Seeing With Two Eyes: A Teacher's Use of Gestures in Questioning and Revoicing to Engage English Language Learners in the Repair of Mathematical Errors

This revelatory case study examines a 5th-grade teacher’s orchestration of discourse and interaction to create opportunities for English language learners to participate in the repair of mathematical errors during a unit on finding the area of geometric shapes. The analysis of discourse takes on a binocular perspective of considering gesture and speech as a unity (McNeill, 1992). The teacher’s pointing, representational, and writing gestures were studied in relation to her questioning and revoicing. This research was guided by a social learning theory that characterizes learning as active and interactive participation in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). The findings detail how the teacher used gestures in grounding her questioning, revoicing students’ strategies, and narrating the meaning of geometric features.

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