Learned Response: Gestures Can Mean A Lot

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI): A small corps of researchers is thinking intently about gestures, and they have found a clear link between the way teachers gesture and how students learn. Their goal is to learn more about which gestures are most effective and how to make teachers more aware of their power. "If teachers know what might be effective, they can use it as part of their tool kit," said Martha Alibali, a professor of psychology and educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research into gestures offers other tantalizing clues about what works and what does not in the classroom. Alibali and others found that preschoolers were more likely to correctly identify objects as symmetrical or asymmetrical when the teacher pretended to point and trace with her hands. Another study that focused on a middle school algebra teacher found that the teacher tended to gesture more when introducing a concept than when reviewing it. Susan Goldin-Meadow, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, found in a recent study that Chicago schoolchildren learned math best when the gestures of teachers enhanced their words rather than simply repeating them.