Gesture's impact on children's learning

Elizabeth M. Wakefield from Loyola University of Chicago presented her research in learning facilitation in children through speech and gesture. Her study determined that gesture supports children’s learning by directing their visual attention to the math lessons and by synchronizing it with the instructor’s speech, in contrast to the children who watched the math lessons without gestures from the instructor. Therefore, children are able to direct their attention to the math problem solving differently when it includes gesture, since it helped them solidify their math problem solving knowledge and promoting a longer lasting learning. These findings are very helpful for school instructors to help them improve their teaching style with children. If they start adding gestures to their speech when teaching children mathematical problem-solving strategies, their learning will show significant improvements.

Gestures that accompany spoken explanations for problem-solving not only facilitate children’s learning but also has been shown to help with children’s creative thinking. According to Elizabeth Kirk and Carine Lewis from the Department of Psychology of the University of York, restricting children’s ability to gesture during a task performance of coming up with creative uses for specific objects, did not influenced their creativity compared to the group of children that were able to gesture during the task. However, in a later experiment they concluded that “encouraging gesture actually boost creativity”. Children who were encouraged to gesture generated more creative and a higher number of uses for particular objects compared to children with no specific instruction.

In conclusion, these findings show evidence about the impact of gesture in facilitating thinking, learning and creativity in children. Gestures either done by the children or by the instructors showed positive effects, and therefore have the potential to be applied in school classrooms. Further studies with older participants such as adolescents would be interesting in order to find out if gestures have a similar impact.

Works cited:

Elizabeth Kirk, Carine Lewis. Gesture Facilitates Children's Creative Thinking. Psychological Science, 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0956797616679183

Wakefield, Elizabeth M., et al. “Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention.”Wiley, 16 April 2018, https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12664