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Elementary teachers' attitudes and beliefs about spatial thinking and mathematics
Heather Burte1, Aaron L Gardony2, Allyson Hutton3
1Texas A&M University, Psychological and Brain Sciences, 4235 TAMU, College Station, TX, 77843, USA. heather.burte@tamu.edu.
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
|April 18, 2020
Summary
Teachers' lower spatial anxiety correlates with reduced math anxiety and improved math teaching efficacy. This highlights the crucial link between spatial skills and math performance in elementary education.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Mathematics Education
Background:
- Spatial thinking is increasingly recognized for its impact on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) outcomes.
- While spatial interventions show promise for elementary math learning, they often neglect affective factors like math anxiety and beliefs.
- Math performance is influenced by perceptions of math abilities, math beliefs, and math anxiety, as well as spatial skill perceptions and spatial anxiety.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the connections between elementary teachers' perceptions of spatial thinking and their math-related attitudes and beliefs.
- To examine teachers' attitudes towards teaching and learning math, their beliefs about spatial abilities, and the role of spatial thinking in mathematics.
- To understand how spatial anxiety and math anxiety are interrelated and influence teachers' efficacy.
Main Methods:
- Teachers' attitudes and beliefs regarding math, spatial abilities, and spatial thinking in math were assessed.
- Factor analysis was used to identify underlying factors connecting stereotypical math thinking, math/spatial anxiety, and spatial competencies.
- A math categorization was developed and validated using teachers' ratings on teaching difficulty, visualization helpfulness, and spatial-thinking involvement.
- Structural equation models were employed to analyze the relationships between spatial-thinking categorization and teacher ratings.
Main Results:
- Lower spatial anxiety was associated with lower anxiety about teaching math, stronger alignment between math beliefs and standards, and higher math teaching efficacy.
- Factor analysis revealed distinct factors linking stereotypical math thinking with math and spatial anxiety, and another connecting spatial competencies with math and spatial thinking.
- The proposed spatial-thinking categorization effectively modeled teachers' ratings of teaching difficulty, visualization helpfulness, and spatial-thinking involvement.
Conclusions:
- Significant interconnections exist between teachers' attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and spatial thinking.
- Future interventions should address spatial and/or math anxiety in teachers.
- Further research is recommended to explore the influence of stereotypical thinking on spatial and math anxiety.
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