ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the focus is on another fundamental aspect of embodied teaching – the teacher’s use of gesture in the classroom. This chapter presents an approach, grounded in Systemic Functional Theory, to annotate and analyse the teacher’s gestures in the classroom. The chapter traces the development of studies in gestures and offers a typology of pedagogic gestures based on the kinds of gestures and the types of meanings they make. Gestures are classified as performative or communicative and the meanings made are organised according to the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. The aim of the extensive descriptions is to provide a set of theoretical apparatus for educational researchers in the identification, annotation, and analysis of multimodal classroom data, specifically on the teacher’s use of gestures. It also offers a way for teacher practitioners to reflect on how they can use gestures aptly and fluently in expressing their pedagogy and in designing the learning experience for their students.
