Abstract

• The main purpose of this research is to study the correlation between students’ spatial ability and their geometrical performance in mathematics at the middle school level. Especially, this study aims to study students’ spatial ability in terms of visualization, spatial relation, closure speed, flexibility of closure and perceptual speed. A descriptive research design was used for this study. Four townships were randomly selected from four districts in Yangon Region. Two high schools were chosen in each township. A total of eight basic education high schools were included in this study. The participants in this study were (600) Grade Seven students. As the research instruments, a test for spatial ability and a test for geometrical performance test were used. To obtain the reliability of these instruments, a pilot test was administered. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha) of the test for students’ spatial ability was (.682) and the test for students’ geometrical performance was (.625). In order to address the research questions, a descriptive statistics (percentage) and Pearson product-moment correlation were used. The percentage of low, moderate and high levels of students’ spatial ability were 12.67% (N=76), 75% (N=450) and 12.33% (N=74) respectively. The percentage of low, moderate and high levels of students’ geometrical performance were 7% (N=42), 84.17% (N=505) and 8.83% (N=53) respectively. So, the students’ spatial ability and geometrical performance were found the highest in moderate level. According to the Pearson product-moment correlation result, there was a positive correlation between students’ spatial ability and their geometrical performance (r = .685, p < .01). This means that a high level of students’ spatial ability will bring about a high level of their geometrical performance in mathematics.