Spatial skills malleability of pre-school children

ABSTRACT

The presented study focuses on children aged from 5 to 6.5 who attend Czech kindergartens. Its purpose is to explore a potential positive impact of an educational game application on malleability of children’s spatial skills through the application usage. The research was conducted as a pedagogical experiment in which the pre-test and post-test phases were carried out with the Mosaics, Puzzles and Patterns subtests of the SON-R 2.5-7 test battery, which is suitable for measuring general non-verbal intelligence in children aged 2.5–7. The game application which was created in the initial phase of the research was applied in the treatment phase to the experimental group. The results showed a statistically significant difference in the preschool children’s spatial ability test scores in favour of the experimental group and confirmed statistically significant benefits of the game application in each of the measured skills. The results have clearly shown that supporting the development of spatial skills through game applications is more effective than a mere use of toys and activities recommended in the current educational guidelines for pre-school children elaborated by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic.

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-school education
• spatial skills
• educational application
• game application
• teaching/learning strategies

Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by Specific research project No. 2101 of the University of Hradec Kralove, Faculty of Science in 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva Milkova

Eva Milkova, PhD is a full professor at the University of Hradec Králové, Faculty of Science, and Department of Applied Cybernetics. Her scientific interests include Graph Theory, Combinatorial Optimization and ICT in Education. She is a guarantee of doctoral studies ICT in Education at the Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Králové. She is a supervisor of considerable number of doctoral students.

Simona Pekarkova

Simona Pekárkova, PhD is a psychologist, special educator. She works as the director of the Pedagogical-Psychological Centre STEP which is recognized by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic. She is one of Eva Milkova doctoral students.