The Role of Instructional Gesture in Learning Science Concepts in Undergraduate Students

Recent research has shown that hand gestures produced by both teachers and learners make underlying mechanisms and abstract symbols more concrete for learning (Goldin-Meadow, Levine, Zinchenko, Yip, Hemani, & Factor, 2012; Vallotton, Fusaro, Hayden, Decker, & Gutowski, 2015). The current study examined the effects of instructional gesture on undergraduates’ learning of plate tectonics by manipulating gesture in several instructional conditions. There were three videotaped conditions in the study: representational gesture, beat gesture, and no gesture. It was hypothesized that instructional gesture condition would enhance the understanding of plate tectonics in undergraduate students. Results showed that while all conditions increased in learning overall, the representation gesture condition showed the most improvement, although it was not statistically significant. Results also showed that participants categorized as having low prior knowledge had statistically significantly higher average change scores than participants with high prior knowledge. The findings from the study are helpful for both in class and online learning. Encouraging instructors to produce representational gestures with their accompanying speech, especially with abstract topics with novice learners, will provide more support for learning

Beyond the Spoken Word: Examining the Nature of Teacher Gesturing in the Context of an Elementary Engineering Curriculum for English-Learner Students

Our research team performed an exploratory analysis of teacher gesturing via a case study of an elementary teacher. We focused on gesturing, a practice found to support both bilingual English learner students’ linguistic development and mathematics achievement, during the teacher’s engineering and science lessons. The research team systematically analyzed teacher video data using McNeill’s gestural dimensions framework and found variation of gesturing types and rates when comparing engineering and baseline science lessons. Additionally, specific types of teacher-gestures appear to be associated with either behavioral or classroom management practices, procedural instructions, and discussion facilitation. We suggest that teacher-gestures such as these have the potential to facilitate bilingual English learners’ language acquisition, while also developing their STEM literacy in general and engineering capacity in particular. Further exploration of teacher-gestures in elementary engineering curricula could lead to an integrated STEM pedagogy that incorporates gesturing as a fundamental teaching strategy, bridging STEM instruction with linguistically responsive instructional practices.Educatio

There is More to Gesture Than Meets the Eye: Visual Attention to Gesture’s Referents Cannot Account for Its Facilitative Effects During Math Instruction

Teaching a new concept with gestures – hand movements that accompany speech – facilitates learning above-and-beyond instruction through speech alone (e.g., Singer & GoldinMeadow, 2005). However, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are still being explored. Here, we use eye tracking to explore one mechanism – gesture’s ability to direct visual attention. We examine how children allocate their visual attention during a mathematical equivalence lesson that either contains gesture or does not. We show that gesture instruction improves posttest performance, and additionally that gesture does change how children visually attend to instruction: children look more to the problem being explained, and less to the instructor. However looking patterns alone cannot explain gesture’s effect, as posttest performance is not predicted by any of our looking-time measures. These findings suggest that gesture does guide visual attention, but that attention alone cannot account for its facilitative learning effects

Elementary Teachers\u27 Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors During Math Instruction

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe elementary teachers’ nonverbal immediacy behaviors during math instruction. The instructional and non-instructional nonverbal behaviors of six female third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers were studied. Methods used included video recording math lessons, conducting one-on-one interviews, and reviewing relevant literature. Data analyses were completed through documenting major nonverbal behaviors displayed and identifying codes, categories, themes, and assertions (utilizing Excel spreadsheet software). The conceptual framework underlying this study has its foundation in phenomenology. As a research methodology, phenomenology investigates how an experience is lived by its participants. Immediacy was the construct used to describe teachers’ nonverbal behaviors during mathematics instruction. This overall framework supported the findings that arose from the data as it came forth from the six teacher participants. The following four themes emerged from the data analysis, including Classroom Environment and Instructional Elements; Math Nonverbal Immediacy Behaviors, Math Concepts, and Real-life Examples; Student Engagement; and Teachers\u27 Reflections and Realizations. These four themes led to two assertions. The first assertion was: “Student engagement during math lessons is interdependent with teachers’ nonverbal behaviors.” The second assertion was: “Teachers’ perceptions of their nonverbal behaviors are essential to the lesson content and instruction as well as intent to form immediacy with students.” Recommendations for teachers include the addition of nonverbal immediacy behavior training through professional development workshops or integration into preservice teacher courses, as well as the pairing of preservice teachers with in-service teachers who employ nonverbal immediacy behaviors. The impact of teachers’ heightened awareness of their nonverbal behaviors might impact current and future lessons and thus, student engagement

