Gestures Lend A Hand In Learning Mathematics; Hand Movements Help Create New Ideas

Description

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2009) — Gesturing helps students develop new ways of understanding mathematics, according to research at the University of Chicago.

Scholars have known for a long time that movements help retrieve information about an event or physical activity associated with action. A report published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science , however, is the first to show that gestures not only help recover old ideas, they also help create new ones. The information could be helpful to teachers, scholars said.

"This study highlights the importance of motor learning even in nonmotor tasks, and suggests that we may be able to lay the foundation for new knowledge just by telling learners how to move their hands," writes lead author and psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow in the article "Gesturing Gives Children New Ideas About Math".

Goldin, Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, was joined by Susan Wagner Cook, now Assistant Professor of Psychology a the University of Iowa and University of Chicago research assistant Zachary Mitchell, in writing the article and doing the research.

For the study, 128 fourth-grade students were given problems of the type 3+2+8=__+8. None of the students had been successful in solving that type of problem in a pre-test. The students were randomly divided into three instruction groups.

One group was taught the words, "I want to make one side equal to the other side." Another group was taught the same words along with gestures instantiating a grouping problem-solving strategy--a V-shaped hand indicating 3+2, followed by a point at the blank (group and add 3 and 2 and put the sum in the blank). A third group was taught the words along with gestures instantiating the grouping ...

Original URL

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090224133204.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090224133204.htm