Spatial Thinking Ability Research Articles

The Impact of Science, Environment, Technology, and Society (SETS) Learning Model Integrated with Google Earth on Spatial Thinking Ability in Senior High School

Developing spatial thinking skills in students often poses a challenge for Geography teachers in Indonesia. The concept of spatial relationships in geography places spatial thinking as a distinct aspect of intelligence, enabling individuals to identify patterns and trends in spatial change. Therefore, appropriate models and strategies are needed to develop spatial thinking skills. This study aims to determine the effect of the Science, Environment, Technology and Society (SETS) learning model integrated with Google Earth on students' spatial thinking ability. This research is a quasi-experiment with posttest-only design nonequivalent groups that uses a quantitative approach with the inferential statistical method using the Independent sample t-test parametric test. The subjects of this study were randomly selected XI grade students from SMAN 10 Malang including, XI-C class as the experimental class and XI-D as the control class. The research instruments used are seven essay questions on spatial thinking ability. The data obtained will be analyzed using parametric statistics Independent sample t-test and obtained sig value. (2-tailed) 0.041. The mean value of the experimental class is greater (80.14) than the mean value of the control class (72.08). It can be concluded that the Science, Environment, Technology, and Society (SETS) model integrated with Google Earth affects students' spatial thinking ability on the material of Disaster and Environment class XI SMAN 10 Malang City. Another finding of this study is that three syntaxes are dominant in bringing up and developing students' spatial thinking ability, namely initiation, concept development formation, and concept application.

Spatial Thinking and Movements in Geometry: GeoGebra with a focus on building animated scenarios

Animated Scenarios are constructions created in GeoGebra with mathematical elements and movement, constituting an animated scene. Movement is fundamental to the construction of Animated Sceneries, it is also essential to spatial thinking and spatial abilities. This theoretical essay aims to discuss the potential of building Animated Scenarios in GeoGebra in/for the recognition of flat and spatial geometric objects, articulated with the movements associated with spatial thinking. For this, the House Animated Scenario are considered. Thus, we identified that movements performed during this construction allow rotating and modifying the shape of objects and that these movements are related to spatial abilities. Furthermore, the use of these movements in construction contributes to the recognition of important characteristics that distinguish flat and spatial objects.

Touch to Learn: A Review of Haptic Technology's Impact on Skill Development and Enhancing Learning Abilities for Children

Early childhood education is critical in shaping children's intellectual and motor skills as it provides a solid foundation for cognitive, social, and emotional development, which highly depends on spatial thinking. Haptic feedback can be effectively used for educational and training purposes, particularly in fields such as physics, math, and arts, offering a more interactive learning media and supporting kinesthetic learners by its nature. Herein, different ways of implementing haptic feedback on different educational scenarios from the perspective of technological development and their impact on children's learned skills and outcomes (e.g., their motivation, their analytical or spatial thinking abilities, or fine motor skills) will be examined. This article provides an overview of how haptic feedback has been implemented in different learning scenarios for children. Particularly, it is indicated that haptics can potentially improve early childhood learning outcomes and spatial reasoning skills as it can increase children's interest, participation, performance in educational activities, and analytical ability. The major drawbacks of the current studies, such as variance in participants’ learning challenges and small sample numbers are also highlighted.

Impact of Out-of-School Educational Environments on the Creative and Spatial Thinking Skills of Gifted Students

The importance of educating gifted children is steadily increasing. The education of these pupils, who are seen as future of the societies, should be encounter to meet their needs. Our study aims to provide the desired learning oucomes without getting bored in fun environments with activities that will attract the attention and increase the motivation of gifted pupils in different locations outside the school. Additionally, it was studied whether there were differences about their creative and spatial thinking abilities with the activities prepared for this education. Our study was conducted using the ‘Pre-Test and Post-Test Experimental Design with Control Group’. Our sample involves experimental group of 21 pupils and control group of 21 pupils in the 6th grade studying at Konya Science and Art Center. The lesson plan of 8-week (32 hours) about museum-based art education was prepared and implemented for experimental group for 4 hours in a week. The control group was trained based on the National Education curriculum. The “Torrance Creativity Test” to decide creativity abilities and the “Mental Rotation Test and Paper Folding Test” to decide spatial thinking abilities were appealed before and after the experimental process for the experimental group, before and after curriculum works for the control group. The comparative effects of the discrepancies between the post-test and the pre-test results were examined to determine whether or not the program applied was effective in the development of students with the collected data. In our study, it was observed that museum visits and activities prepared by enriching the creative and spatial thinking abilities of gifted students were effective in improving students’ creative and spatial thinking abilities. When the experimental group students had fun with museum visits and activities, they concretized objects and reached the application area by seeing and touching. It was observed that the creativity abilities and spatial thinking abilities of the control group pupils could not be developed with classical educational plans.

