The relation between mathematics achievement and spatial reasoning

Abstract

The articles in this MERJ special issue collectively explore how spatial reasoning is related to, and supports, mathematics learning. Spatial reasoning refers to a suite of different skills that involve the mental manipulation of two-dimensional and threedimensional relations between and within objects. The relation between spatial reasoning and mathematics achievement across development is consistent, predictive, and strengthens over time (Resnick et al. 2019). Fortunately, spatial reasoning can be learned and improved with practice (Lowrie et al. 2018; Uttal et al. 2013), and improvements in spatial reasoning are causally related to improvements in mathematics understanding (Cheng & Mix 2014; Lowrie et al. 2017). However, these relations vary by task (e.g., Mix et al. 2016), highlighting the need to consider how specific connections are formed and extend to more general performance. This special issue brings together international research across the fields of mathematics education, development, and cognition, which serves to bridge and bring exposure to frequently siloed findings. In doing so, we (the editorial team) were faced with many challenges reconciling the fundamentally different methodologies, definitions, and valued outcomes each field takes in their research practice. For example, we needed to balance finding appropriate reviewers to ensure the accepted papers would meet the methodological standards within and across the relevant fields of discipline, while purposefully showcasing representative approaches that might complement or be adopted by researchers from other fields. To this end, the articles within the special issue have taken care to explicitly describe their techniques and define their constructs. We have emerged with a collection of nine strong papers across four continents. Contributions range from early career to experienced researchers; such is the breadth and depth of research on this topic. These papers can be conceptualized along two overarching themes: (1) theoretical/ conceptual links between spatial reasoning and mathematics skills and (2) practical application of spatial reasoning learning in mathematics environments. The Lowrie

Different complex word problems require different combinations of cognitive skills

“…The link between spatial skills and mathematical word problem solving has been addressed by a number of studies (e.g., Casey et al, 1997;Geary et al, 2000;Hegarty & Kozhevnikov, 1999;Resnick et al, 2020). Previous studies show that visual representations can contribute to the construction of a mental model and the interpretation of the situation in word problem solving (Boonen et al, 2014;Múñez et al, 2013;Schnotz & Bannert, 2003), however, there are also conflicting findings (Dewolf et al, 2014;Dewolf et al, 2015;Elia et al, 2007).…”

“…Considering the student perspective, several individual factors influencing the solution of word problems have been investigated apart from arithmetic skills (Daroczy et al, 2020;Verschaffel et al, 2020), including linguistic skills (Boonen et al, 2013;Boonen et al, 2016;Daroczy et al, 2015;Fuchs et al, 2006Fuchs et al, , 2018Pongsakdi et al, 2020;Swanson et al, 1993;Vilenius-Tuohimaa et al, 2008), spatial skills (Casey et al, 1997;Geary et al, 2000;Hegarty & Kozhevnikov, 1999;Resnick et al, 2020) and reasoning skills (Fuchs et al, 2015(Fuchs et al, , 2020Spencer et al, 2020;Vilenius-Tuohimaa et al, 2008). At the same time, Daroczy et al (2015) point out that few studies compared these factors in a comprehensive design that could reveal unique effects and interactions, and that these studies rarely considered task characteristics at the same time.…”

Comparing ICT With Physical Manipulative Supported Learning of 3D Geometry in Elementary School

“…Extensive research refers to the relationship between spatial abilities and achievement in mathematics (Clements & Battista, 1992; Hawes et al., 2019; Newcombe, 2010; Young et al., 2018). There exists the researchers’ need to describe the nature of this relationship (Young et al., 2018), connect spatial abilities with the success in solving various problems in different fields of mathematics education (Gunderson et al., 2012; Hawes et al., 2019; Hegarty & Kozhevnikov, 1999; Mulligan, 2015), and investigate the connections among different types of mathematical tasks and spatial reasoning, with the aim of extending them to a more general performance (Đokić, 2014; Resnick et al., 2020). Taking into consideration that training can improve spatial abilities regardless of students’ age, that the improvement is permanent, and that it transfers to the skills that students are not directly taught (Uttal et al., 2013), the recommendation is that mathematics education should be enriched with spatial contents (Bruce et al., 2017; Mulligan et al., 2017; Uttal et al., 2013).…”

“…In this paper, we explore if the use of physical manipulatives or ICT has a different effect on students’ spatial reasoning. Second, a connection between different types of geometry tasks and spatial abilities was previously investigated (Đokić, 2014; Panaoura et al., 2007; Pittalis et al., 2010; Resnick et al., 2020; Woolcott, Logan, et al., 2020). The question remains if the use of different support tools produces different effects on various types of tasks ( visualization tasks , net tasks , and measurement tasks ).…”

Reasoning, Representing, and Generalizing in Geometric Proof Problems among 8th Grade Talented Students

“…A number of authors have contended that students can gain an understanding of ideas associated with geometric transformations by deploying dynamic geometry environments (DGEs) [1,44] and using representations to justify their thinking [45,46]. The role of visualization or algebra in geometric reasoning was also explored [42,47].…”