The Affordances of Gesture for Learning and Communicating About Spatial and Nonspatial Aspects of Gases

This dissertation discusses the affordances of hand gestures for communicating and learning about chemistry topics, specifically comparing the utility of gestures for spatial and nonspatial aspects of gases in General Chemistry. The theoretical framework of this work is embodied cognition, and through this lens, gesture serves as both an input and output of cognition. This research includes a qualitative study on spontaneous gestures produced by learners and an experiment investigating the differential effects of various methods of gestured instruction on learner answers to spatial and nonspatial questions. In the qualitative study, students completed an assessment wherein question content was categorized a priori as spatial or nonspatial, and they subsequently participated in one-on-one retrospective think-aloud interviews. Student gestures were analyzed from videos of these interviews, and analysis revealed the ubiquity of gestures specifically representing spatial concepts such as collisions between gas molecules. In the second study, students individually were presented with a lesson on gases including choreographed gestures, and they completed a pre- and posttest to measure learning. Students were randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions for the lesson: observing the instructor’s gestures, mimicking the instructor’s gestures, or a no gesture control group. There was not a significant difference in learning between conditions. Taken together, these findings further the understanding of gesture use and processing in chemistry education contexts.

Author dc:creator

• Ashley D. Manning (23291413)

• Chemistry
• Science education

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.25417/uic.31451188.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/31451188