(Salle F101)
Lund, Kristine
(Laboratoire ICAR (CNRS, Université Lyon 2, ENS-LSH, ENS, INRP), Lyon)
How teachers use a student’s gesture
as a diagnostic tool
When students speak about material objects they have at hand, it has
been proposed that their metaphorical gestures (gestures narrative in
character relating to abstractions) of conceptual and abstract entities
are facilitated (Roth & Lawless, 2002). Gesturing, favored by the presence
of artifacts is thus seen as scaffolding the emergence of scientifi c
language. Other research has illustrated the notion of gesture and speech
mismatch (gesture conveying different information than that conveyed
in speech) as being suggestive of receptiveness to learning (Garber,
Alibali & Goldin-Meadow, 1998). When learners are acquiring a concept,
Alibali & Goldin-Meadow, (1993) suggest that they progress from a stable
state in which they produce incorrect gesture-speech matches, through
an unstable state where they produce gesture-speech mismatches (perhaps
signaling two different problem-solving strategies) and fi nally to
a stable state where they produce correct gesture-speech matches. It is
during this unstable state that a learner may be seen as in the process
of acquiring a particular concept and more likely to benefi t from instruction.
But do teachers interpret students’ gestures and use them to diagnose
students’ conceptions ? Alibali, Flevares & Goldin-Meadow, (1997)
have shown that when teachers describe fourth grade students’ problem
solving strategies of mathematics equations, these descriptions (be they
gestural themselves or verbalized) can indeed be traced to students’
gesture. However, with one or two possible exceptions, teachers did not
explicitly cite gestures as reasons to assess students in the way they did
and therefore decoded gestural content into verbal or verbal/gestural
assessment in an unconscious way (Alibali, personal communication).
In this proposed communication, we show how two French high school
physics teachers in training - through their talk and gesture - analyze
the recorded and transcribed verbal and gestural activity of a student’s
problem solving to assess his physics knowledge (Lund, 2003). They
explicitly cite his gesture as evidence for his confusion of the concepts
of speed and movement. Implications are drawn for wider use of student
gesture analysis in teacher education.