The Importance of Gestures in Learning

Gestures are movements that most people make without even thinking twice. There has been a lot of research focused on gestures and their importance and significance. A lot of the research examines how gestures may help us think and even learn. The article "Thinking with Gestures," discusses Dr. Susan Goldin-Meadow's research which suggests that gestures play a critical role in our thinking and ability to learn. In this study, Dr. Goldin-Meadow used a task developed by Jean Piaget to predict which children would learn better according to their gestures. In the task, two rows of checkers (six in each row) were lined up so that one row of checkers matched the other. One of the rows was then spread out so that there was more space between each checker. Children were asked which row had more checkers. There were two types of gesturers; those who matched their gesture with their speech ("matchers") and those who did not ("mismatchers"). This demonstrated that the children who did not match their gesture and speech were more likely to succeed. Dr. Goldin-Meadow suggests that these children are thinking in a more advanced way, by not matching their gestures and speech. This means that gestures demonstrate the knowledge a child possesses. This can be very helpful for instructors because they are aware of what level a child's knowledge is according to the type of gestures that they use.

The idea that gestures can facilitate learning is a topic of interest to other researchers. Dr. Elizabeth Wakefield-Connell is another researcher who focuses on the importance of gestures. Specifically, she studied how gestures guide visual attention, which can lead to positive learning outcomes. Dr. Wakefield-Connell used eye tracking to assess where children direct their attention while watching instructional videos on how to solve a certain type of math problem. The study had two groups; one group watched instructional videos with just speech and the second group watched videos with speech and gestures. Her study revealed that the children who watched the speech and gesture videos did better on the posttest. This means that this group of children learned how to problem solve better than the other group. The eye tracking data revealed that most of the children's visual attention was on the instructor's gestures, which demonstrated how to solve the math problem. This suggests gestures facilitate learning because attention is brought to the most relevant information needed in order to learn something new.

Gestures are movements that the majority of people use to communicate. However, these two studies have demonstrated that gestures are used for more than just communication. Gestures help us learn and they can also represent the level of knowledge we possess. The suggestions that these articles make about learning through gestures can be used by instructors to better the way they teach so students can succeed more.








Links
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/thinking-with-gestures

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/13j3ka06799we8d/AAAQwoivU_dbL2RWqrVqLy0sa/(09.24.19)%20-%20Elizabeth%20Wakefield-Connell?dl=0&preview=Wakefield+et+al.%2C+2018+copy.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

Works Cited
Michel, A. (2015). Thinking With Gestures. Retrieve from
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/thinking-with-gestures.

Wakefield E, Novack MA, Congdon EL, Franconeri S, Goldin-Meadow S. Gesture helps learners learn, but not merely by guiding their visual attention. Dev Sci. 2018;e12664. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12664