Multimodal classroom discourse: gestures and proxemics in teacher-student interaction

ABSTRACT

This paper intends to bring the relevance of studies about classroom discourse from a multimodal perspective with focus on how gestures (nonverbal language) participate in making meaning processes and possibility, or not, engagement in classroom interaction. This paper presents a pseudo eye-tracking study to examine teachers’ unconscious, nonverbal cues when eliciting student answers. In particular, the study looks at how teachers address students by either pointing at them with their index finger or using an open-hand, palm-up gesture. The study was conducted in three schools in Chile and four schools in UK. Students not only follow the explicit nonverbal cues very well (and very subtly); they also display particular patterns of proxemics and nonverbal behavior. The results show that asking a student to answer a question by pointing at them with an index finger resulted in a sudden negative change, with the student distancing themselves from the teacher. In contrast, when a question was accompanied by an open-hand, palm-up gesture, the students moved close and turned their body toward the teacher. These findings bring important questions to think about processes of engagement in classroom discourse, focusing aspects that involve non-verbal signals that participate of meaning production in teacher-student interaction.

Keywords:
Turn-taking; Proxemics; Gesture; Multimodal communication; Engaging communication