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The need to understand and predict behaviour in complex settings such as the classroom and the workplace elevates the importance of the role of context and communication in building models of cognition. Embodied cognition is an emerging framework for understanding intellectual behaviour in relation to the physical and social environment and to the perception-and action-based systems of the body. By reconsidering cognition with regard to interactions with the world, rather than in terms of the sequestered computational nature of the mind, embodied cognition recasts many of the central issues of the study of thought and behaviour. One of the ways that cognition is seen as embodied is through the close relation of hand gestures with thinking and communication. In this chapter, I investigate how gestures enact symbols and thereby ground the meaning of abstract representations used in instructional settings. Central to this inquiry are two principles that follow from the theory of embodied cognition (Wilson 2002): that cognition is situated and that cognitive work is off-loaded onto the environment. A third principle – that off-line cognition is body based – is also considered, but reframed to include the influences of social interactions, along with sensorimotor processes, as mediating cognitive behaviour even when others are not present. This last issue is developed more fully in the closing section of this paper. Instruction is a communicative act. As such, what research reveals about instruction, and the learning that ensues, informs our understanding of the production and comprehension of language. When instruction is examined as discourse, it becomes clear that gesture is ubiquitous (Alibali and Nathan, in press). A review of the literature Valenzeno et al. 2003) also shows that gesture use is influential. Teachers' uses of gestures have been shown to facilitate learner comprehension of material and performance on later tasks. For example, students are more likely to reiterate ideas from tutors' speech when that speech is accompanied by matching gestures (Goldin-Meadow et al. 1999). Preschool students' learning and explanations of bilateral symmetry is enhanced when instruction makes use of appropriate gestures (Valenzeno et al. 2003). Gestures also help 18-de Vega-Chap18-new 5/7/08 6:31 PM Page 375