Assessing knowledge conveyed in gesture: Do teachers have the upper hand?

Abstract

Children's gestures can reveal important information about heir problem-solving strategies. This study investigated whether the information children express only in gesture is accessible to adults not trained in gesture coding. Twenty teachers and 20 undergraduates viewed videotaped vignettes of 12 children explaining their solutions to equations. Six children expressed the same strategy in speech and gesture, and 6 expressed different strategies. After each vignette, adults described the child's reasoning. For children who expressed different strategies in speech and gesture, both teachers and undergraduates frequently described strategies that children had not expressed in speech. These additional strategies could often be traced to the children's gestures. Sensitivity to gesture was comparable for teachers and undergraduates. Thus, even without raining, adults glean information, ot only from chil-dren's words but also from their hands. How does a skilled teacher identify when a child experi-ences a "teachable moment " and decide what type of in-struction to offer that child? For instruction to be beneficial, it must be timed appropriately vis4t-vis the child's devel-