GESTURES AND CODE-SWITCHING IN MATHEMATICS INSTRUCTION - AN EXPLORATORY CASE STUDY

While gestures are considered an important resource in the mathematics classroom, gesture use in bilingual instruction has been largely neglected in research so far. This paper presents a case analysis of two teachers’ bimodal bilingual instruction in the context of isosceles triangles to show how they coordinate meaning making of content and terminology through code-switching and gestures. Based on the analysis, we will introduce the concept of ‘bimodal mnemonics’ as means to support learning mathematical terminology together with the respective concept and conclude with a brief discussion of our preliminary findings and an outlook on future research.