The investigation of the relationship between the 8th grade students' spatial ability and their geometry achievement

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the 8th grade students' spatial ability and their geometry achievement within the frame of the variables; gender, preschool education, type of school, the level of interaction with intelligent games, liking level of drawing activities, individual sociality perception and mathematics success. This relational survey study was conducted on 400 eighth-grade students taking education at different type of middle schools from Göksun district of Kahramanmaraş province in Turkey during the 2016-2017 academic year. In this study; "Demographic Information Form", "Transformational Geometry and Geometric Objects Achievement Test" developed by the researcher and "Spatial Ability Practice Test" developed by Newton and Bristoll (2011) and translated to Turkish by the researcher were used as data collection tools. The data were analyzed with SPSS 17.0 packaged software using descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one way ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient. According to the results; it was determined that there was positive and significant relationship between the students' spatial abilities and all of the variables. Also; there was significant and moderate relationship between students' spatial abilities and their geometry achievement and mathematics success in a positive way. Additionally; a significant difference was identified in favor of girls with regard to students' spatial abilities. There was also a significant difference in favor of the students receiving education in day school with regard to students' spatial abilities. It was found that a significant difference was identified in favor of the students received preschool education with regard to eighth-grade students' spatial abilities. When the subcomponents of the spatial ability considered, it was determined that spatial visualization has come into prominence with respect to spatial relations and spatial orientation. Science Code : Key Words :Spatial Ability, 8th Grade Student, Gender, Preschool Education, Geometry Achievement. Page Number : 114 Adviser : Prof. Dr. Adem DURU