The Role of Gesture Based Learning in Math and Reading

 

Gestures are an important aspect of human communication utilized by individuals of all walks of life. For children, gesture has proved to be an especially useful tool for learning and cognitive development. Studies focusing on gesture based learning in mathematics and reading show promising results that can further be utilized in the classroom setting to promote learning. 

In the article "Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children", researchers utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural basis of how children solve mathematical problems either with the use of gesture and speech strategy or just speech strategy. Children were taught to produce a strategy for solving math equivalence problems either through speech and gesture or just speech alone. After the training period, fMRI was used to compare the neural patterns in each group of children as they solved additional problems during the scan. The results showed that children who learned through speech and gesture were more likely to recruit motor regions when solving problems during the fMRI scan than the children who learned through speech alone. This suggested that gesture can support and promote learning because it is a type of action which engages the motor system. There is also evidence that learning through gesture can leave an impact on the motor system through a neural trace. This neural trace is activated when the children later solve the math problems that they had learned with the gesture strategy. 

Elizabeth Wakefield's work focused on the role of gestures in mathematical reasoning. However, gestures can prove to be beneficial in other subjects as well. Researchers at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have conducted studies investigating the relevance of rhythmic gestures in the development of children's narrative and oral skills. Rhythmic gestures are characterized by rhythmic movements of the hands/arms together with prosody. The participants were shown six stories which were told by two teachers under two different experimental conditions. Under the first condition, no rhythmic gestures were used to stress the keywords in the story. Under the second condition, rhythmic gestures were used. At the end of the experiment, children produced a narrative about the story they had been read to. The results showed that the children who were shown rhythmic gestures produced better stories with a better narrative structure. This study shows that the use of gestures is beneficial in improving story telling skills as well as narrative structure in children. 

Both of these studies have shown that gestures can be a powerful tool to facilitate learning in children in a variety of subjects. With the field of education evolving in the COVID-19 era, the results of these studies can be used to create new teaching methods incorporating gesture based learning. 

Work Cited:

Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona. "Telling stories using rhythmic gesture helps children improve their oral skills." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 January 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190117142234.htm>.

Wakefield, E. M., Congdon, E. L., Novack, M. A., Goldin-Meadow, S., & James, K. H. (2019). Learning math by hand: The neural effects of gesture-based instruction in 8-year-old children. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81(7), 2343–2353. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-019-01755-y