VISUAL THINKING SKILLS OF FIRST-GRADE INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS

Abstract

This study aims to identify the visual thinking skills of first-year middle school students in mathematics. The researcher adopted a descriptive approach due to its suitability for the study's objectives. A research tool, a visual thinking skills test, was pre pared, the test consisted of 25 multiple-choice questions with four alternatives distributed across the four visual thinking skills, which are: (the skill of reading visual shapes, the skill of analyzing visual shapes, the skill of interpreting information on visual shapes, and the skill of inferring meaning from visual shapes). The validity and reliability of the tool were verified. Once it was ready for use, the visual thinking skills test was administered to the research sample (first-year middle school students) at Al-Shayma Girls' Secondary School and Abu Tarab Boys' Secondary School, both affiliated with the Maysan Governorate Education Department. After conducting the appropriate statistical analyses, the researcher concluded that first-year middle school students possess high-level visual thinking skills in mathematics. In light of the study's results, the researcher made a number of recommendations and suggestions.