Can Visual Arts Learning Improve Geometric Reasoning? A Transfer Study

这个项目将调查视觉艺术的学习是否会导致几何推理的提高，这是一门学生不断练习可视化的学科。这项纵向的准实验研究将比较有和没有广泛接触视觉艺术的高中生。几何推理将在基线和一到两年的学习后进行评估，艺术中的可视化技能、一般空间可视化和与可视化无关的控制任务也将进行评估。如果这项研究支持艺术组的学生在几何推理方面表现出更大进步的假设，那么未来的研究将检查视觉艺术训练与其他依赖可视化的STEM领域（如物理、化学、生物和数学的其他领域）之间的转移。这项研究有望扩展我们对数学中视觉空间思维与视觉艺术之间关系的理解，并增加我们对可能发生远近转移的条件的理解。它还意味着，通过增加在几何方面取得成功的学生人数，从而增加留在数学管道中的人数，可以增加学生获得更高水平数学的机会，特别是那些传统上教育不足的学生。

This project will investigate whether learning in the visual arts, a discipline in which students continually practice visualization, leads to improvements in geometric reasoning. This longitudinal, quasi-experimental study will compare high school students with and without extensive exposure to the visual arts. Geometric reasoning will be assessed at baseline and after one and two years of study, as will visualization skills in art, general spatial visualization, and control tasks not related to visualization. If the study supports the hypothesis that students in the arts group will show greater improvement in their geometric reasoning, future research will examine transfer between visual arts training and other STEM areas that depend on visualization such as physics, chemistry, biology, and additional areas in mathematics. This study promises to extend the boundaries of our understanding of the relation between visual-spatial thinking in mathematics and the visual arts and add to our understanding of the conditions under which near and far transfer may occur. It also has implications for increasing access to higher-level mathematics for students, particularly those students who have traditionally been underserved educationally, by increasing the number of students who succeed in geometry, and thereby increasing the numbers who stay in the mathematical pipeline.