Wolff-Michael Roth is a cognitive scientist at the University of Victoria in Canada. His research on the role of gesture in the development of scientific literacy has led him to change the way he conducts his courses as a professor. Rather than presenting lectures in which he does most of the talking, Roth finds as many opportunities as he can to ask individual students to describe and explain the topics being covered in that day’s class. Lacking a fully developed understanding, or even the relevant technical vocabulary, his students lean heavily on gesture to convey their budding
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