Quelltext der Seite The Impact of Scale on Children's Spatial Thought

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{{diss
| name= Cathleen Heil
| titel = {{PAGENAME}}
| hochschule= Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
| jahr = 2020
| typ = Dissertation
| betreut = Silke Ruwisch
| begutachtet = Silke Ruwisch, Andreas Büchter, Eva Neidhardt
| download =
| sprache = Englisch
| note = 
| pruefungam = 
| schulart =
| stufe =  
| matheduc = 
}}
 
== Zusammenfassung ==
Children’s thought about space is influenced by their abilities to perceive, encode,
and mentally manipulate spatial relations they experience and explore in everyday
life. Geometry education in primary school aims to support children as they
organize those experiences at an abstract level and develop cognitive abilities to
consciously manipulate spatial information in different spatial settings, that is,
their spatial abilities. Many studies have investigated children’s abilities to mentally
manipulate spatial relations in tabletop settings but not those required when
the self is located or moving in real space. Addressing this gap in the literature,
this study proposes map-based spatial tasks in real space and examines the relations
of individual differences in the corresponding underlying cognitive abilities
used to solve spatial tasks at both scales of space, small-scale and large-scale
spatial abilities, in greater detail.
Using a correlational study design, this study investigates the relation between
performances of 240 fourth graders on a mid-sized German university completing
paper-based tasks in a classroom setting and map-based orientation tasks in a real
space setting. The former test consisted of a subset of tasks that required the
children to mentally manipulate object-based transformations and another asking
the children to transform the imagined self. The latter test mimicked the practical
use of maps such as indicating the direction toward unseen locations, finding
one’s position and viewing direction on the map, or navigating toward a predefined
goal. The test also included tasks without a map that required the children
to make inferences on directions to landmarks from survey knowledge acquired
during movement in space.
Descriptive results revealed that paper-and-pencil tasks requiring multistep
mental transformations of abstract and complex spatial information were appropriate
means to measure individual differences in children’s performances reflecting
small-scale spatial abilities. Moreover, maps were found to be potentially
powerful cognitive tools for teachers and researchers to stimulate and measure
children’s spatial thought in real space. By comparing different models in confirmatory
factor analyses, the study showed that at both scales of space, spatial
abilities should not be treated as an undifferentiated construct but rather be
understood as multidimensional.
The results suggested that a two-factor model distinguishing between object
manipulation and perspective transformation abilities might be an option to model
small-scale spatial abilities. They also confirmed a three-factor model distinguishing
between the abilities to make inferences on directions from survey
knowledge and two subclasses of map use, namely the abilities to transform information
from the map to the referent space, comprehension abilities, and the ones
to use information from the referent space to reason about spatial locations on the
map, production abilities.
The results of multivariate statistical analyses at the manifest and latent level
indicated that children’s spatial abilities at both scales of space are partially but
not fully related. These results specify the degree of overlap between subclasses
of small-scale and subclasses of large-scale spatial abilities, clarify the role
of visuospatial working memory as a mediator when it comes to relations with
abilities to use a map in real space, and emphasize the predictive role of particular
spatial tasks. The results provide new insights regarding the similarities and
differences between both classes of spatial abilities. The findings of this study
contribute to the literature in the study of spatial thought in mathematics education
and provide empirical evidence for the development of pedagogical interventions
both in geometry education and beyond.

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== Kontext ==
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=== Literatur ===
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