Getting the Upper Hand: Natural Gesture Interfaces Improve Instructional Efficiency on a Conceptual Computer Lesson

As gesture-based interactions with computer interfaces become more technologically feasible for educational and training systems, it is important to consider what interactions are best for the learner. Computer interactions should not interfere with learning nor increase the mental effort of completing the lesson. The purpose of the current set of studies was to determine whether natural gesture-based interactions, or instruction of those gestures, help the learner in a computer lesson by increasing learning and reducing mental effort. First, two studies were conducted to determine what gestures were considered natural by participants. Then, those gestures were implemented in an experiment to compare type of gesture and type of gesture instruction on learning conceptual information from a computer lesson. The goal of these studies was to determine the instructional efficiency – that is, the extent of learning taking into account the amount of mental effort – of implementing gesture-based interactions in a conceptual computer lesson. To test whether the type of gesture interaction affects conceptual learning in a computer lesson, the gesture-based interactions were either naturally- or arbitrarily-mapped to the learning material on the fundamentals of optics. The optics lesson presented conceptual information about reflection and refraction, and participants used the gesture-based interactions during the lesson to manipulate on-screen lenses and mirrors in a beam of light. The beam of light refracted/reflected at the angle corresponding with type of lens/mirror. The natural gesture-based interactions were those that mimicked the physical movement used to manipulate the lenses and mirrors in the optics lesson, while the arbitrary gestures were those that did not match the movement of the lens or mirror being manipulated. The natural gestures implemented in the computer lesson were determined from Study 1, in which participants performed gestures they considered natural for a set of actions, and rated in Study 2 as most closely resembling the physical interaction they represent. The arbitrary gestures were rated by participants as most arbitrary for each computer action in Study 2. To test whether the effect of novel gesture-based interactions depends on how they are taught, the way the gestures were instructed was varied in the main experiment by using either video- or text-based tutorials. Results of the experiment support that natural gesture-based interactions were better for learning than arbitrary gestures, and instruction of the gestures largely did not affect learning and amount of mental effort felt during the task. To further investigate the factors affecting instructional efficiency in using gesture-based interactions for a computer lesson, individual differences of the learner were taken into account. Results indicated that the instructional efficiency of the gestures and their instruction depended on an individual\u27s spatial ability, such that arbitrary gesture interactions taught with a text-based tutorial were particularly inefficient for those with lower spatial ability. These findings are explained in the context of Embodied Cognition and Cognitive Load Theory, and guidelines are provided for instructional design of computer lessons using natural user interfaces. The theoretical frameworks of Embodied Cognition and Cognitive Load Theory were used to explain why gesture-based interactions and their instructions impacted the instructional efficiency of these factors in a computer lesson. Gesture-based interactions that are natural (i.e., mimic the physical interaction by corresponding to the learning material) were more instructionally efficient than arbitrary gestures because natural gestures may help schema development of conceptual information through physical enactment of the learning material. Furthermore, natural gestures resulted in lower cognitive load than arbitrary gestures, because arbitrary gestures that do not match the learning material may increase the working memory processing not associated with the learning material during the lesson. Additionally, the way in which the gesture-based interactions were taught was varied by either instructing the gestures with video- or text-based tutorials, and it was hypothesized that video-based tutorials would be a better way to instruct gesture-based interactions because the videos may help the learner to visualize the interactions and create a more easily recalled sensorimotor representation for the gestures; however, this hypothesis was not supported and there was not strong evidence that video-based tutorials were more instructionally efficient than text-based instructions. The results of the current set of studies can be applied to educational and training systems that incorporate a gesture-based interface. The finding that more natural gestures are better for learning efficiency, cognitive load, and a variety of usability factors should encourage instructional designers and researchers to keep the user in mind when developing gesture-based interactions

Meaningful Hand Gestures for Learning with Touch-based I.C.T.

