A Study on the Spatial Abilities of Prospective Social Studies Teachers: A Mixed Method Research

From the classical linguistic perspective, literacy refers to someone's ability to read, write, and speak in a language. These abilities can be observed in all parts of human life, ranging from everyday communications, to the workplace and science. In a similar vein, spatial literacy manifests itself in people's endeavors to solve problems in their lives, usually in the form of spatial knowledge, spatial thinking and acting patterns and spatial capabilities (National Research Council [NRC], 2006). Therefore, spatial thinking as a core skill of human life can be learned, incorporated into formal education, and enhanced through suitably arranged tools, technologies, and curricula.Spatial ability is an important variable that guides students' academic achievements (Battista, Wheatley, & Talsma, 1982; Lubinski, 2010; Maeda & Yoon, 2013; Yurt, 2014). Studies conducted in this regard have revealed that spatial ability is correlated with higher order skills such as problem solving (Clements & Battista, 1992; Hegarty & Kozhevnikov, 1999; Kragten, Admiraal, & Rijlaarsdam, 2015), creative thinking (Smith, 2009) and reasoning (Yurt, 2014). In addition, it has been understood that we use our spatial abilities effectively in daily life -for example, while using maps, doing sport and putting our things in order (Kimura, 1999; Peng, & Sollervall, 2014; Pietsch & Jansen, 2012). Thus, spatial thinking is felt very strongly in daily activities; however, it is difficult to filter out and know its role in these activities occurring in all aspects of people's lives. This kind of thinking is essential to many people's activities. It supports their successful performance and sometimes explains why a certain failure occurs (NRC, 2006).Spatial ability is generally defined as the ability to form well-constructed visual shapes, keep them in mind, and arrange and convert them (Lohman, 1996). There is no consensus in the relevant literature about the components of spatial ability consists. Researchers have defined various components of spatial ability depending on their points of view based on the way they explain the mental processes used in the visualization of shapes. Although some of these components are common, many of them are quite different from one another. The components of spatial ability that have been defined and explained can be listed as space, spatial orientation, visualization, holistic (global) perception, holistic flexibility, speed of perception, estimate of length, perceptual changes and figurative delusions (French, 1951, p. 21 as cited in McGee, 1979); spatial visualization, spatial perception and mental rotation (Linn & Petersen, 1985, p. 1482-1483); spatial orientation, spatial location memory, targeting, spatial visualization, differentiating objects and spatial perception (Kimura, 1999); visualization, spatial relations, speed of comprehension, mastery at comprehension and speed of perception (Carroll, 1993, p. 362-363) and spatial relations, visualization and spatial orientation (Contero et al., 2005, p. 25). On the other hand, spatial visualization and mental rotation abilities are generally regarded as the two fundamental components of spatial ability (Maeda & Yoon, 2013). Spatial visualization has been defined as being able to imagine the holistic and step by step orientations of objects and parts of objects in a three-dimensional space (Olkun, 2003), whereas mental rotation has been defined as the ability to invert and rotate two and three-dimensional objects in mind (Carroll, 1993).Studies aimed at identifying individual differences in spatial ability have revealed that spatial ability might differ by gender (Casey, Nuttall, Pezaris, & Benbow, 1995; Linn & Petersen, 1985; Maeda & Yoon, 2013; Reilly & Neumann, 2013; Turgut & Yenilmez, 2012; Yurt & Sunbul, 2011). It has transpired as a result of many studies indicating that males are more talented than females, especially in the mental rotation ability. …