A Gesturing Example

Part of the research that has informed this project has been to document how pre-service teachers, working in 1-1 tutoring settings, gesture around written symbolic representations to help students with learning disabilities organize their work. The diagrams below illustrate some of the gestures that tutors have used in such settings. Research findings from cognitive psychology suggest that the use of gestures like these can help reduce demands on working memory, help students make connections between elements of a problem, and help students keep track of their work from one step to the next. Our hypothesis is that pre-service teachers can develop the capacity to use these gesturing processes while also attending to students' thinking and posing strategic questions that promote the development of conceptual understanding.