SBP:Using Gesture to Augment web-based Mathematics Instruction for Children and Adults

This research focuses on the role that gesture can play in hearing and deaf children's math learning in an online/remote instructional context, and asks whether gesture plays the same role in hearing and deaf adults as it plays in children. The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified the need to make computer online instruction a viable alternative method for dispensing education. Yet, schools-especially those in low-income areas-have struggled to adapt to remote and online instruction, compromising educational goals and deeply affecting marginalized and low-income children and college students. This challenge points to the lack of systematic evidence on what works in online education, who online education works for, and how to improve this vehicle for education. This research explores: (1) how instruction that includes gesture enhances math learning in children in an online context; (2) whether gesture can be used as a tool for math learning in adults; (3) whether the mechanisms underlying gesture's impact on learning are the same for child and adult learners. The project focuses on two foundational STEM concepts--mathematical equivalence, an essential building block for later complex math and science concepts in children; standard deviation, an essential concept for statistical understanding and complex quantitative reasoning in adults.

The overall goal of this project is to harness the science of gesture to improve the design of online mathematics lessons for children and adults. Online learning materials are proliferating rapidly, but often lack properties of human interactions such as gesture (the hand movements people make while speaking or signing that add visual/spatial imagery to the message). The research has 3 specific aims: (1) To determine whether gestures in math instruction can be employed in an online/remote venue for hearing and deaf individuals. (2) To determine why gesture works to promote learning. Does gesture play a role in learning because it is produced by the body? Does it have an impact on learning because it is produced simultaneously with speech? Does it do more than direct a learner's attention? (3) To determine whether the mechanisms responsible for gesture's impact on learning are the same in children and adults. The protocol for both children and adults contains an assessment of the participant's understanding of the concept; instruction in the concept; and a second assessment comparable to the first. Children are taught mathematical equivalence in an online context; gesture is systematically varied in "just-in-time" feedback during a mathematics lesson. Adults are taught standard deviation in an in-person context in which gesture is systematically varied.This project is co-funded by the Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12), which seeks to enhance preK-12 teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics through the research and development of new innovations and approaches.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.