The gestures we produce serve a variety of functions—they affect our communication, guide our attention and help us think and change the way we think. Gestures can consequently also help us learn, generalize what we learn and retain that knowledge over time. The effects of gesture-based instruction in mathematics have been well studied. However, few of these studies are directly applicable to classroom environments. Here, we review literature that highlights the benefits of producing and observing gestures when teaching and learning mathematics, and we provide suggestions for designing research studies with an eye towards how gestures can feasibly be applied to classroom learning.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence’.