Attending neuroscience seminars has helped me personally learn more about research methods and their applications in the real world. A specific research that really got my attention and come up with new questions and possibly further research ideas was Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield’s research.
On September 24th, Dr. Wakefield was the guest speaker of our seminar course. She came and talked about her research that was titled “ Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention”. She was trying to find out if there is any relationship between hand gestures and speech in teaching and/or learning. She was looking specifically at using that technique in learning basic math problems in children. The study was conducted by having different groups in which the control group was shown a math video without a person nor hand gestures but with only a teacher’s voice and the test groups were shown a video with a teacher that was performing hand gestures while she was teaching. The results were taken by analyzing where the students were looking during the short lesson. In the test groups, the students were looking mostly at the instructor while she was speaking then following her gestures.
Because I am a student and I sometimes reach out to external resources to help my understanding of some concepts, I have watched some online videos explaining those concepts. In some of these videos, there were speech and gestures; however, I noticed that gestures not only helped me learn but it also helped me remember these concepts when I came across them some time later. After watching these videos, I would explain to myself the concept again using the same words and gestures as the ones were in the video. So I was wondering if there was anything that included speech and gesture in the student, so I started looking into this further and I came across a research study that tested the efficacy of gestures on students and speakers.
The research was conducted by Doctors Clough and Hilverman. They did the same experiment with children as Dr. Wakefield but they also included older children with more complex math problems and got similar results. They also tested the effect of hand gestures on speakers and their memory. They did that by creating three groups: group 1: speech only, group 2: gesture only and group 3: speech and gesture.
The results of this experiment was that groups 2 and 3 did significantly better on the post tests given 4 weeks after the lesson than group 1. Students that learned with gestures have gotten the benefit of learning over time, while students in group1 have not. Group 3 has performed better than group 2. The researchers concluded that both speech and gesture have helped the students’ memory and not only just understanding the concept at the moment it was taught.
Dr. Wakefield’s research along with other research shows promise toward bettering the education system. This can help us find ways to help more students learn and understand concepts and their memory of it. We can do that by providing classes to instructors about teaching with hand gestures and how to utilize them to help students’ understanding.
Reference:
Wakefield E, Novack MA, Congdon EL, Franconeri S, Goldin-Meadow S. “Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention.” Wiley, 2018 February. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12664
Clough, Sharice and Caitlin Hilverman. “Hand gestures and how they help children learn.” Researchgate, 2018 June.
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