SPATIAL ABILITY OF PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE TEACHERS: RELATIONSHIPS WITH EARTH SCIENCE MISCONCEPTIONS, OVERALL CONTENT UNDERSTANDING, AND PREVIOUS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE COURSEWORK

The geosciences are considered by some science educators to be the most spatial of all sciences. Spatial ability is known to be related to success in science and is considered a subset of intelligence, but relatively little is known about it. What relationships exist between various types of spatial abilities and mastery of Earth science concepts and overall Earth science understanding? This presentation offers results and conclusions from a series of studies of statistical relationships between three types of spatial abilities and Earth science understanding by preservice elementary/middle (E/M) teachers. It examines: 1) the relationship between scores on tests of three types of spatial ability with scores on a test of Earth science conceptual understanding (ESC) related to common Earth science misconceptions which appear to have spatial components, 2) the relationship between those spatial ability scores to specific Earth science misconceptions, 3) the relationship between scores on both the spatial ability and Earth science conceptual understanding scores to overall Earth science content understanding, and 4) the relationship between both of those types of scores with students’ number of university science courses.

Results showed positive significant relationships between each of the three spatial ability test scores with ESC scores, with mental rotation scores showing the strongest correlation. One or more spatial ability test scores were significantly correlated to scores on eight of the twenty ESC items. Significant positive correlations existed between ESC scores at both the beginning and end of the semester with composite exam scores, with a stronger correlation at the end of the semester. Students in the later years of their university science content course progression tended to score higher on spatial ability test scores that did students who had not begun their university science content study. All results were particularly evident with mental rotation scores.

Although certainly many factors influence learning of Earth science concepts, the important contribution of spatial ability should not be overlooked or left entirely to chance.