Part II Commentary 1: Mathematics Educators’ Perspectives on Spatial Visualization and Mathematical Reasoning

Abstract

Researchers generally agree that spatial problem solving skills involve the ability to generate mental images as a strategy for solving mathematics problems, often in conjunction with maintaining and manipulating those images. Further, translating these mental images into physical representations/graphics through drawings or diagrams is advantageous for many mathematics problems. The chapters by Sinclair, Moss, Hawes, and Stephenson (this volume) and Lowrie and Logan (this volume), point out Polya's (1965) recommendation to "draw a diagram" as one of the first steps in understanding a mathematics problem. Students who use this heuristic may be more successful on a wide range of problems across mathematics content areas. Ho and Lowrie (2014) report that Singapore students are taught to use the model method, which is a visual problem-solving heuristic prevalently used in Singapore classrooms, and Murata (2008) reports on the use of the tape diagram approach as visual-spatial tool used to solve many types of mathematics problems in Japanese classrooms-both countries that score highly on standardized testing. PU - SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG PI - CHAM PA - GEWERBESTRASSE 11, CHAM, CH-6330, SWITZERLAND