The aim of our study is to explore tacit dimensions of education and learning processes through ethnographic research. We focus on educational interactions in classrooms and particularly on educational processes in which children learn school-specific gestural behavior. In our paper we will present data collected at an inner city elementary school in Berlin which follows the ideas of progressive education (Wulf et al. 2010). Our data relates to a mixed-aged learning group in which first, second, and third graders learn together. We will show that the first graders acquire practical knowledge about gestures through both instruction and implicit learning processes.

We will begin by pointing out the importance of gestures in interactional processes. To date research on gestures in pedagogy and linguistics focuses on the cognitive and intentional dimensions of gestural behavior. Furthermore, these approaches use a unidirectional conception of communication. Meaning is transmitted from speaker to listener; or in pedagogical settings from teacher to pupil. The reciprocal perspective of interaction is not taken into account (Aigner 2002; Heidemann 2003; Kendon 2004; McNeill 2005; Goldin-Meadow 2005). In contrast, in our paper we focus on the performative dimension of gestures which becomes apparent in social interactions. Basically drawing on the works of George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, we examine gestural ‘interactional moves’ within educational practices (Goffman 1981: 24); according to this framework gestural behavior becomes significant in sequences of action and reaction (Mead 1973; Goffman 1967). In particular, we conceptualize gestures in reference to historical-anthropological considerations on mimesis which point out the significance of the actors’ bodily references to each other in social practices (Gebauer/Wulf 1998). In the first part of our presentation our data analysis is directed towards the question: what social and educational function do gestures have in interactions?

In the second part of our presentation we will ask how pupils learn a specific gestural behavior when they enter school. For children starting elementary school marks a fundamental transition process (Kellermann 2008); school differs in many ways from institutions that the children already know (like kindergarten or family). In school, particularly in the classroom, there is a well-rehearsed arrangement of behavior that is reproduced again and again in characteristic practices and is thus recognizable as institutional Wulf et al. 2010). The bodies function here as intermediaries that permanently transfer meanings in addition to and/or beyond linguistic content (Goffman 2001: 6ff.). We will emphasize the importance of gestures in didactics in order to explore these questions: How do teachers use gestures to communicate certain content? Do they react to the gestural behavior of the pupils? How do those children starting school learn the meaning of certain gestures and to perform such gestures? We will analyze data from a mixed-aged learning group during the first weeks after the first graders entered school.

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