Browsing by Author "Davis, B."

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    Enhancing student’s spatial reasoning skills with a robotics intervention
    (North American Chapter of the International Group for the Physchology of Mathematics Education, 2021-12-20) Francis, Krista; Rothschuh, S.; Davis, B.
    Spatial reasoning is a high-impact topic as it strongly predicts interest in, appreciation of, and success in STEM domains and careers. Yet, spatial reasoning is often under-used, underdeveloped, and ignored in current grade-school curriculum and teaching. Framed by the perspective of embodied cognition, our study explores changes in elementary students’ spatial reasoning skills after participation in either a short-term or a long-term robotics intervention. We administered measures of spatial reasoning elements before and after two differently structured robotics interventions to students aged 9-10 years: a short-term (N=11) and two long-term (N=48). Statistical analysis revealed significant improvements to several different elements of spatial reasoning in both groups. Our findings suggest that programming robots in either the short- or long-term leads to improvements in spatial reasoning.
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    Growth in mathematical understanding and spatial reasoning with programming robots.
    (North American Chapter of the International Group for the Physchology of Mathematics Education, 2021-12-20) Francis, Krista; Rothschuh, S.; Davis, B.
    This poster describes how programming robots might support both the development of spatial reasoning and growth in mathematical understanding using interpretive video analysis of two Grade 4 students’ attempts to program their robot to follow a pentagon.
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    Malleability of Spatial Reasoning with Short-Term and Long-Term Robotics Interventions
    (Springer, 2021-05-29) Francis, Krista; Rothschuh, S.; Poscente, D.; Davis, B.
    Spatial reasoning correlates with academic success in mathematics and science, is highly malleable, and can be learned. Yet, spatial reasoning is often underused, underdeveloped, and ignored in current grade-school curriculum and teaching. This study explores changes in elementary students’ spatial reasoning skills after participation in either a short-term or a long-term robotics intervention. The robotics intervention and the spatial elements within the intervention tasks are described. Measures of spatial reasoning elements were administered before and after each intervention. Two different groups of students ages 9–10 years were tested: a short-term group (N = 11) and a long-term group (N = 48). Statistical analysis revealed significant improvements to several different elements of spatial reasoning in both groups. Findings suggest that programming robots in either the short- or long-term intervention was associated with improvements in spatial reasoning.