Article published In:
GestureVol. 22:1 (2023) ► pp.1–38
Weakest link or strongest link?
The effects of different types of linking gestures on learning
Teachers often use gestures to connect representations of mathematical ideas. This research examined (1) whether
such linking gestures help students understand connections among representations and (2) whether sets of gestures that include
repeated handshapes and motions – termed gestural catchments – are particularly beneficial. Undergraduates viewed
one of four video lessons connecting two representations of multiplication. In the control lesson, the instructor
produced beat gestures that did not link the representations. In the link-only lesson, the instructor used
gestures to link representations, but the gestures did not form a catchment. In the consistent-catchment lesson,
the instructor highlighted corresponding elements of the two representations using identical gestures. In the
inconsistent-catchment lesson, the instructor highlighted non-corresponding elements of the two
representations using identical gestures. Participants who saw the lesson with the consistent catchment – which highlighted
similarities between representations – were most likely to understand the novel representation and to report learning from the
lesson.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Connecting representations in mathematics learning
- Linking gestures in math instruction
- Gestural catchments
- Catchments as linking gestures
- Teachers’ gestures and students’ metacognition
- The current study
- Method
- Participants
- Design
- Materials
- Warm-up worksheet
- Video lesson
- Posttest
- Procedure
- Warm-up
- Lesson
- Multiplication representations interview
- Posttest
- Additional task
- Final interview and self-evaluation of learning
- Demographic survey
- Coding
- Participant interview
- Verbal links
- Gestural links
- Written work
- Symbolic-expression-to-area-model item
- Area-model-to-line-model and symbolic-expression-to-line-model items
- Line-model-to-symbolic-expression items
- Place value items
- Coding self-evaluations of learning
- Results
- Overview of analyses
- Preliminaries
- Did the instructor’s gestures influence participants’ descriptions of links between the area and line models?
- Did the instructor’s gestures influence participants’ performance on the written posttest?
- Symbolic-expression-to-area-model item
- Area-model-to-line-model items
- Symbolic-expression-to-line-model items
- Line-model-to-symbolic-expression items
- Place value items
- Did the instructor’s gestures influence participants’ judgments about their learning of multi-digit multiplication and place
value?
- Discussion
- Summary of results
- Theoretical significance
- Practical significance
- Limitations
- Future directions
- Conclusion
-
References
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Alibali, Martha W., Rui Meng, Andrea Marquardt Donovan, Meixia Ding & Amelia Yeo
2024.
How teachers make connections among ideas in mathematics instruction. In
Natural Behavior [
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