Investigating the Effect of Origami Instruction on Preservice Teachers’ Spatial Ability and Geometric Knowledge for Teaching

Abstract

Whereas origami is said to have pedagogical benefits in geometry education, research is inclusive about its effect on spatial ability and geometric knowledge among preservice teachers whose prior knowledge in geometry is seemingly weak. The study investigated the effect of origami instruction on these aspects using pretest posttest quasi-experiment design. The experimental group consisted of 52 students while students in the control group were 42. Paper folding test and mental rotation test were used to assess two subscales of spatial ability and achievement test was prepared to assess geometric knowledge for teaching shape and space. Data was analyzed using (M)ANOVAs at 0.05 significance level. The results of univariate ANOVAs show statistical and practical significant effect on spatial orientation and geometric knowledge for teaching, but unpredictably no statistical significant difference in spatial visualization between groups was found. The MANOVA however indicated overall statistically significant difference in posttest mean scores between groups with treatment accounting for 16.5% of multivariate variance of dependent variable. Implication for adopting origami instructions at the colleges of education were discussed.