Session Information
ERG SES B 11, Mathematics Education
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
RQ: Is there a significant relationship among 8th Grade Students’ Geometry Achievement, Geometry Self-Efficacy and Spatial Anxiety?
Geometry occupies a crucial place in mathematics curriculum because it provides students to improve deductive structure by combining the theories of mathematics with real life situations (Hvizdo,1992). The main goal of geometry course was stated as to improve students’ spatial sense by giving various representations in teaching the relations and three dimensional shapes (Gaulin,1985).
Although the teachers make great effort to teach geometry, based on the results of numerous studies, the students do not learn geometry as much as they need or they are expected (Clements&Battista,1992). In Turkey the situation is same. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study results, in which the science and mathematics achievement of 8th grade students of 38 countries were measured, Turkish students obtained the lowest mean scores in geometry content area (Duatepe,2004).
Many researchers claimed that spatial ability, the ability to generate, retain, retrieve, and transform well-structured visual images (Lohman,1993), has an important role in understanding geometry (Unal,Jakubowski,&Corey,2009). According to Wheatley (1990) spatial sense includes various abilities such as drawing tables, graphs and diagrams, looking for patterns so it has a great importance in geometry teaching and learning. However, spatial anxiety, “anxiety about environmental navigation” (Lawton,1994,p.767), cannot be ignored when spatial sense is under consideration. In the literature there were studies investigating the relationship between the components of spatial ability and spatial anxiety (Hund & Minarik,2006; Lawton,1994, Dursun,2010). For instance, in Dursun (2010)’s study, a negative significant relationship between spatial visualization ability and spatial anxiety of preservice teachers was revealed. Similarly, Hund and Minarik (2006) found that spatial anxiety had a negative relationship with navigation performance. Furthermore, Lawton (1994) asserted that orientation strategy which is “maintaining a sense of their own position in relation to environmental reference points” (p.767) had a negative relationship with spatial anxiety. Based on the results of these studies it can be convenient to say that having a strong positive relationship with spatial ability (Bulut&Koroğlu,2000), geometry achievement might be negatively related to spatial anxiety. Thus, spatial anxiety is one of the concerns of this study
The other variable to be examined is geometry self-efficacy which refers to “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required in order to produce given attainments” (Bandura,1977,p. 3). Bandura (1977) claimed that self-efficacy beliefs determine whether an individual will attend the task and the amount of effort the individual will perform in case of interferences. In most of the studies, self-efficacy was used to explain the reason for the performance variety between people who have similar knowledge and abilities (Pajares&Miller,1995). Since self-efficacy and anxiety affects achievement, investigating the relationship of these three variables for geometry will be beneficial and meaningful for educators and teachers.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bandura,A.(1977). Self-efficacy:Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review,84,191-215. Bulut, S.,& Koroglu, S.(2000). Onbirinci sınıf öğrencilerinin ve matematik öğretmen adaylarının uzaysal yeteneklerinin incelenmesi. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi,18,56-61. Cantürk-Günhan, B., & Başer, N. (2007). The development of self-efficacy scale toward geometry. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi,33,68-76. Clements, D. H., & Battista, M. T.(1992). Geometry and spatial reasoning. In D.A.Grouws (Ed.), Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp420-464). New York, NY: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics/ Macmillan Publishing Co. Duatepe, A. (2004). The effects of drama based instruction on seventh grade students’ geometry achievement, van Hiele geometric thinking levels, attitude toward mathematics and geometry (Unpublished master’s thesis). Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Dursun, Ö. (2010). The relationships among preservice teachers’ spatial visualization ability, geometry self-efficacy and spatial anxiety. (Unpublished master’s thesis). Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Gaulin, C.(1985). The need for emphasizing various graphical representations of 3-dimensional shapes and relations. In L. Streefland (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference for the PME, Noordwijkehout, The Netherlands,2,53-71. Hund, A. M.,& Minarik, J.L.(2006). Getting from here to there: Spatial anxiety, way finding strategies, direction type, and way finding efficiency. Spatial Cognition and Computation,6,179-201. Hvizdo, M. M. (1992). A study of the effect of spatial ability on geometry grades (Unpublished master’s thesis). Southern Connecticut State University, Connecticut. Lawton, C.A.(1994). Gender differences in way-finding strategies: relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety. Sex Roles,30(11/12),765-779. Lohman, D.F.(1993). Spatial Ability and G. Paper presented at the First Spearman Seminar, Iowa City, Iowa. Pajares, F.,& Miller, D. (1995). Mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance:The need for secificity of assessment. Journal of Counseling Psychology,42(2),190-198. Unal, H., Jakubowski, E., & Corey, D. (2009). Differences in learning geometry among high and low spatial ability pre-service mathematics teachers. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology,40(8),997-1012. Wheatley, G. H. (1990). Spatial sense and mathematics learning. Arithmetic Teacher,37,10–11.
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