Do Girls and Boys have Equally Good Spatial Thinking Skills?

Günter Maresch, Eleni Lagoudaki

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding/Legal commentaryChapter in BookResearchpeer-review

Abstract

The online spatial thinking platform RIF has collected anonymous results from more than 2.8 million individual tasks completed by students from 36 countries around the world. This large quantity of data allows analyses, and various interpretations of students’ spatial thinking skills. The data were examined regarding age- and gender-specific differences and performance in the different areas of spatial thinking. The results of the analyses show clear trends: (1) Girls and boys have (with one exception) equally good spatial thinking skills. (2) Boys (just) have a clear advantage in the domain of mental rotation. (3) The spatial ability of adolescents hardly improves at all during puberty (between the ages of 12 and 16), (4) With increasing age, the average probability of solving the tasks correctly increases for all students in all domains of spatial thinking.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNew Ways of Teaching and Learning, Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of The Mathematics Education for the Future Project.
EditorsJanina Morska, Alan Rogerson
Place of PublicationMünster
PublisherWTM-Verlag
Pages230-235
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-95987-288-1
ISBN (Print)978-3-95987-288-1, 978-3-95987-287-4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

Publication series

NameThird Symposium Proceedings. New Ways of Teaching and Learning. Aemilia Hotel, Bologna, Italy. August 6-10, 2024

Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012

  • 101 Mathematics

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