Acta Didactica Napocensia
Volume 10 Number 2, pages 123-130
Published: 25 August 2017
Pre-service Primary School
Teachers’
Spatial Abilities
Iuliana
Marchis
Abstract. Spatial abilities are used in
many aspects of everyday life, thus developing these abilities should be one of the most
important goal of Mathematics Education. These abilities should be developed
starting with early school years, thus pre-school and primary school teachers
have an important role in setting the foundation of these abilities. A teacher
can successfully develop students’ competencies/abilities if she/he possess
those competencies/abilities. Thus evaluating and developing pre-service
primary school teachers’ spatial abilities is an important goal of their
training. This paper presents a research on pre-service primary school
teachers’ spatial abilities. Students were tested using an online problem sheet
and the results were quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated, trying to
identify some common misconceptions. The results show the necessity of
developing these students’ spatial abilities. Based on the results, some
hands-on activities and paper based problem types are proposed for developing
students’ spatial abilities.
Keywords: Spatial ability, pre-service primary school teachers,
Mathematics Education, teacher training