Analysis of errors of Secondary School students when solving PISA activities associated with spatial sense

Abstract

An investigation is presented about the errors manifested by 122 15-year-old students who are in the first year of Uruguayan high school when solving PISA activities in the content, space and form. The study has a qualitative approach of a descriptive nature. Ten categories of errors are established, six related to spatial sense, and the other four consist of general mistakes in mathematics. The results show that the most frequent errors associated with spatial sense respond to the incorrect interpretation of formulations and graphs and are more related to a low development of visualization skills than to knowledge of geometric concepts. The skills that have had the greatest impact on errors are the perception of spatial relationships and the perception of positions in space, and to a lesser extent, figure-context perception and visual discrimination. General errors have had a lower impact on the resolution of activities.

Keywords
Spatial sense; Visualization skills; Errors; Difficulties