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Gesture & Three Point Communication in Curriculum Conversations

Noticing

Open evening provides an interesting opportunity to explore how you explain your subject and your curriculum journey to someone who will often know little about what you do. You will have many opportunities to repeat this explanation over a short period of time as you spend 4 or 5 minutes in conversation with student and parent groupings over a few hours.


I am at pains to point out to you that I never intended to write this blog at all today, but having seen a lot of recent Twitter posts on the topic of gesture and having been reading about three point communication, I could not help but notice my behaviours when I was required to repeat them over and again at this event! Therefore, what I have noticed are two potentially interesting aspects of my usual approach. 


Gesture


I always begin exploring what economics is by explaining that there are not enough resources on the planet to be able to meet everyone’s endless wants, so groups of people must make choices. And that is what we are essentially studying, the choices made by these groups about how to allocate these resources. For example how do we decide which goods and services to produce, and who will get them? 


I then mention that some countries resolve this problem with a command system, like in communist countries, where governments are making all the choices about what to produce and who gets it. As I am saying this, I very often seem to raise my hand to one side, in a sort of ‘on the one hand’ type gesture! 



I then discuss that the alternative would be to use a free market system where these decisions are made using supply, demand and prices, so for example, goods are allocated to those who can pay more for them. My arm now waves across 180 degrees in front of me to illustrate that we have hit the other extreme on the continuum. My arm then tracks back a little. We’re somewhere in between the two in this country. 


The gesture reveals the schema


This gesture externally reveals my internal thinking about this topic. I see these two systems as the extremes, and most of what we study is about the varying degrees within which we operate between these extremes. I typically use a continuum diagram to teach this topic in the first few lessons of Year 12.


Three Point Communication


I then move onwards to point students’ and parents’ attention to my graphic which will help me explain our curriculum content and sequence. 




Eye contact for all of us is now directed towards the graphic as I am pointing to the market section, where we begin our studies. I then continue pointing and explaining through the nation, firm and global journey that we take. 


This is the first time I have used such a graphic on open evening and I found the three point approach really helped me to explain and engage. I also found the graphic helped overcome transience and enabled interested parties to explore further and ask questions as they wished.


Why the graphic?


I created a version of this graphic previously as part of my curriculum thinking work and due to my desire to clearly communicate my curriculum content and sequencing to all stakeholders (see my blogs on these issues here and here). 


Initial feedback from non-economics students on my red design was that it was full of words that people who had not studied the subject could not understand! So this version has been deliberately simplified to enable subject novices (although assuming some general knowledge) to appreciate what will be involved. I am also using this with my new Year 12 students to help give them an idea of the big picture of the curriculum journey we are embarking upon. 


What are you revealing? What are you sharing?


So, I wonder what your repeated open evening gestures are revealing about your curriculum thinking? And I also wonder whether you will consider the idea of graphically mapping your subject to be useful in creating a tool for curriculum communication?


I would love to hear your thoughts! 




  


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