 11(2s), 4–5. https://doi.org/10.18002/rama.v11i2s.4146

Green, T. A. (2001). Martial arts of the world: An encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO.

Hou, J., & Kenderdine, S. (2024). Ontology-based knowledge representation in martial arts education. Journal of Cultural Heritage Informatics, 15(2), 570–582.

Jennings, G. (2019). The “light” and “dark” side of martial arts pedagogy: Towards a study of (un)healthy practices. In C. L. T. Corsby & C. N. Edwards (Eds.), Exploring research in sports coaching and pedagogy: Context and contingency (pp. 137–144). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Mahoney, J. L., & Hitti, A. (2017). An ecological perspective on out-of-school learning: A review of research and directions for future inquiry. In K. Peppler (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of out-of-school learning (pp. 493–497). SAGE.

Pedrini, L., & Jennings, G. (2021). Cultivating health in martial arts and combat sports pedagogies: A theoretical framework on the care of the self. Frontiers in Sociology, 6, 601058. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.601058