SPATIAL THINKING ABILITY IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Spatial thinking ability is the ability to mentally manipulate and rotate an object in solving two-dimensional and third-dimensional geometric problems as well as the ability to imagine the shape of an object from a different perspective in solving three-dimensional geometric problems. This spatial ability is very necessary for students because good spatial abilities will also support good understanding of mathematics. Apart from that, students also need spatial abilities to solve everyday problems, such as looking at a map, explaining their position and so on. This spatial ability consists of spatial visualization, spatial rotation and spatial orientation. To improve spatial abilities, teachers must be creative in designing learning by using various media or teaching aids that are appropriate to the material being studied.Keywords: Spatial thinking skills, Geometry, Elementary education

Enhancing Spatial Ability among Undergraduate First-Year Engineering and Architecture Students

Spatial ability (SA) refers to the ability to generate, retain and manipulate abstract visual images in one’s head. Research of this ability conducted during the last few decades had shown that SA is an essential ability to the development of mathematical skills in children. Later studies addressed adult SA development and accordingly found that SA was a predictor of success in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields of academic studies. Recently, focus has also been directed to another related field which is architecture. This group has not been extensively researched in relation to its spatial thinking abilities. The current research examines the efficiency of a new training program aimed at improving engineering and architecture student’s SA abilities. This program was based on previous intervention programs but was innovative in its combination of both traditional and computer-based teaching methods and combining frontal learning, hands on model building and augmented reality (AR) tools, all in a short program of 20 h. We asked whether the training program will be effective in improving student’s SA ability and whether this improvement will remain across different factors such as gender, faculty and math level. The results showed a significant improvement in SA abilities among the students who took the training program, compared with the control group. These results were true for both engineering and architecture students. Moreover, the results showed the training program to be efficient regardless of gender or prior math level.

Revalidating a measurement instrument of spatial thinking ability for junior and high school students

Spatial thinking is a set of cognitive abilities that enable people to organize, reason about, and mentally manipulate both real and imagined spaces. One of the available measurement instruments is the Spatial Thinking Ability Test (STAT). Given the critical need for spatial thinking ability measurement for junior and high school students, and the popularity of STAT to measure spatial thinking ability, revalidation of STAT is necessary as STAT was developed primarily for university students and validation of the original STAT was based on the classical test theory from which the findings are notoriously sample dependent. We used Rasch modeling to revalidate STAT as it allows parameters to be mutually independent and measures to be interval. The sample included 1340 junior and high school students. Item fit statistics, Item Characteristics Curves, unidimensionality test, and the Wright map provided evidence for the construct validity of STAT measures. The reliability of the instrument was moderate. Wald test for item measure invariance of individual items showed that among sixteen items seven items were variant in measures. The Anderson LR test indicates that the Rasch difficulty measures of STAT were not adequate for invariance. There was no DIF between two subsamples based on gender, suggesting fairness of the instrument in terms of gender. The above results suggest that STAT possesses certain degrees of validity, reliability, and fairness, although there is still room for further improvement.

