Teachers’ gestures as a means of scaffolding students’ understanding: Evidence from an early algebra lesson in

During classroom instruction, teachers often attempt to scaffold students’ understanding of lesson content. But how is this scaffolding achieved? One obvious possibility is that teachers adjust the ways in which they communicate information relevant to the lesson. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about how teachers vary their communicative behavior in order to scaffold student understanding. However, video technology has greatly increased the range of behaviors that can come under rigorous study. Using video analysis techniques, we examined a teacher’s use of verbal and gestural forms of communication. In this paper, we consider the possibility that teachers use spontaneous hand and arm gestures along with their speech in an effort to scaffold students ’ understanding. Previous research has documented that teachers do indeed use gestures in classroo