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Part of
Why Gesture?: How the hands function in speaking, thinking and communicating
Edited by Ruth Breckinridge Church, Martha W. Alibali and Spencer D. Kelly
[Gesture Studies 7] 2017
► pp. 285–316

Chapter 13
Making and breaking common ground

How teachers use gesture to foster learning in the classroom

Teachers regularly use gesture as part of multimodal instruction to both break and make common ground. Teachers break common ground when they introduce new ideas and new mathematical practices. Teachers make common ground by connecting new ideas to students’ prior knowledge and to current disciplinary practices. Our findings show the importance of linking gestures, a highly regulated aspect of pedagogical communication, which is used to foster connection building, while reducing the cognitive demands for learners. A focus on the function of pedagogical gesture for managing common ground provides an account of classroom learning that resolves the Learning Paradox by examining the establishment, maintenance and disruption of common ground.
Article outline
  • Common ground and learning
  • Gesture and common ground
    • Past research: Gesture and common ground in conversational contexts
    • Past research: Gesture and common ground in the classroom
  • The tension between making and breaking common ground
  • Case 1.Breaking and making common ground when introducing algebraic expressions
  • Case 2.Breaking and making common ground when introducing polynomial multiplication
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gs.7.14nat
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