Visuospatial Reasoning: An Ecocultural Perspective for Space, Geometry and Measurement Education

403 Pages·2015·21.843 MB·English

by  Kay Owens (auth.)

Kay Owens
Visuospatial
Reasoning
An Ecocultural Perspective for Space,
Geometry and Measurement Education
Mathematics Education Library
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/6276

Kay Owens
Visuospatial Reasoning
An Ecocultural Perspective for Space,
Geometry and Measurement Education
Kay Owens
School of Teacher Education
Charles Sturt University
Dubbo , NSW , Australia
ISSN 0924-4921 ISSN 2214-983X (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-02462-2 ISBN 978-3-319-02463-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02463-9
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945742
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This book is dedicated to the
people of Papua New Guinea and
the Glen Lean Ethnomathematics
Centre at the University of
Goroka, PNG.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the many people of Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia
who have welcomed me into their homes and their knowledges, directly and indi-
rectly. I hope this book illustrates a glimpse of the wealth of your cultures and my
respect for you. There are too many to thank individually but I would particularly
like to acknowledge Wilfred Kaleva and Rex Matang for their years of sharing and
caring. I also want to thank the Dubbo Aboriginal community especially the Elders,
my colleagues at Charles Sturt University (too many to name), and Diane McNaboe
for teaching me Wiradjuri. I want to thank my husband Chris for his endless
patience, support, and editorial work over the many years that the ideas of this book
have been recorded. For their comments on drafts, I appreciate and was inspired by
Peter Galbraith, Philip Clarkson, and the writing group in my School of Teacher
Education at CSU, and for their contributions both in conversations, research and
writing to the contributing authors─Kate Highfi eld, Ravi Jawahir, and Marcos
Cherinda.
vii

Contents
1 Introduction: Visuospatial Reasoning in Context ................................ 1
The Challenge ........................................................................................... 1
Historical Overview of Relevant Research on Spatial Abilities
and Visual Imagery ................................................................................... 2
Visuospatial Reasoning and School Test Performance ............................. 3
Visuospatial Reasoning in Mathematics Education Research .................. 5
Defi ning Visuospatial Reasoning .............................................................. 6
Extending the Meaning of Visuospatial Reasoning .................................. 9
Visuospatial Reasoning and Geometry ..................................................... 10
Bridging from the Psychological to the Ecocultural Perspective ............. 11
An Ecocultural Perspective on Learning .................................................. 12
Ecocultural Identity and Mathematical Identity ....................................... 14
Moving Forward ....................................................................................... 16
2 Visuospatial Reasoning in Twentieth Century
Psychology-Based Studies ...................................................................... 19
The Challenge ........................................................................................... 19
Visuospatial Reasoning and Studies on Spatial Abilities ......................... 20
Visuospatial Reasoning from an Information Processing Perspective ...... 22
Studies of Learners with Disabilities ........................................................ 24
Age and Visuospatial Reasoning .............................................................. 26
Visuospatial Reasoning on Different Tasks .............................................. 29
Personal Approaches to Visuospatial Reasoning ...................................... 31
Training ..................................................................................................... 33
Key Study on Children’s Visuospatial Reasoning .................................... 35
Visuospatial Reasoning—Getting Inside Children’s Heads ..................... 40
Holistic, Concrete, Pictorial Imagery .................................................... 43
Dynamic Visuospatial Reasoning ......................................................... 45
Visuospatial Action Reasoning ............................................................. 47
Pattern Visuospatial Reasoning ............................................................. 51
Procedural Visuospatial Reasoning ....................................................... 57
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