Spatial ability and transformational geometry

New technologies in education are placing more emphasis upon visual and spatial skills, those required to inspect, encode, transform, and construct information in visual displays. They do this by presenting students with learning material embedded in complex visual displays and hypermedia, and by requiring students to navigate through virtual space. These developments make it important for us to learn more about the underlying nature of visuospatial ability, how it is related to academic performance, and how it can be improved. This paper explores these issues in the context of instruction in transformational geometry upon geometry performance and spatial ability of Grade 7/8 students. The instructional conditions were (a) a traditional textbook approach involving paper-and-pencil tasks and verbal instruction (Traditional Group), and (b) an approach incorporating object manipulation, and visual imagery, which was designed to encourage spatial thinking (Spatial Group). Multiple regression results indicated that posttest geometry performance was predicted by pretest geometry, pretest spatial ability, and the interaction of pretest geometry and instructional condition; the interaction indicated that high prior knowledge subjects performed better in the Spatial group, low prior knowledge subjects in the Traditional group. Posttest spatial ability was predicted by handedness, pretest geometry, pretest spatial ability, and the interaction of pretest spatial ability and handedness; the interaction indicated that less right-handed subjects of low spatial ability improved on spatial ability more than their more right-handed peers.