Gestures in Mathematics Thinking and Learning

Gestures come up as one of the modern topics in mathematics education research in the last two decades, when many studies refer to interactions in mathematics activity of teaching and learning. The role that gestures can play in these processes has been recognized not only in the field of communication, but also in that of thinking. A push in this direction has been given by the possibilities offered by new technologies suitable for the study of classroom interactions, especially the use of video recording, that brought out the very possibility of observing phenomena that until then had remained unrecordable. Gestures thus began to be considered among the resources through which mathematics communication, thinking, and learning take place. This chapter offers an overview on how gestures come into attention in mathematics education research. Starting from the pioneering works on gestures in the linguistic and psychological field, gestures have become a fundamental tool for analyzing and describing students’ cognitive processes, actions, and learning while they are involved in mathematical activities.