Taking a Hands-on Approach to Learning

Abstract

When people talk, they gesture. These gestures often convey substantive information that is related, but not always identical, to the information conveyed in speech. Gesture thus offers listeners insight into a speaker’s unspoken cognition. But gesture can do more than reflect cognition—it can play a role in changing cognition and, as a result, contribute to learning. This article has two goals: (a) to make the case that gesture can promote growth early in development when children are learning language and also later in development when children learn about math, and (b) to explore the implications of these findings for practice—how gesture can be recruited in everyday teaching situations by parents and teachers. Because our hands are always with us and require little infrastructure to implement in teaching situations, gesture has the potential to boost learning in all children and thus perhaps reduce social inequalities in achievement in language and math.