A descriptive investigation of Turkish high school students’ spatial visualization ability

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish high school students’ spatial visualization ability. Gender, school type, and grade were used as independent variables to describe spatial visualization ability as it pertains to the respective dimensions. Descriptive research was used, and the sample consisted of 555 students from private and state high schools. The study was carried out in Çankaya, Ankara. The “Purdue Spatial Visualization Test - PSVT” developed by Roland Guay in 1976, adapted into Turkish by Sevimli (2009) was used to measure students’ spatial visualization abilities. The data collection took place during the fall semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. The data analyses were conducted by considering students’ total scores of PSVT. Descriptive statistical analyses were conducted to determine students’ spatial visualization levels based on the variables: gender, school type, and grade. An independent samples t-test was conducted to determine whether the mean difference between gender and school types were statistically significant. Welch’s ANOVA test was conducted to determine whether the mean difference between grades was statistically significant. Moreover, Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to find out if there were relationships between the students’ PSVT total scores and their mathematics course grades, also for their socioeconomic status. Analyses revealed that students’ spatial visualization levels were dependent on their gender and school type. It was found that there was not a statistically significant difference between the PSVT mean scores of grades. There was a significant, positive correlation between students’ spatial visualization levels and mathematics grades and socioeconomic status.