Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math - Summary and Reflection
Article Summary: This study investigates how hand gestures facilitate mathematical learning in children. Researchers found that children required to produce correct gestures during a math lesson learned more than those producing partially correct or no gestures. The hand gestures that were pointing and making a “V” with two fingers to symbolize grouping. This effect was mediated by children extracting information from their own hand movements (that were modelled) and adding the word “grouping” to their spoken repertoire. Notably, the grouping strategy conveyed through these gestures was never verbalized by the teacher, implying that children developed new ideas specifically through their physical movements. The authors suggest that body movements can play a large part in creating new knowledge rather than just processing old ideas, like many other studies suggest. Ultimately, the research indicates that educators may lay foundations for learning by simply instructing students on how to move their hands, and with time and practice these gestures will lead to greater success.
Stop #1: “[...] people use hand gestures when no one is watching [...]”
This partial sentence made me stop reading and reflect on my own gestures. People often comment on how much I “talk with my hands” and I often hit things (ex: knock things off my desk) when teaching or talking to others. I then reflect on when no other eyes are around; I drive with my knee or one hand when I am on the phone and I put my phone on speaker phone at home so that I can gesture. Clearly gesturing is a big part of speaking for me.
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| https://advancingwomenconference.ca/2021/09/12/talk-with-your-hands/ |
Stop #2: The notion that the word “grouping” was never used, but students incorporated it into their post lesson speech.
This made me happy. I find it fascinating when the human brain can process and create things subconsciously, but it is even more fascinating when multiple brains do the same thing without human-human interaction. “[...] gesturing can facilitate learning by helping children extract information from their own hand movements”. The importance seems to lay on what gestures are modelled. In this case the use of a “V” later indicated to students minds how this was a grouping method and then they later understood that and were able to verbalize. I use a similar notation when teaching order of operations, where I group each step using a “V” on paper. I am curious to see how students would translate this to speech, perhaps something I will try!
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| Notes from Ms. Taylor's SST Math Class. |
Question: What hand gestures do you use when teaching? Have you ever paid attention to them? Is this something you would explore more to enhance student success?
Citation: Goldin-Meadow, S., Cook, S. W., & Mitchell, Z. A. (2009). Gesturing gives children new ideas about math. Psychological Science, 20(3), 267–272. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02297.x
From your summary, I understand that hand gestures offer students a way to link metaphors. Linking metaphors is used to offload cognitive operations needed for a new concept (Nathan, 2021), like linking a new concept to its story. The gesture V used could have allowed them to link arithmetic operations and equality symbol meaning to the action of grouping, which they are probably familiar with in their daily life.
ReplyDelete“What hand gestures do you use when teaching? Have you ever paid attention to them? Is this something you would explore more to enhance student success?”
I use and pay attention to my hand gesture when I teach because my students are not only ESL, but Naskapi does not have translation for many of the math vocabulary I need to use in grade 9-10-11.
Because my students’ language is verb-based, I try to use movements to translate the mathematical nouns into actions. A very simple but deliberate hand gesture I used is when a written problem requires an addition. While saying: “if you have ‘something’ AND ‘something’ together, what is the operation you need to do?” I will ‘grab’ the ‘something’ with my hands one by one, and when I say together, I will join both of my hands together. I found that using intentional gestures repeatedly, like this one, helped my students translate the idea/concept into something that makes sense to them. Although, I have not seen them repeat those gestures on their own. I wonder if it is because they are not used to using their body to learn.
References:
Nathan. M. (2022). Foundations of embodied learning. Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9780429329098
This is really interesting! Thank you so much for sharing!
Delete"The authors suggest that body movements can play a large part in creating new knowledge rather than just processing old ideas," in reading this and thinking more about my own gestures both in the classroom and out I think of how this relates in ways to sign language.
ReplyDeleteMy mother is a teacher who throughout my life has worked with the deaf community and would often sign while speaking, even at when it was just the two of us (both hearing) at home. Some of those signs became a part of my daily gestures and without me really realizing it. In trying to think of what specifically I use as hand gestures in class it is a lot of representing of size, and symbols and for interactions in math are more full gestures with more motion but I struggle to bring to mind the details of them without looking at the math. When I'm teaching I use a lot of gestures both as a form of communication and to engage students, I don't explicitly explain what some of the gestures I use mean but through repetition of using the same gestures frequently in class I find some of my students use them back when trying to ask questions, especially if trying to do so more quietly. I am intrigued to explore this more to see how it can support student success and me a more intentional component of my teaching.
I agree, I would love to explore this topic a bit more, or at least be more mindful of it! Perhaps incorporating bits of sign language in math is a path to better understanding.
DeleteThank you for sharing!
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ReplyDeleteFascinating discussion here. Taylor, I'd love to hear how (or whether) your students take up a gesture that corresponds with your V-shaped groupings of the order of operations. Lovely thoughts about linking metaphors, Noemi! And Colleen, that is so fascinating about using sign in unconscious ways as you teach and talk about math. Just as Naskapi does not have exact correspondences for some English language mathematical terms, ASL and other deaf sign languages conceive of the world in somewhat different ways from English too. Noemi, I am very interested in the ways that you use careful gestures to 'verbify' certain terms for Indigenous learners. And then, as Taylor has said, there are ways that students collectively, and unconsciously, may interpret gestures to make sense of new concepts!
ReplyDeleteJust a note that you are currently in a reading group of 4 people (which I'll reshuffle this week...) Thanks to Noemi and later Taylor for responding to Jean-Jacques -- Colleen N., are you reading Jean-Jacques' writing? And Jean-Jacques, are you reading and responding to your other group members? I will soon be re-shuffling the groups, and I will make sure that the four of you get into 3-person groups for the next part of the course!
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