Teacher gestures as pivot signs in semiotic chains

It is widely shown in literature that gestures take part in classroom interactions. Adopting the perspective of Theory of Semiotic Mediation, we illustrate how they can act as “pivot signs” in semiotic chains, namely they can be used by the teacher to link signs referring to a situated context (such as the activity with an artifact) to the mathematical domain. More specifically, by analysing a mathematical discussion in grade 5, we identify two different ways in which gestures intervene, together with other modalities, in this process: pointing as pivot sign and multimodal pivot signs.