UW-Madison’s Mitchell Nathan and Martha Alibali took part in a virtual panel discussion on May 19 hosted by the Embodied Mathematical Imagination & Cognition (EMIC) team.
The 90-minute event — titled “Instructional Gestures for Classrooms and On-Line Mathematics Learning” — was recorded and can be accessed via this EMIC web page.
The panel focused its efforts on examining these questions:
- Why is gesture important for learning and teaching?
- What can gesture research tell us about how to make online learning effective? What can we expect to be challenges for online learning?
- What advice for parents do you all have right now — and for teachers facing online instruction?
Nathan is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of the learning sciences and a faculty member with the School of Education’s departments of Educational Psychology, and Curriculum and Instruction. Alibali is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor with the Department of Psychology and is an affiliate of the Department of Educational Psychology.
The EMIC was hoping to reach teachers, parents, and researchers facing new demands of online learning so they have scientifically based practices they can apply to education.
In addition to Nathan and Alibali, the virtual panel also included Rebecca Boncoddo of Central Connecticut State University. The event was moderated by Caro Williams-Pierce of the University of Maryland and Colorado State University’s Hortensia Soto was a discussant.