Systematic Review of Spatial Thinking in Mathematics Education

The objective of this study is to perform a comprehensive analysis of existing research on spatial thinking abilities using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). To achieve this, five search engines (Scopus, SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, and ERIC) were utilized during various stages, including identification, screening, eligibility, inclusion, and data analysis. Adhering to the PRISMA reporting rules, a total of 22 articles were included, selected mainly from the sorted studies. The results of our research indicate that there were four studies conducted using a mixed method approach, while nine studies utilized a quantitative approach, and another nine focused on qualitative methods. The number of studies investigating spatial thinking has consistently increased over the years. The findings section revealed that the majority of studies on this subject were authored by researchers from the USA, followed by authors from Australia, Turkey, Israel, Germany, Spain, China, Slovakia, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

3D Street Story Map Learning Media for High School Student’s Spatial Thinking Ability

One of the geography skills is students have spatial thinking ability. The aim of this research is to develop 3D Street Story Map Learning Media to accelerate students' spatial thinking ability. Learning media developed based on Google My Map integrated with virtual tours so that learning media can be used in geography learning courses. The development uses a 4D model that is adjusted to development needs. The define phase examines the study of development needs including a literature study and needs assessment of high school students and teachers. The design stage contains four steps, including constructing criteria and references, selecting media, selecting formats, and initial design. The second stage is to develop and validate learning media from material and media experts and test the practicality of learning media. The research results are the creation of 3D Steet Story Map learning media which was developed based on a needs assessment study, tested validity based on the material and media experts, and has practical and effective value for student geography learning. The practical implications of using 3D Street Story Map learning media are in this article.

Does spatial thinking ability relate to performance when using web-mapping services? A survey with digital natives

Abstract. We present the design and implementation of an empirical synchronous remote study for exploring the relation between spatial ability and performance on web-mapping services involving undergraduate University students; digital natives. The study exploits Spatial Thinking Ability Test to assess participants’ spatial ability and to reveal if and to what extent it is related to their ability to perform tasks on popular web-mapping services. Participants’ performance was assessed on the basis (a) of successfully executing tasks and (b) of how much time participants needed to properly perform tasks. A usability scale was used to measure participants’ subjective perceptions of web-mapping services usability. Moreover, participants were self-assessed in digital skills using the Digital Natives Assessment Scale. Results reveal differences among services in task accuracy indicating that not only the web-mapping service but also the nature of tasks guide participants’ performance. Correlations between spatial ability, digital skills, system usability, familiarity, and performance using web mapping services tend to be low and not significant leading to the assumption that success when interacting with a web mapping service is underlined by other factors as well.

Applications of Teaching Based on Virtual Reality in Agro-Pastoralism Areas

This article first put forward the educational application of immersive virtual laboratories for the problems of poor spatial thinking ability and weak hands-on operation ability. Second, aiming at the problems of a lack of excellent backbone teachers and insufficient educational information equipment, a Tibetan-Chinese bilingual immersion virtual basic teaching system suitable for students in pastoral areas has been developed to complement the teaching of teachers in remote areas. Third, the application of virtual gymnasiums is proposed to reduce the physical discomfort of students under harsh conditions. And then the application of virtual vocational technical training is proposed for poor employment situations in agro-pastoralism areas. Finally, the Tibetan-Chinese bilingual immersive virtual basic teaching system developed for pastoral students was put into use for a short period of time in the farming and pastoral schools and was well received by the pastoral students, and the teachers also gave feedback that the system has now improved at least the concentration of the student.

The relationship between pre-service teachers’ spatial thinking ability and their mathematical creativity in the context of problem posing

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to quantify the relationship between pre-service teachers’ spatial visualisation skills and their mathematical creativity through problem-posing tasks. A group of 62 pre-service teachers completed the Purdue Spatial Visualisation test and took the mathematical creativity test through problem-posing tasks. Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficients in SPSS-28 were employed to find the correlation between pre-service teachers’ spatial visualisation skills and their mathematical creativity (i.e. fluency, flexibility, and originality) through problem-posing tasks. Results showed a moderate to high correlation (r = .523) between pre-service teachers’ fluency scores and their spatial visualisation scores, and this correlation was statistically significant (p < .05). Similarly, the results showed a high correlation (r = .619, p < .05) between pre-service teachers’ flexibility scores and their spatial visualisation scores. However, the results also revealed a weak correlation (r = .218) between pre-service teachers’ originality scores and their spatial visualisation scores (p = .240). Possible explanations for these correlations in relation to existing studies about mathematical creativity and the implication for future studies are provided.

