Bodymarking: An Interpretive Framework for Analyzing Embodied Action in Classrooms

In this paper, we introduce a new interpretive framework, which we call Bodymarking, to aid in describing and interpreting activity (e.g., individuals’ gestures, gaze, and interaction with materials in the environment) in the classroom. We apply the framework to video recordings of mathematics lessons to explain how it can be used and offer some provisional remarks about the kinds of insights that the framework has yielded in some of our preliminary analyses. Our intention is twofold: (1) to point to the framework’s potential applications in the study of classroom activity and (2) to offer the tool and our coding norms in sufficient detail such that others might be able to make use of it as an analytical tool for their own video data.