Why is instructional gesture ineffective in some contexts? And what is it about learners that predicts whether they will learn from gestures? This between-subjects linear measurement training study compares gesture instruction to two controls--operant action and transient action--in a diverse sample of first-grade students (N = 174, M[subscript…

Virtual reality (VR) has been shown to induce excessive affective processing, which in turn impacts the learning process and learning outcomes. Therefore, a better understanding of emotional dynamics and how emotions are instigated while learning with VR is needed. For this purpose, the students learning process with a VR simulation was captured…

Silence is not often recognized as a key component within dialogue. Dialogue within the classroom and other settings tend to focus on verbal forms of communication and neglect ways in which dialogue is imbued with silence. However, silence is not merely the absence of sound or speech. This activity explores silence as a multifaceted, literal, and…

Elementary music educators use a variety of strategies in classroom instruction. The purpose of this case study was to explore student perceptions of Curwen hand signs, a common instructional strategy in elementary music classrooms. Second- and third-grade students reported various challenges, benefits, and influential factors surrounding hand…

A video lecture instructor exhibiting positive emotion has been shown to induce similar emotions in students, improving the students' motivation and increasing their attention, thus improving their learning performance. However, little systematic research exists on which specific design features with regards to the instructor can induce such…

Gestures--hand movements that accompany speech and express ideas--can help children learn how to solve problems, flexibly generalize learning to novel problem-solving contexts, and retain what they have learned. But does it matter who is doing the gesturing? We know that producing gesture leads to better comprehension of a message than watching…

The present study addresses the impact of multimodal complexity in the transmission of a dance exercise. This study examined what kind of temporal correspondence favors the clarity of a teaching instruction in the context of a dance class. From an autoethnographic perspective, we describe a real learning situation in which a teacher marks (bodily…

Research has demonstrated that deaf children of deaf signing parents (DOD) are afforded developmental advantages. This can be misconstrued as indicating that no DOD children exhibit early language delays (ELDs) because of their early access to a visual language. Little research has studied this presumption. In this study, we examine 174 ratings of…

Contrary to prevailing research on willingness to communicate (WTC) which treats spoken second language (L2) as the predominant indicator of WTC, this study examines a young English as a second language (ESL) learner's WTC expressed through multimodal means and her utilization of multimodal and multilingual resources for mediating WTC in…

Pointing plays a significant role in communication and language development. However, in spoken languages pointing has been viewed as a non-verbal gesture, whereas in sign languages, pointing is regarded to represent a linguistic unit of language. This study compared the use of pointing between seven bilingual hearing children of deaf parents…

This study aims to strengthen the empirical evidence by analyzing the communication process between early childhood education (ECE) teachers and children during the learning process. It also aims to explore how the process occurs and how children respond. This qualitative descriptive exploratory research utilizes the content analysis method.…

In spoken languages, children acquire locative terms in a cross-linguistically stable order. Terms similar in meaning to in and on emerge earlier than those similar to "front" and "behind," followed by "left" and "right." This order has been attributed to the complexity of the relations expressed by…

Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) describes different ways to communicate that supplement or compensate for the impairment of individuals with complex communication needs. AAC can utilize computerized devices, with visual scene display (VSD) or video visual scene display (VVSD) as a communication mode. Recent literature…

Young children draw from verbal and nonverbal input to make meaning from texts, a skill that is foundational for later reading comprehension and academic achievement. However, prior studies have focused solely on teachers' verbal input during prekindergarten read-alouds. We examine four Black, female prekindergarten teachers' multimodal enactments…

Keeping a conversation going is the social glue of friendships. The DSM criteria for autism list difficulties with back-and-forth conversation but does not necessitate that all autistic children will be equally impacted. We carried out three studies (two pre-registered) with verbally fluent school children (age 5-9 years) to investigate how…