More evidence of the value of gesture in teaching math

04/2013

A new study claims to provide ‘some of the strongest evidence yet’ for the benefits of gesturing to help students learn.

The study involved 184 children aged 7-10, of whom half were shown videos of an instructor teaching math problems using only speech, while the rest were shown videos of the instructor teaching the same problems using both speech and gestures. The problem involved mathematical equivalence (i.e., 4+5+7=__+7), which is known to be critical to later algebraic learning.

Students who learned from the gesture videos performed substantially better on a test given immediately afterward than those who learned from the speech-only video (average proportion correct around 42% vs 31% — approximations because I’m eyeballing the graph), and, unlike the speech-only group, showed further improvement on a test 24 hours later (around 46% vs 30%). They also showed stronger transfer to different problem types (35% vs 22%).

http://www.futurity.org/society-culture/to-teach-kids-math-keep-hands-mo...

[3377] Cook, S W., Duffy R. G., & Fenn K. M.
(2013).  Consolidation and Transfer of Learning After Observing Hand Gesture.
Child Development. n/a - n/a.

Related News

A study of 265 New York City minority children has found that those born with higher amounts of the insecticide chlorpyrifos had lower IQ scores at age 7.

A study involving 171 sedentary, overweight 7- to 11-year-old children has found that those who participated in an exercise program improved both executive function and math achievement.

Contrary to previous laboratory studies showing that children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, new research indicates that in real-life situations, children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects.

A twin study involving 457 pairs has found that ADHD on its own was associated with a reduced ability to inhibit responses to stimuli, while reading disabilities were associated independently with weaknesses on measures of phoneme awareness, verbal reasoning, and

A number of studies have provided evidence that eating breakfast has an immediate benefit for cognitive performance in children. Now a new study suggests some “good” breakfasts are better than others.

A

Children with autism often focus intently on a single activity or feature of their environment.

When children learn to count, they do so by rote. Understanding what the numbers really mean comes later. This is reflected in the way children draw a number line.

Following a monkey study that found training in spatial memory could raise females to the level of males, and human studies suggesting the video games might help reduce gender differences in spatial processing (see below for these), a new study shows that training in spatial skills can eliminate

Brain imaging of 49 children aged 9-10 has found that those who were physically fit had a

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news
Error | About memory

Error

The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.