Poster #10 - The Interplay of Gesture, Manipulatives, and Speech in Children's Fraction Learning

• In Event: 61.072 - MTCC Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: 61.072-1 - Poster Session in Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Abstract

For this presentation, we will analyze two illustrative examples from a larger study of children’s mathematics learning. The larger study synthesizes three areas of cognitive science: physical action on objects, gesture, and metaphorical reasoning. The analysis to be presented here examines how children think about fractions using evidence from video-recorded interviews during which children demonstrate their understanding of fractions. Using Radford’s (2009) theory of multimodal cognition and his method of analyzing video-recorded learning events, we look for signs of children’s conceptual knowledge through their coordination of gesture, speech, and use of tools.

Authors

• Shereen Oca Beilstein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Paul Beilstein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign