Making Measurement Mistakes: How Actions and Gestures Can Rectify Common Student Misconceptions

• In Event: 25.017 - Supporting Spatial Thinking to Enhance STEM Learning

Abstract

Linear measurement is a source of pervasive and long-lasting student misconceptions (Solomon et al., 2015), yet most research to date has focused on characterizing these misconceptions rather than identifying new instructional techniques to address them. Across two experiments, we compare instruction with actions-on-objects (manipulatives) to instruction with hand gestures in a linear measurement training context with first grade children. Gestures are abstract, representational hand movements that can help children to learn new ideas (Alibali, 2005; Novak & Goldin-Meadow, 2015), but they differ from more traditional actions-on-objects in a key way—they do not require learners to directly interact with the physical environment. We ask which learning tool is more effective and for which students.

In Experiment 1, 117 1st graders (68 females; mean age: 6.97 years) were given a pre-test to determine their initial strategy on measurement problems where the object to-be-measured was shifted away from the start of the ruler (Figure 1). All of the children consistently used one of two incorrect strategies, ‘reading-off’ the number at the end of the object or ‘hatch-mark counting’–counting the lines beneath the object. After pre-test, children were assigned to one of four training conditions: Action Only; Gesture Only; Action-then-Gesture; or Gesture-then Action. ‘Action’ instruction required children to align transparent plastic unit chips on top of a ruler underneath an object while counting the spaces. ‘Gesture’ instruction required children to use a pinching thumb-and-forefinger gesture to count the spaces. Children who began the study using a ‘hatch-mark counting strategy’ showed dramatic improvement at post-test after all four training conditions. By contrast, children who started the study using an incorrect ‘read-off strategy’ showed the most improvement after Action Only training and Gesture-then-Action training (Figure 2). Findings suggest that children with a more severe misconception of units at pre-test (read-off group) struggle to learn from gesture-based instruction unless it is immediately followed by a clarifying lesson with actions-on-objects.

In Experiment 2, 94 1st graders (46 females; mean age: 6.99 years) were given a pretest and assigned to one of three training conditions: Actions-Only; Gestures-Only; or Iterated Action (a single unit chip, iterated along the ruler). Children were also given two working memory measures (one spatial, one verbal). Once again, children who used an incorrect ‘hatch-mark counting strategy’ at pretest showed dramatic improvement after all three training conditions (Figure 3). By contrast, children who used the ‘read-off strategy’ at pretest only showed improvement after Action Only training and Iterated-Action training. Although children in the two groups did not differ in their performance on the verbal working memory task, the hatch-mark counting group had significantly higher performance on the spatial working memory task (Figure 4), suggesting that children who use a read-off strategy may have weaknesses in spatial thinking and reasoning.

Overall, the results of these two studies show that the prior measurement knowledge of the learner is connected to spatial working memory, and can also predict the efficacy of each intervention. Actions were accessible to all learners, while gestures posed context-dependent difficulties for novice learners.

Authors

• Eliza Congdon

• Susan C. Levine