The role of technology in educational contexts is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with very few students and teachers able to engage in classroom learning activities without using some sort of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Touch-based computing devices in particular, such as tablets and smartphones, provide an intuitive interface where control and manipulation of content is possible using hand and finger gestures such as taps, swipes and pinches. Whilst these touch-based technologies are being increasingly adopted for classroom use, little is known about how the use of such gestures can support learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how finger gestures used on a touch-based device could support learning

How Do Gestures Influence Thinking and Speaking? The Gesture-for-Conceptualization Hypothesis.

Peer reviewedPostprin

Cognitive demands of face monitoring: Evidence for visuospatial overload

Young children perform difficult communication tasks better face to face than when they cannot see one another (e.g., Doherty-Sneddon & Kent, 1996). However, in recent studies, it was found that children aged 6 and 10 years, describing abstract shapes, showed evidence of face-to-face interference rather than facilitation. For some communication tasks, access to visual signals (such as facial expression and eye gaze) may hinder rather than help children’s communication. In new research we have pursued this interference effect. Five studies are described with adults and 10- and 6-year-old participants. It was found that looking at a face interfered with children’s abilities to listen to descriptions of abstract shapes. Children also performed visuospatial memory tasks worse when they looked at someone’s face prior to responding than when they looked at a visuospatial pattern or at the floor. It was concluded that performance on certain tasks was hindered by monitoring another person’s face. It is suggested that processing of visual communication signals shares certain processing resources with the processing of other visuospatial information

Online Instructors’ Gestures For Euclidean Transformations

The purpose of this case study was to explore the nature of instructors’ gestures as they teach Euclidean transformations in a synchronous online setting, and to investigate how, if at all, the synchronous online setting impacted the instructors’ intentionality and usage of gestures. The participants in this case study were two collegiate instructors teaching Euclidean transformations to pre-service elementary teachers. The synchronous online instructors’ gestures were captured in detail via two video cameras; one through the screen-capture software built into the online conference platform used to conduct the class and another separate auxiliary camera to capture the gestures that the instructors made outside the view of the screen-capture software. The perceived intentionality of the instructors’ gestures was documented via an hour-long videorecorded interview after teaching the Euclidean transformation unit. The findings indicated that synchronous online instructors make representational gestures and pointing gestures while teaching Euclidean transformations. Specifically, that representational gestures served as a second form of communication for the students while pointing gestures grounded synchronous online instructors’ responses to student contributions within classroom materials. The findings further indicated the combination of the synchronous online instructors’ gestures and language provided a more cohesive picture of the Euclidean transformation as opposed to the gestures alone. Additionally, the findings specified that synchronous online instructors believe the purpose of their gestures was for the benefit of their students as well as for themselves. Finally, the findings highlighted a connection between instructors who previously thought about the potential impact of gestures in the mathematics classroom and intentionally producing gestures. Specifically, critically thinking about gestures within the mathematics classroom before teaching appeared to correspond with more intentional gestures while teaching. Based on these findings, there were three recommendations. The first recommendation was for continued education on gesture as an avenue to communicate mathematical ideas. A professional development workshop may assist collegiate instructors to produce more intentional and mathematically precise gestures. The last two recommendations were for synchronous online instructors to utilize technology that affords students the opportunity to view all of their gestures and for the instructors to explicitly instruct their students to pay attention to their gestures. Knowing that the students can view all of their movements and are specifically looking for gestures might prompt the instructors to gesture with more intentionality and precision

Gesture enhances learning of a complex statistical concept

Prior research has shown that gestures that co-occur with speech can improve understanding of abstract concepts by embodying the underlying meaning of those concepts, thereby making them more accessible to the listener. The present study examined the effect of gesture on undergraduate students’ learning of a complex statistical concept (analysis of variance; ANOVA). Students in three classes watched a brief video in which the speaker explained the conceptual background of ANOVA while using gesture and students in three other classes saw a similar video with the same speech, but no gesture. Students who saw the gesture learned significantly more, as measured by the increase in scores between a pre-test and a post-test. These results suggest that teachers can enhance students’ learning through the strategic use of gesture