RUME 27
2025
Alexandria, Virginia
An Analysis of one Calculus Student’s Understanding of Derivative Through Gestures
Page: 1365
This preliminary report focuses on investigating the range of gestures students use to explain the concept of derivative in different contexts. Students were asked to explain their meaning of derivative and how they make sense of the formal limit definition of derivative. In addition to taking an embodied cognition perspective in our analysis, we also draw from Zandieh’s Derivative Framework to make meaning of the range of gestures we observed. For this preliminary report, we analyzed a video recording of one student during a 30-minute assessment interview for a first semester calculus course wherein he displayed over 40 different gestures. Our findings focus on five representational gestures that were salient in the student’s explanation of derivative. We discuss methodological implications about analyzing gesture alongside a cognitive framework of a mathematical concept, as well as how our findings connect with existing themes in research on mathematical gestures.