Transitioning into the theoretical literature review, even though Brown, Dickson and Gibson (1984) argued that there is a considerably marked lack of investigation towards insight into children’s thinking on the conceptualisation of angles (p.115), it has been noted that available research tends to point towards the assumption that angles have been a difficult concept to comprehend for children (Browning, Garza-Kling and Sundling, 2008, p.284). This appears to refer to Keiser’s 2000 description of angles as being an abstract and diverse concept (as cited by Browning, Garza-Kling and Sundling, 2008, p.284), strongly advocated by Mitchelmore and White 2002 of which highlighted the importance of having spatial ability and proposed a teaching
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Findings indicated how individual children find it difficult to conceive the idea of angles being relatable to such numerous everyday objects, for example, using the idea of the clock lesson (White, 2002, lesson 6, p. 15-17) to show the similarity of experimented studies against personal experience, teachers observed that when the hour hand is given on a clock face, over 50% of the class could not draw accurately the second minute hand according to the angle …show more content…
Some drew stereotypical angles e.g. right angles from 12 o’clock. In correspondence to personal experience explained previously, the reasoning to this problem was labeled as insufficient experience to different prototypes of angles which in turn, suggests that children fail to see angles in its dynamic state as a measurement of turn. However, the main limitation of this text is that the sample size consisted of only 5 primary schools situated in South Wales which cannot be used as a representative of generalising the results of all year 3 students in the UK. Nonetheless, similar results were found in a study carried out in Recife, Brazil indicating that children of 6-7 years old exhibited no apparent strategy in turning the hands on a watch ‘a half turn’ due to the deficiency of physical experience with angles that reinforces its dynamic nature. (Byrant and Nunes, 1997, p.113) This reiterates Stanic and Owens’ (1990, p.50-51) notion of spatial ability to gain a better understanding of geometry that can be nurtured through activities. Alternatively, these two examples seem to be supportive of the Piagetian’ theory stating that the conceptualisation of angles progresses from stages of visual thinking to more abstract and analytical over time, implying that children of similar ages tend to have similar ways of
Findings indicated how individual children find it difficult to conceive the idea of angles being relatable to such numerous everyday objects, for example, using the idea of the clock lesson (White, 2002, lesson 6, p. 15-17) to show the similarity of experimented studies against personal experience, teachers observed that when the hour hand is given on a clock face, over 50% of the class could not draw accurately the second minute hand according to the angle …show more content…
Some drew stereotypical angles e.g. right angles from 12 o’clock. In correspondence to personal experience explained previously, the reasoning to this problem was labeled as insufficient experience to different prototypes of angles which in turn, suggests that children fail to see angles in its dynamic state as a measurement of turn. However, the main limitation of this text is that the sample size consisted of only 5 primary schools situated in South Wales which cannot be used as a representative of generalising the results of all year 3 students in the UK. Nonetheless, similar results were found in a study carried out in Recife, Brazil indicating that children of 6-7 years old exhibited no apparent strategy in turning the hands on a watch ‘a half turn’ due to the deficiency of physical experience with angles that reinforces its dynamic nature. (Byrant and Nunes, 1997, p.113) This reiterates Stanic and Owens’ (1990, p.50-51) notion of spatial ability to gain a better understanding of geometry that can be nurtured through activities. Alternatively, these two examples seem to be supportive of the Piagetian’ theory stating that the conceptualisation of angles progresses from stages of visual thinking to more abstract and analytical over time, implying that children of similar ages tend to have similar ways of