Performing action has been found to have a greater impact on learning than observing action. Here we ask whether a particular type of action—the gestures that accompany talk—affect learning in a comparable way. We gave 158 6-year-old children instruction in a mental transformation task. Half the children were asked to produce a Move gesture relevant to the task; half were asked to produce a Point gesture. The children also observed the experimenter producing either a Move or Point gesture. Children who produced a Move gesture improved more than children who observed the Move gesture. Neither producing nor observing the Point gesture facilitated learning. Doing gesture promotes learning better than seeing gesture, as long as the gesture conveys information that could help solve the task.

This chapter argues that, in the coming years, educators and the general public will look increasingly to discoveries from the neurosciences for insights into how best to educate young people. It considers how educators can navigate change and opportunities of scientific discovery. The chapter proposes a new cluster of professionals: neuro-educators. The mission of neuro-educators will be to guide the introduction of neurocognitive advances into education in an ethical manner that pays careful attention to and constructively capitalizes on individual differences. The uniquely honed skills of these neuro-educators will enable them to identify neurocognitive advances that are most promising for specific educational goals and then, even more broadly, to translate basic scientific findings into usable knowledge that can empower new educational policy for a new neurosociety.

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When learners explain answers to tasks they have yet to master, they often gesture. In a pretest- posttest design, we show that these gestures provide insight into what learners know about a chemistry task, and whether they are ready to make gains on that task. Adults, naïve to organic chemistry, drew stereoisomers of molecules and explained their drawings. All participants gestured spontaneously during explanations, and often expressed strategies only in gesture (and not in speech). In some cases, these strategies conveyed information that was explanatorily relevant to the problem; in other cases, they conveyed information that was explanatorily irrelevant. Relevant strategies produced only in gesture on the pretest, and no other types of pretest strategies, predicted posttest performance. This finding supports the hypothesis that information conveyed uniquely in gesture and not in speech indicates readiness-to-learn, but advances the argument: Gesture-speech mismatch predicts learning not because it reflects general upheaval in learners, but because it reveals explanatorily relevant implicit knowledge that promotes change.

Чеботок Анна Сергеевна, студент биологического факультета, Саратовский национальный исследовательский государственный университет имени Н. Г. Чернышевского, anya_chebotok@ mail.ru Зинченко Екатерина Михайлова, кандидат биологических наук, ассистент факультета психологии, Саратовский национальный исследовательский государственный университет имени Н. Г. Чернышевского,