The Role of Instruction with Gesture for English Language Learners’ Math Learning

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

This study examines the effects of gesture on math learning for English Language Learners (ELLs) and monolingual English-speaking students in a traditional classroom setting. Studies have shown that representational hand gestures enhance learning for both the producer and the perceiver of gesture (Singer & Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Cook et. al., 2013; Koumoutsjakis et. al., 2016). However, gesture’s effect on learning for ELLs is not well understood. Additionally, our study involves learning abstract, STEM-related concepts. We addressed these questions in a naturalistic, classroom setting setting. One hundred ninety three second-graders were given a math pretest containing mathematical equivalence problems (i.e., 3+4+5= ___+5). These problems require accurate knowledge of the meaning of the equal sign to solve correctly. Eighty percent of 2nd and third grade children in the United States fail at these problems because of misconceptions about the meaning of the equal sign (Perry, Church, & Goldin-Meadow, 1988; McNeil et al, 2004). Students then watched experimentally manipulated video instruction about the equal sign in which the instructor gestured along with the spoken instruction, or did not gesture at all and only provided spoken instruction. Classrooms were randomly assigned to watch either speech only or speech + gesture video instruction. Learning was measured by the difference in the number of correct solutions produced between the pretest to the posttest. We found that: (1) gesture enhanced learning for all students and (2) gesture was significantly more beneficial for ELLs than for monolingual English-speaking children. Instructors’ gestures may help ELLs learn by providing non-linguistic gestural imagery to scaffold abstract mathematical concepts. This research may help equip instructors to mitigate the gap in STEM learning outcomes and representation in STEM fields for marginalized first-generation students whose native language is Spanish.

Authors

• Hannah Valdiviejas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Presenting Author

• Theodora Koumoutsakis, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrew Mistak
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ruth Breckinridge Church, Northeastern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author