Teachers' spatial literacy as visualization, reasoning, and communication

This paper conceptualizes spatial literacy as consisting of three overlapping domains: visualization, reasoning, and communication. By considering these domains, this study explores different aspects of spatial literacy to better understand how a group of mathematics teachers reasoned about spatial tasks. Seventy-five preservice and inservice teachers worked on problems that involved spatial objects, their properties, and their relationships. Teachers' responses suggested that their spatial literacy skills were underdeveloped with deficiencies most evident on problems that were solvable by dimensional reasoning. Poor vocabulary and misconceptions hindered teachers' performance. Teachers who used multiple reasoning strategies were more likely to solve a problem correctly. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.