Including gesture in instruction facilitates learning. Why? One possibility is that gesture points out objects in the immediate context and thus helps ground the words learners hear in the world they see. Previous work on gesture's role in instruction has used gestures that either point to or trace paths on objects, thus providing support for this…

Used descriptive analysis and a forced choice task to investigate childrens' and adults' production, interpretation, and judgment of notation. Results showed that young children may not impose the same symbol-meaning structure at decoding that was proposed at encoding. Only after this ability develops does a preference for one form-one function…

This longitudinal study investigated the ways in which two groups of eight students used spreadsheets to represent and solve algebra problems and related this to their previous arithmetical experiences and evolving use of symbolic language. The spreadsheet environment supported students to move from specific to general thinking. Includes story…