Collaborative Research: Fostering Elementary School Students' Visuospatial Skills and Mathematical Competencies through an Origami-based Program

合作研究：通过折纸项目培养小学生的视觉空间技能和数学能力

• 批准号: 1920821
• 负责人: Perla Myers
• 金额: $ 100.98万
• 依托单位: University of San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-15 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1920821&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Fostering; Elementary; Students

The United States has a severe shortage of STEM professionals, and this gap is even more pronounced for underrepresented learners. In 2017, the average mathematics score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for 4th-grade English Language Learner (ELL) students was 26 points lower than the average score for their non-ELL peers. The closing of this gap will require interventions that focus on mathematics and on the visuospatial competencies that support mathematics learning. Visuospatial and mathematical competencies are important in most STEM fields and both are underdeveloped in underrepresented learners in the United States. Although there are increasing efforts to develop evidence-based mathematics curriculum and to present mathematical concepts or problems in a visual way, most visuospatial interventions were implemented in a lab setting (e.g., video games; training on mental rotation) and in ways that would be difficult to translate into existing educational settings. Based on research-informed approaches, this project will refine and evaluate an innovative origami curriculum and instructional guides to address the need to enhance students' visuospatial abilities and spatial language and related mathematical competencies. This project will build on an NSF-funded project (DRL-1713547) in which elementary-school students rated purposeful origami as one of the most engaging hands-on STEM activities they have experienced. The project will refine and evaluate the effectiveness, durability, and transfer of an innovative origami-based program on visuospatial skills, with a focus on elementary school low-achieving English Language Learners (ELLs). This study will provide a unique and comprehensive experimental assessment of the contributions of an origami-based program on the development of different types of visuospatial competencies and how the latter contributes to children's mathematical development. The project is a collaborative effort between cognitive psychologists, learning scientists, mathematics education researchers, and origamists that is focused on creating developmentally appropriate and engaging educational interventions and on better understanding the relationship between children's visuospatial reasoning and their mathematical learning. Research results will be disseminated and shared via scholarly research conferences and through publications in peer-reviewed research journals. Furthermore, the professional development protocols developed in the project will provide a straightforward way to scale-up this intervention and help educators integrate this new approach into their practices. This project is funded by the EHR Core Research Program, which funds fundamental research in STEM learning and learning environments, STEM workforce development, and broadening participation in STEM. Importantly, this project extends previous longitudinal correlational studies to investigate the causal links between the gains in visuospatial skills and students' mathematical competencies using an experimental design and a 12-month follow-up study with a group of 240 fourth-graders. This project refines an engaging intervention through an iterative design-based research process to help identify the learning and teaching components that can optimally foster children's visuospatial skills. This project will draw on previous research efforts that have examined spatial training effects and includes a comprehensive set of validated measures of visuospatial skills, mathematics competencies, mediators, and confounding factors, which will allow us to examine the complex relations, for the first time, between students' visuospatial activities and their emerging spatial and mathematical competencies. At the same time, the project will identify important cognitive factors and instructional strategies that contribute to the development of visuospatial and mathematical skills among low-achieving ELL students. The focus on this at-risk student group will improve our understanding of how to construct a more inclusive learning environment and will provide clear directions for focused interventions, in order to address the broader goal of preparing more low-achieving ELL student to enter STEM fields.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

美国严重缺乏STEM专业人员，对于代表性不足的学习者来说，这种差距更加明显。2017年，四年级英语学习者（ELL）学生在国家教育进步评估中的平均数学成绩比非ELL学生的平均成绩低26分。缩小这一差距需要采取干预措施，重点是数学和支持数学学习的视觉空间能力。视觉空间和数学能力在大多数STEM领域都很重要，在美国代表性不足的学习者中，这两种能力都不发达。虽然有越来越多的努力，以发展基于证据的数学课程，并提出数学概念或问题，在视觉的方式，大多数视觉空间的干预措施是在实验室设置（例如，视频游戏;心理旋转训练）以及难以转化为现有教育环境的方式。基于研究知情的方法，这个项目将完善和评估创新的折纸课程和教学指南，以满足需要，提高学生的视觉空间能力和空间语言和相关的数学能力。该项目将建立在NSF资助的项目（DRL-1713547）的基础上，在该项目中，小学生将有目的的折纸评为他们经历过的最具吸引力的动手STEM活动之一。该项目将完善和评估的有效性，耐久性，和视觉空间技能的创新折纸为基础的程序转移，重点是小学低成就的英语学习者（ELLs）。本研究将提供一个独特的和全面的实验评估的贡献折纸为基础的程序对不同类型的视觉空间能力的发展，以及后者如何有助于儿童的数学发展。该项目是认知心理学家，学习科学家，数学教育研究人员和折纸家之间的合作努力，专注于创造适合发展和参与的教育干预措施，并更好地了解儿童的视觉空间推理和他们的数学学习之间的关系。研究成果将通过学术研究会议和同行评审的研究期刊上的出版物传播和分享。此外，在该项目中开发的专业发展协议将提供一种简单的方法来扩大这种干预，并帮助教育工作者将这种新方法融入他们的实践。该项目由EHR核心研究计划资助，该计划资助STEM学习和学习环境的基础研究，STEM劳动力发展和扩大STEM的参与。重要的是，这个项目扩展了以前的纵向相关研究，调查之间的因果关系的收益在视觉空间技能和学生的数学能力，使用实验设计和12个月的随访研究与一组240名四年级学生。该项目通过迭代设计为基础的研究过程，以帮助确定学习和教学的组成部分，可以最佳地培养儿童的视觉空间技能，完善了一个引人入胜的干预。该项目将借鉴以前的研究工作，研究空间训练的效果，并包括一套全面的视觉空间技能，数学能力，中介和混杂因素的验证措施，这将使我们能够研究复杂的关系，第一次，学生的视觉空间活动和他们新兴的空间和数学能力。与此同时，该项目将确定重要的认知因素和教学策略，有助于低成就ELL学生的视觉空间和数学技能的发展。对这一高危学生群体的关注将提高我们对如何构建更具包容性的学习环境的理解，并将为重点干预提供明确的方向，为了实现更广泛的目标，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响进行评估的支持审查标准。

项目成果

Meta-analysis on the relation between visuomotor integration and academic achievement: Role of educational stage and disability

• DOI: 10.1016/j.edurev.2021.100412
• 发表时间: 2022-02
• 期刊: Educational Research Review
• 影响因子: 11.7
• 作者: Lora Khatib;Yaoran Li;D. Geary;Vitaliy Popov

Development and initial validation of a mathematics-specific spatial vocabulary scale

数学特定空间词汇量表的开发和初步验证

• DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1189674
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Frontiers in Education
• 影响因子: 2.3
• 作者: Ünal, Zehra E.;Ridgley, Lisa M.;Li, Yaoran;Graves, Cassandra;Khatib, Lora;Robertson, Taryn;Myers, Perla;Geary, David C.
• 通讯作者: Geary, David C.