The Effect of Virtual Reality Game Teaching Technology on Students’ Immersion

VR (Virtual Reality) technology as the current cutting-edge technology, is widely used in the field of education, and plays a huge advantage. VR game teaching creates an immersive learning environment so that learners can have a clearer and more intuitive understanding of professional knowledge of various disciplines, enhance their learning enthusiasm and interest in learning, and give full play to subjective initiative of learners. VR technology gradually blurs the boundary between realities and virtual, and experiential have a certain emotional investment in excessively real virtual space, to create a sense of immersion and to effectively cultivate students’ spatial thinking and higher-order thinking ability. A questionnaire on the effect of VR game teaching technology on college students’ immersion was designed, and the effects of four aspects of VR game teaching technology, namely publication rules, role description, game control, and game review on learners’ immersion were explored. Results show that publication rules, role descriptions, and game control in VR game teaching have significant positive effects on college students’ immersion. All samples of different game platforms show a significant degree of immersion (P&lt;0.05), and two VR game platforms, namely wearable VR interaction and VR all-in-one, improve learners’ immersion more significantly. Results of this study have important reference value for integrating VR technology into three-dimensional composition teaching, stimulating students’ sense of participation in game learning, improving VR game teaching effect and improving learning efficiency.

Web GIS as a pedagogical tool in tourist geography course: the effect on spatial thinking ability and self-efficacy

ABSTRACT While Web GIS has been supposed as a useful tool in improving the spatial thinking abilities of students, most existing empirical studies were seldom undertaken in an educational programme providing rather limited geo-technological training to students. This study focuses on tutorial sessions of a tourism geography course in a Singaporean university, in which students usually engaged with very few GIS and other geospatial technologies. Combining a standardised assessment, that is Spatial Thinking Abilities Test, and semi-structured interviews, the study suggests that the implementation of Web GIS, collaborating with students’ major background and pre-existing GIS experience, efficiently enhanced their performance in spatial thinking abilities test; moreover, the exposure to GIS practices during tutorial sessions also stimulated students’ interest in using GIS and enhanced self-efficacy, which further equipped students with stronger motivation to continue learning geography. The paper contributes to existing debates around (Web) GIS as a pedagogical tool through incorporating qualitative interview materials into the discussion.

Use of web-based GIS applications in geography teaching-the implications from Türkiye

Geography, as a discipline which examines the earth, aims to increase analytical thinking skills by instilling spatial thinking (ST) skills in students. The youth who enrich a sense of space with these talents will effectively solve the spatial problems they encountered. In the modern world, where spatial issues are frequently being faced with, ST is extremely important for analyzing and interpreting data. Geographical information systems (GIS) appear as a method commonly used to process data and transform it into spatial information. In this context, despite the renewal of the secondary education (SE) geography curriculum in T?rkiye, with the components required for the use of GIS at the SE level, prevented the use of GIS in SE from reaching the desired level. Developments in technologies have also caused significant changes in the field of GIS with the power of cloud technologies and, the work done in the personal computer environment has been moved to the internet environment. Web GIS applications, which can be used via a web browser, are much easier to use than desktop software and can reach many users from any device with the internet. Within the scope of the study, a sample application was designed to use web GIS tools in geography teaching. With the application, it is possible to assess the students? achievements in the geography lessons regarding verbal and spatial data. Thus, it was aimed to ensure the active participation of the students in the geography lessons, develop their ST ability, and perception of space.

Application of 3D printing technology combined with PBL teaching method in clinical teaching of cerebrovascular disease: An observational study

Traditional clinical teaching does not allow medical students to combine theoretical knowledge with practical knowledge. As such, we aimed to determine the effectiveness of three dimensional (3D) printing technology combined with problem-based learning (PBL) in the clinical teaching of cerebrovascular diseases. Medical interns were randomly divided into an experimental group (n = 136) that was taught using 3D printing technology + PBL method and a control group (n = 133) that was taught using traditional methods. We compared assessment results of theoretical and clinical practice skills and the subjective evaluation of teaching methods between the 2 groups. The assessment results of the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P < .05). The survey assessing the evaluation of teaching methods showed higher satisfaction with teaching methods, increased learning interest, and improvement in the spatial thinking ability of interns in the experimental group compared to the control group (P < .05). There was no significant difference when assessing which teaching method better improved the interns' understanding of cerebrovascular diseases (P < .05). The application of 3D printing technology combined with the PBL teaching method in neurosurgery clinical teaching can stimulate interest in learning and significantly improve academic performance and problem-analysis and solving skills.

