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Aspects of Spatial Thinking in Problem Solving: Focusing on Viewpoints in Constructing Internal Representations

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International Perspectives on the Teaching and Learning of Geometry in Secondary Schools

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Abstract

What difficulties do seventh grade students have in constructing internal representations and in their mathematizing processes while considering external representations from various viewpoints ? Students received a photograph and were asked to mark where on a map they think the photograph was taken. The results reveal seven types of places where students mark a point and six specific perspective cues they use. Different kinds of difficulty students had in each category are found by examining the relational terms, such as in front of, or right side, used by the students. The study suggests that a possible cause of difficulty in constructing internal representations is a lack of connection between the objects in terms of their position and direction from several perspectives. Finally our data indicates that crating positional relation with information of real world is a significant ability in mathematizing process .

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Author’s translation from the original in Japanese.

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Correspondence to Mitsue Arai .

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Arai, M. (2018). Aspects of Spatial Thinking in Problem Solving: Focusing on Viewpoints in Constructing Internal Representations. In: Herbst, P., Cheah, U., Richard, P., Jones, K. (eds) International Perspectives on the Teaching and Learning of Geometry in Secondary Schools. ICME-13 Monographs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77476-3_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77476-3_17

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