How Teacher Gestures Affect Student Problem Solving

¶ … Teacher Gestures Affect Student Problem Solving Learning is a process of brain development and change that is caused by diverse factors contributing to the learning experience of humans. Such includes mechanisms like speech and gestures. This paper aims to study and provide information on the role of gesture mechanism in the learning process of students. From written articles and previous studies, this paper aims to gather and analyze data on how gestures affect change and development in the problem solving capabilities of children.

It addresses issues on the fundamental role of using gestures in teaching: How are children's problem solving methods and approaches influenced by teachers' gestures? Speech, naturally, is the very common approach of imparting thoughts and knowledge to anyone. It is the easiest way of expressing ideas, of presenting information, and of allowing the mind to picture what is being explained through verbalized characterization of the subject. Aside from speech, however, there is another element that facilitates the mind in obtaining and demonstrating knowledge - the gestures.

During learning, or when listening to someone, we may be unaware that it is usual for us to sometimes accompany speech with gestures. We may also be unaware that as we have the natural tendency of using gesture in expressing ideas, knowledge, or thoughts, gesture is a helpful element of communication in conveying information to others. Several studies have been conducted on the effect of gesture, as an accompaniment of speech, in the teaching method to children.

Most of which suggests that, when examined, non-verbalized approach of conveying knowledge in teaching (i.e. during explanation of a particular topic) provides substantive information to students. This paper will do an informative research on a number of studies and articles on this subject. It will also try to gather findings from previous research and studies on the relationship of gestures in teaching, in the conceptual understanding of students, and in the construction of knowledge as derived from gesture mechanisms.

Gestures at Work Cognitive studies in the process of learning have long recognized gesture as a useful accompanying medium in the field of communication. Gestures enable communication of further and supplementary ideas in support to the general form of verbal communication. Recently, many studies have focused their attention on the relevance of gestures in the learning process and problem solving abilities of students.

What is the purpose of gestures? Based from his research on the studies of well-known psychologists, Justine Cassell, in his A Framework for Gesture Generation and Interpretation, defines the communicative function of hand gestures, stating that gestures have been shown to elaborate upon and enhance the content of accompanying speech (McNeill, 1992; Kendon, 1972), often giving clues to the underlying thematic organization of the discourse or the speaker's perspective on events. Gestures have also been shown to identify underlying reasoning processes that speaker did not or could not articulate (Church and Goldin-Meadow, 1986).

The essential nature of gestures is embedded in the diverse form of communication. In teaching and learning, for instance, gesture is classified to be within the teaching method of multiple representation. In her Understanding Change in Mathematical Reasoning: Evidence from Gesture and Speech, a study presented by Martha W. Alibali, Alibali states relationship between problem representation and the development of problem-solving strategies. Her study discusses how problem representation affects solving skills, enabling a student to develop new approach in solving problems.

Alibali suggests and hypothesizes that problem representation is a bridge between conceptual and procedural knowledge changes in problem representation may be one source of new problem-solving strategies Alibali's study deals with evidences of gesture as an effective tool in mathematical reasoning. In her paper, problem representation includes the use of gesture in the teaching process. Gesture is a part of the problem representation that directs children to generate new solving approach. Aside from what they learn from oral representations, gestures enable them to gain more conceptual knowledge of a subject.

Gesture Basics states the findings of David McNeill, an analyst who conducted extensive analysis and research on the performance of gestures in cognition and language, on the relationship of gesture and speech. McNeill claims that the extremely close synchrony between gesture and speech indicates that the two operate as an inseparable unit, reflecting different semiotic aspects of the cognitive structure that underlies them both.

Evidence for this tight synchrony includes the fact that disrupting speech (as during delayed auditory feedback) disrupts gesture (McNeill, 1992), that stutterers modify their gestures to maintain synchrony with speech (McNeill, 2000), and equally, that deliberate mismatch between gesture and speech can influence a subject's recall of a narration (McNeill, 1992). Gesture is a visual representation of information that illustrates the aspects of symbolism from which knowledge can also be inferred. Some instances of these symbolisms in which gesture can be applied are words like "up," "down," "adjacent," etc.

