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Abstract While there is increased interest in using movement and embodiment to support learning due to the rise in theories of embodied cognition and learning, additional work needs to be done to explore how we can make sense of students collectively developing their understanding within a mixed-reality environment. In this paper, we explore embodied communication’s individual and collective functions as a way of seeing students’ learning through embodiment. We analyze data from a mixed-reality (MR) environment: Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) (Danish et al., International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 15:49–87, 2020), using descriptive statistics and interaction analysis to explore the role of gesture and movement in student classroom activities and their pre-and post-interviews. The results reveal that students appear to develop gestures for representing challenging concepts within the classroom and then use these gestures to help clarify their understanding within the interview context. We further explore how students collectively develop these gestures in the classroom, with a focus on their communicative acts, then provide a list of individual and collective functions that are supported by student gestures and embodiment within the STEP MR environment, and discuss the functions of each act. Finally, we illustrate the value of attending to these gestures for educators and designers interested in supporting embodied learning. 

Charles Goodwin’s legacy includes a multitude of analytical tools for examining meaning making in interaction. We focus on Goodwin’s substrate—“the local, public configuration of action and semiotic resources” available in interaction used to create shared meanings (Goodwin, 2018, p. 32), gathering early career scholars to explore how research designs adapt substrate as an analytical tool for education research in diverse settings. This structured poster session examines how substrate can be used to capture a complex web of learning phenomena and support important analytical shifts, including representing learning processes, privileging members’ phenomena to address issues of equity, and understanding shifting power relations through multi-layered and multi-scaled analyses.