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Toy‐playing behavior, sex‐role orientation, spatial ability, and science achievement
Author(s) -
Tracy Dyanne M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.3660270704
Subject(s) - spatial ability , psychology , test (biology) , developmental psychology , academic achievement , science education , orientation (vector space) , mathematics education , cognition , ecology , geometry , mathematics , neuroscience , biology
The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the possible relationships among children's extracurricular toy‐playing habits, sex‐role orientations, spatial abilities, and science achievement. Data were gathered from 282 midwestern, suburban, fifth‐grade students. It was found that boys had significantly higher spatial skills than girls. No significant differences in spatial ability were found among students with different sex‐role orientations. No significant differences in science achievement were found between girls and boys, or among students with the four different sex‐role orientations. Students who had high spatial ability also had significantly higher science achievement scores than students with low spatial ability. Femininely oriented boys who reported low playing in the two‐dimensional, gross‐body‐movement, and proportional‐arrangement toy categories scored significantly higher on the test of science achievement than girls with the same sex‐role and toy‐playing behavior.