The Impact of a Spatial Intervention Program on Students’ Spatial Reasoning and Mathematics Performance

Abstract

There is increasing evidence for the impact of spatial training on mathematics performance in early years of education, however little research has focused on secondary school environments, which are traditionally more discipline driven. In the present study, a large-scale classroom-based intervention saw the introduction of twelve hours of spatial training instead of standard mathematics instruction across a ten-week term with grade eight students. The intervention program was delivered by classroom teachers within the Experience-Language-Pictorial-Symbolic-Application (ELPSA) pedagogical framework (Lowrie & Patahuddin, 2015). Differences in spatial and mathematics performance after the intervention, assessed by Hierarchical Linear Modeling, indicated that the intervention group (thirty-two classes) improved on spatial reasoning and mathematics achievement significantly more than a business-as-usual control group (eight classes). Improvement was found across geometry and measurement and number and algebra content for the intervention group, relative to the control group. This study provides evidence for an effective implementation of spatial learning with impact on mathematics performance, led by classroom teachers in a secondary school context.

Keywords:

• Spatial reasoning
• spatial training
• mathematics
• classroom intervention
• secondary school

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Robyn Lowrie, Alex Forndran, Ajay Ramful and Sitti Pattahuddin for assistance with development of the intervention program and classroom observation. Additional thanks to Australian Capital Territory teachers for assistance in developing the intervention program and resources, Destina Winarti for help with classroom observation and Josh Crowley for his work in developing the digital assessment platform.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Seven teachers taught the intervention lessons in two separate classes.

2 The Australian school year consists of four ten-week terms that run from January to December.

3 Australian Secondary Schools operate in time blocks for content delivery. These blocks vary between schools, so while some schools chose to deliver the entire program in one five-week block to allow for another complete content block within the term, other schools delivered the program for 1-2 lessons per week while delivering an additional mathematics lesson concurrently.

4 Ethical guidelines restricted collection of student demographic information to age, identified gender, teacher name and school.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (grant number DP150101961).