Sharon Begley, in her Newsweek article Living Hand to Mouth, indicates that recent research has found that gestures facilitate speakers trigger their memory when conveying thoughts and ideas. This corresponds to Krauss's theory of "lexical memory" (Begley, 1998). Speakers often define words, such as "under," that are spatial in nature with the supplement of gesture (Begley, 1998). Further, patients of stroke whose brains are affected and partially disabled gesture more when trying to speak (Begley, 1998).

Begley also indicated an American study that focuses on the effect of using gesture and not using gesture when defining words. Based from the volunteers of the study, it was found that when volunteers were given with the definition "an instrument used for calculation," they either failed to come up with the word "abacus" or it took them time to answer. Gestures in the Learning Process of Students Speech is the most important instructional tool that teachers use in imparting information to students.

Nowadays, however, teachers utilize other concrete forms of communication in their teaching process. Such includes visual aids, symbolisms, and gesture mechanisms which are found to be effective in learning. They allow students to grasp more concepts from what they convey. Several research that was conducted on improving the learning outcomes of students have found that multiple representations aid instructional methods of teachers in providing effective teaching approach to students.

Research has also found that students are able to develop new and more concepts when they are simultaneously presented with multiple medium of visual learning along with verbal explanations. Multiple representations in this subject include the use of picture imageries, models, and gestures. In their article How Many Do You See? The Use of Non-Spoken Representations in First-Grade Mathematics Lessons, Flevares and Perry indicate that teachers largely use multiple representations as a method in teaching.

In mathematics, for instance, speech alone cannot completely cover the teaching process because mathematics involves diverse symbolic forms. For a student to establish adequate and broad mathematical understanding, teachers often use multiple representations and verbal modalities simultaneously. Included in this are visual representations of iconic symbols as well as the use of teacher gestures while discussing lessons (i.e. pointing to mathematical symbols). The effectiveness of simultaneously using spoken and non-spoken teaching method to achieve better comprehension skills of students is supported by Mayer's study.

According to Flevares and Perry, Mayer found that students performed better if they saw verbal and visual information simultaneously than if they received verbal explanations only. Mayer concluded that instructors can aid students' mental representations by presenting the information in a "coherent" manner: in other words, simultaneously presenting information in verbal and visual modalities. Mayer stresses that the use of multiple representations is best effective when they are presented concurrently.

This can enable students to have points of reference and comparisons of each presented representation, allowing the students to develop related concepts from the symbolisms. Another study, conducted by Pimm, conveyed that gestures are helpful to teachers because they serve as means of quick assessment of what they are talking, whether they verbally voiced correct information or not.

The importance of gesture and its crucial role in establishing better comprehension and problem-solving skills of students was presented by Valenzeno, Alibali, and Klatzky in their article Teachers' Gestures Facilitate Students Learning: A Lesson in Symmetry. Their study made use of preschool students as participants, and two videotaped lessons. Both videotapes demonstrate a lesson in symmetry. One of which, however, contains a lecture in which the teacher promotes verbal discussion accompanied by gestures such as pointing to symbols.

The other, on the other hand, contains a lecture in which the teacher discusses through verbal explanations alone. A set of students was made to view the first videotape, and another set of students was made to view the other tape. Valenzeno, Alibali, and Klatzky have found that, based from the test presented to the students after viewing the videotaped lesson, the children who viewed the verbal-plus-gesture lesson scored higher than those who viewed verbal lesson alone. Also, the first set had grasped more concepts of symmetry and asymmetry.

Further study on the effect of gesturing was conducted by Goldin-Meadow and a company of researchers. Through an experiment conducted on children and adults, they aimed to find the ability and capacity of memory to retain information when applying gesture and when not applying gesture during an explanation task. The first process of the experiment made the participants solve math problems, addition for children and factoring for adults. After solving, they were asked to memorize a list of items.

Then, each of the participants was asked to explain in two methods how they solved the math problems - with the use of gesturing, and without gesturing. After each type of explanation task (with gestures and without gestures), they were asked to recall the list of items they previously memorized.

Based from the results of the experiment, Goldin-Meadow and her company found that, when comparing the results of recalling items after the two types of explanation task, all the participants were able to recall 20% more items after explaining their math solutions with gesturing. Goldin-Meadow and her company concluded that gesturing imposes lesser load of cognition in our memory, freeing lesser information it currently has, and retaining more information it had previously loaded.

