GESTURE AND CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR AS A WINDOW INTO STUDENT UNDERSTANDING OF SEDIMENTARY SYSTEMS

Our study uses methods from research on embodied cognition and linguistics to understand students’ conceptions of sequence stratigraphy. Cognitive linguistics research recognizes abstract concepts as grounded in sensorimotor experiences that transfer into mental models known as image-schemas. We align the analysis of gesture with the theory of conceptual metaphor to recognize the use of the image schemas as a source of concept representation. By using these two approaches we identified aspects of student learning of sedimentary systems. A hermeneutical approach enabled us to access student meaning-making from students’ verbal reports and gestures, to explore image schemas that lie in student explanations of four core-ideas in sequence stratigraphy. The study included 25 students from three U.S. Midwestern universities. Students were enrolled in senior-level undergraduate courses on sedimentology and stratigraphy. We used semi-structured interviews for data collection. Our gesture coding focused on three primary types of representational gestures; deictic, iconic, and metaphoric. From analysis of video-recorded interviews we interpreted four main image schemas in gestures and verbal reports. The container schema appeared to represent both spatially and temporally extended concepts, differentiated into three separate sub-types. The source-path-goal schema is also common in student reasoning about sedimentary processes specially dealing with deposition of sediment, the up-and-down schema, and the link schema are associated with responses about sea level fluctuations and unconformities. Results suggested that students tended to make more iconic and metaphoric gestures when dealing with abstract concepts such as relative sea level, base level, and unconformities. Based on the analysis of gestures that recreated certain patterns as time, strata, and sea-level fluctuations, we reasoned that proper representational gestures may indicate completeness in conceptual understanding. We conclude that students rely on image schemas to develop ideas about complex sedimentary processes. Our research also supports the hypothesis that gestures provide an independent and non-linguistic indicator of image-schemas as mental models that shape conceptual development.