Ema Surahmi, I. Ketut Budayasa, Rooselyna Ekawati
Students can easily convey ideas through gestures and speech patterns that mirror mental techniques used simultaneously or separately to solve math problems. Speech conveys one explanation, and gesture provides another. The descriptive-exploratory study aimed to determine how elementary school students' gestures and speeches played a role in solving fractional number problems. The research subjects comprised 34 students divided into two groups, boys and girls, aged 9-10 years. Furthermore, two students were selected, a female (SP) and a male (SL), with the same mathematical ability and good communication skills. Data were collected through observation and interview-based task-solving fractions problem-solving. Gestures and speeches revealed important information about students' reasons for solving problems in learning mathematics. The study's results stated that in solving fractional problems, students used writing, pointing, and representational gestures, referring fundamental ideas to abstracts and speech as explanations of raised gestures, which had implications for the chosen problem-solving strategy. Gestures and speech, which are integrated into problem-solving in general, both have an essential role in the cognitive process; students are able to build knowledge and reconstruct it based on the sensorimotor, which is based on perception and action. This fact proves that knowledge can be realized through body movements. Theoretically, this research can complement the scientific knowledge of the Embodied Cognition theory, which states that thinking and cognitive abilities are born from sensorimotor activity resulting from the body's interaction with the environment. © 2025 Author(s).
Department of Mathematics Education, Universitas Madura, Pamekasan, Indonesia; Department of Mathematics Education, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia
