Chapter 8: The Role of Conscious Gesture Mimicry in Mathematical Learning

When people converse, they often mimic each other’s gestures (Kimbara, 2006). In many instances, this gesture mimicry is spontaneous and unconscious, just as people often perform and interpret gestures without consciously monitoring them (McNeill, 2005; Parrill & Kimbara, 2006). In this chapter, we examine the conscious and deliberate use of gesture mimicry in mathematics learning. Specifically, we investigate the question: How can gesture mimicry enable one to (a) understand the speaker’s mathematical thinking, and (b) appropriate the mathematical meanings associated with the speaker’s gestures (i.e., the grounded blends) as semiotic resources (Arzarello, Paola, Robutti, & Sabena, 2009) for developing one’s own mathematical thinking.