A Project-Based Instruction Approach to Improving Student Lunar Phases Learning Outcomes: A Quantitative Inquiry

We investigated how students’ lunar phases learning outcomes were affected by student and teacher demographic characteristics (gender, race/ethnicity, spatial thinking ability, and content knowledge). The study identified moderately strong correlations both between students’ spatial thinking ability and understanding of lunar phases, as well as between the pre-to-post-intervention scores of the two measures. Multilevel modeling showed significant predictors of learning outcomes from both student and teacher variables. This study furthers works on establishing a connection between student learning outcomes and the content knowledge and spatial ability for themselves as well as their teachers, and shows promise for a project-based instruction approach in aiding in lunar phases understanding.

The Mediating Effect of Academic Achievement in Geography on the Relationship between Family Capital and Geospatial Thinking

This study examined how the family capital of upper secondary school students impacted on their geospatial thinking skills and explored the mediating effect of their academic achievement in geography. A total of 1,018 upper secondary school students participated. The results of our mediation analysis conducted using the PROCESS modeling tool revealed that family capital has a direct predictive effect on students’ geospatial thinking and an indirect predictive effect via their academic achievement in geography. Therefore, this paper aims to redistribute family capital, so as to effectively apply it to the cultivation of students’ geographic academic achievement and geographic spatial thinking ability.

Development of Geographic Learning Media with Android for Improving Spatial Thinking Ability Using Subject of Anthroposphere Dynamics

Goals of the research are: (1) Knowing the characteristics of geography android learning media by not only students, but also teachers (2) Knowing feasibility of geography android learning media (3) Knowing the effectiveness of geography android learning media towards spatial thinking This is Research and Development with Thiagarajan model. Techniques of collecting data used are questionnaire analysis of needs, validation from material experts, validation from media experts, validation from teacher, validation from student’s, trying of questionnaire, tests, also documentation. Result of this study include: (1) characteristics of geography android learning media, from results obtained data that most of characteristics of geography android learning media with characteristics of students' learning styles on visual, color selection in blue and Comic Sans M font selection. (2) According to evaluation of validation from material experts and validation from media experts who gave score 5 (very good category), and also the evaluation of validation from teacher and validation from which had score 4 (good category). that it is feasible to use. (3) the geography android learning media was effective to improve spatial thinking ability according value of pre-test and post-test. Spatial thinking ability was increased especially in region aspect. The effectiveness of using geography android-based learning media improves spatial thinking significantly at 95% confidence level (Sig 0.007 &lt;0.05).

SPATIAL THINKING OF STUDENTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS AS AN INDICATOR OF THEIR INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

The peculiarities of formation of spatial thinking in students of engineering and pedagogical specialties in the course of study of the graphic cycle disciplines have been substantiated. The definitions of “spatial thinking” and “spatial imagination” are clarified. The legitimacy of spatial thinking as an independent mental process, which is associated with the analysis of spatial features and the relationship between elements of real objects (or their graphic images) and application of these features in resolution of design problems by students of engineering specialties of higher education is mentioned.&#x0D; The content and basic operational units of spatial thinking in undergraduates during their study of graphic disciplines have been described. The dependence of the level of development of spatial thinking of students on the type of spatial images operating in Descriptive Geometry, drawing, engineering and computer graphics lessons has been specified. There has been offered the typology of students of engineering and pedagogical specialties of pedagogical high school, depending on their level of spatial thinking development and ability to explicit spatial transformations. The initial level of spatial thinking development of the students of the first year of study before the study of the cycle of graphic disciplines in higher education institutions has been also analyzed. The prospects of resolution of the issue of increasing the level of spatial thinking in undergraduates as an indicator of their intellectual development have been outlined in the study.