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
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