Categorizing teachers’ gestures in classroom teaching: from the perspective of multiple representations

Teachers’ use of gestures with multiple representations are common non-verbal behaviors in classroom teaching. Teachers’ gestures as a subject of research has attracted more and more interest in recent years. Categories of gestures need to be developed to facilitate the analysis of teachers’ gestures in classroom teaching. This study developed categories of teachers’ gestures in classroom teaching from the perspective of multiple representations. Based on the developed categories, the study examined the gestures of six teachers (three novice teachers and three expert teachers) through video analysis. The findings indicate that the embedding of multiple representation theory makes the function classification of gestures more specific and meaningful. The application findings also indicate that this new approach is capable of distinguishing different gesture characteristics between different teachers in relation to the teaching experience. Moreover, the findings clearly indicate the applicability, reliability, and validity of the categories of teachers’ gestures developed. The study has implications on future theoretical and applied research on non-verbal behaviors in the classrooms.