Identifying the spatial strategies used by visually impaired students

The aim of this study is to examine the spatial ability of 8th grade students with visual impairments in the context of spatial visualization and spatial orientation, which are considered as subcomponents of spatial ability. In addition, it is another purpose of the research to examine the strategies that these students use when solving the questions requiring spatial ability in the context of different types of questions. A phenomenological pattern, which is a qualitative research pattern, has been used. Participants of the study consist of 8 visually impaired students who are educated in the 8th grade of a secondary school for the visually impaired. As subcomponents of spatial ability, spatial visualization and spatial orientation, which are the classification of McGee (1979) have been taken. In the research, interview was preferred as data collection method. As a result, while the strategies that the visually impaired students used when solving the types of questions requiring spatial ability were the strategy of mental rotation, manipulation and key property in the spatial visualization subfield, and it was the strategy of counting, key property in the spatial orientation subfield. Question type requiring 2D rotation, it was seen that mental rotation and key property strategy were used; 3D rotation, key property strategy was used; mental manipulation strategy was used in the question type of cube making and paper folding; mental manipulation and counting strategy were used in the isometric view question type; key property and counting strategy were used in the orthographic view question type. Also, visually impaired students had difficulties in perceiving 3D structures and could not imagine cube with no visible face, and they counted the number of faces instead of cubes, and in the 2D rotation and 3D rotation question types, it was seen that the students were looking for similar figures in the options rather than rotating them. Keywords: Spatial ability, spatial strategy, geometry, visually impaired students