A QUALITATIVE EXPLORATION OF INDIAN SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEIVED SPATIAL ABILITY

Authors

  • Mohammad Tanweer Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Teachers’ Training and Non-formal Education, (Institute of Advance Studies in Education), Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46827/ejpe.v0i0.1696

Keywords:

spatial ability, lived experiences, childhood experiences

Abstract

The present phenomenological study investigates the lived experiences of Indian school students, in attempting to answer the question: “What is it like for a student to experience the spatial ability phenomenon in learning school science?” The study included 12 interviewees and 12 focus group participants at Jamia Senior Secondary School run under Jamia Millia Islamia administration. Data sources included interview transcripts; think aloud transcripts, focus group transcripts, researcher journal entries, performance data, observation data, and spatial ability test (MRT) data. This paper provides the holistic, structural description of the spatial phenomenon that emerged from the descriptions of the participants’ experience, as well as an expository on invariant themes that were elicited from the data. Educational implications are also discussed.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter

DOI

References

Alderton, D. L. (1989, March). The fleeting nature of sex differences in spatial ability. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.

Brosnan, M. J. (1998). Spatial ability in children's play with Lego blocks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 87, 19-28.

Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Demetrious, A., Kui, Z. X., Spanoudis, G., Christou, C., Kyriakides, L., & Platsidou, M. (2005). The architecture, dynamics, and development of mental procession: Greek, School or Universal? Intelligence, 33(2) 109-141. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2004.10.003

El Koussy, A. A. H. (1935). The visual perception of space. British Journal of Psychology, 20, 1-80.

Gardener, H. (1983). Frames of mind. The Theory of Multiple Intelligence.

Giorgi, A. (1997). The theory, practice and evaluation of the phenomenological methods as a qualitative research procedure. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 28, 235-260.

Giorgi, A. (Ed.). (1985). Phenomenology and psychological research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Glasmer, F. D., & Turner, R. W. (1995). Youth sport participation and associated sex differences on a measure of spatial ability. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 81, 1099-1105.

Hegarty, M. (2007). The Role of Spatial Thinking in Undergraduate Science Education. Thinking, 1–34.

Hegarty, M., Keehner, M., Cohen, C., Montello, D. R., & Lippa, Y. (2007). The role of spatial cognition in medicine: Applications for selecting and training professionals. In Applied Spatial Cognition. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2113(08)60611-2

Kyllonen, P. C., Lohman, D. F., & Snow, R. E. (1984). Effects of aptitudes, strategy training, and task facets on spatial task performance. Journal of Psychology, 76(1), 130-145. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.76.1.130

Linn, M. C., & Petersen, A. C. (1985). Emergence and characterization of sex differences in spatial ability: A meta-analysis. Child development, 1479-1498.

Lohman, D. F. (1979). Spatial ability: A review and reanalysis of the correlational literature (Technical Report No. 8). Arlington, VA: Office of Naval Research.

Lohman, D. F. (1993). Spatial ability and G. Paper presented at the first Spearman Seminar, University of Plymouth.

Lord, T. R., & Garrison, J. (1998). Comparing spatial abilities of collegiate athletes in different sports. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 86, 1016-1018.

Lunneborg, P. W. (1982). Sex differences in self-assessed, everyday spatial abilities. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 55, 200-202.

Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

McGee, M. G. (1979b). Human spatial abilities: Sources of sex differences. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Mohler, J. L. (2008). Examining the spatial ability phenomenon from the student’s perspective. Engineering Design Graphics Journal, 72(3), 1-15.

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Peters, M., Lehmann, W., Takahira, S., Takeuchi, Y., & Jordan, K. (2006). Mental rotation test performance in four cross-cultural samples (n = 3367): Overall sex differences and the role of academic program in performance. Cortex, 42(7), 1005-1014. doi:10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70206-5

Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1971). Mental Imagery in the child. New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Salthouse, T. A., Babcock, R. L., Mitchell, D. R. D., Palmon, R., & Skovronek, E. (1990). Sources of individual differences in spatial visualization ability. Intelligence, 14,187-230. doi:10.1016/0160-2896(90)90004-D

Silverman, I., Choi, J., & Peters, M. (2007). The hunter-gatherer theory of sex differences in spatial abilities: Data from 40 countries. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36(2), 261-268. doi: 10.1007/s10508-006-9168-6

Sorby, S. A. (1999). Developing 3-D spatial visualization skills. Engineering Design Graphics Journal, 63(2), 21-32.

Tang, Y., Zhang, W., Chen, K., Feng, S., Ji, Y., Shen, J., et al. (2006, July 11). Arithmetic processing in the brain shaped by cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 103(28), 10775-10780. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0604416103

Thurstone, L. L. (1938). Primary mental abilities. Psychometric Monographs, No. 1.

Vandenberg, S. G. (1971). The Mental Rotations Test. Boulder: University of Colorado.

Vandenberg, S. G., & Kuse, A. R. (1978). Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47, 599-604.

Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M. P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. Psychological Bulletin, 117(2), 250-270. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.2.250

Wang, J., & Lin, E. (2005). Comparative studies on U.S. and School mathematics learning and the implications for standards-based mathematics teaching reform. Educational Researcher, 34(5), 3-13. doi: 10.3102/0013189X034005003

Downloads

Published

2018-05-31

Issue

Vol 4, No 2 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

 

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

 

  1. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

 

  1. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).