Many studies on the benefit of gestures in student learning were conducted on a model of distinguishing the capability of the memory to comprehend properly, and the ability to grasp, store, and retain knowledge and information. The cognitive science of non-verbal communication such as gestures has proven effectiveness in terms of children's learning process. As found by many researchers, through diverse experiments conducted on learning individuals, both children and adults, verbal communication coupled with gesturing enhances the learning abilities of listeners.

While gesturing serves as a comprehensive model and a big component in facilitating communication between teachers and students, many researchers note that multiple representations, such as gesturing, and verbal teaching should complement each other. A study conducted by Emily S. Cross and Elizabeth A. Franz, indicated in the Science News article Gestures Help Words Become Memorable (Memory), of the University of Otago in New Zealand suggests that gesture is a supplement method of teaching that can serve relevant purpose to students' learning.

The article indicates that Hand gestures amplify the impact of spoken words, rather than serving as embellishment for spoken words, say Emily S. Cross and Elizabeth A. Franz, both of University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. People recall more of what they hear if the speaker communicates with relevant hand gestures, the researchers find. Cross and Franz's study performed an almost similar experiment of Goldin-Meadow et.al.

Cross and Franz's study focused on examining a memory's capability when tested with speech demonstration using gestures, without gestures, and with irrelevant gestures. The 120 participants of the study have shown results that majority of the demonstrated speech with relevant gestures are easily remembered and recalled than those with irrelevant or no gestures at all. While gesture serves an integral function to speakers, so does it to the listeners. The occurrence of gestures that accompany speech is an instinctive method of facilitating access and delivery of information.

The purpose gestures convey may be of equal importance to what verbal communication does. Justine Cassell, in his A Framework for Gesture Generation and Interpretation, indicates certain equality in what speech and gesture can communicate.

When people are exposed to gestures and speech that convey slightly different information, whether additive or contradictory, they seem to treat the information conveyed by gesture on an equal footing with that conveyed by speech, ultimately seeming to build one single representation out of information conveyed in the two modalities (Cassell, McNeill & McCullough, in press). Benefits of Communicating with Gestures as Supplementary Method Gestures play a vital role in the process of communicating information, and in the process of representing concepts in a different mechanism.

As found by many research and studies, compared to communicating with speech alone, supplementing verbal communication with non-verbal form, such as gestures, enhances listeners' comprehension, develops better learning process, and enables the memory to retain more information. Based from experiments conducted by diverse studies, and from literature reviews, following are some of the advantages gesturing presents. Gesture presents an extended approach to teachers in presenting instructions to students.

When teachers incorporate verbal explanations with hand movements, such as pointing to objects or demonstrating hand motions relevant to what is being spoken, students are provided with more reference and basis of learning. Studies found that gesturing is a strategy intentionally used by some speakers because it enhances their public speaking skills. Also, through gestures, they are able to effectively express the contents of their speech. Gesture links instructional forms of verbal communication and non-verbal representations. Communication usually takes place in a multi-modal form.

Even a simple conversation happen using two mechanisms: speech and gesture. For instance, when a stranger asks you for a direction on how to go to a particular place, it is usual and normal that you use your hands to point to directions, such as "left," "right," "straight ahead," etc. Or when you speak of concrete adjectives such as "tall," "short," "circular," etc. Through gestures, you are able to associate same concepts verbally and non-verbally. Quek, et.

al, in their Multimodal Human Discourse: Gesture and Speech, states the association of speech and gesture as modes of expression. Gesture and speech clearly belong to different modalities of expression but they are linked on several levels and work together to present the same semantic idea units. The two modalities are not redundant; they are coexpressive. The act of gesturing helps children re-represent perceptual or motor knowledge into explicit, verbal form (Alibali, 2000).

According to a study conducted by Alibali, Karmiloff-Smith indicates that children have the tendency of producing another representation of conceptual knowledge into concrete forms. In relation to this, Alibali suggests that process can be done through gestures. Gestures, in her definition, states that they facilitate the expression a perceptual information (Alibali, 2000). Gestures influence and guide teachers' problem representation and children's problem comprehension.

When teachers incorporate verbal explanations with hand movements, such as pointing to objects or demonstrating hand motions relevant to what is being spoken, conveying and grasping information becomes easier. This was found to be true to both the.