| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 地理環境資源學研究所 === 105 === The training of spatial thinking has been the main target in education of geography. The collage entrance examinations have strongly set the direction of teaching in high school in Taiwan. Therefore, how do test items in the college entrance exams measure the spatial thinking abilities is worth exploring. After reviewing literature, spatial concepts and their definitions were systematically organized into different levels. The level and original density of spatial thinking in each test item in 2012-2016 General Scholastic Ability Test (GSAT) and Advanced Subjects Test (AST) in Taiwan were analyzed. Test items that contain spatial concepts and with low item difficulty value (i.e. difficult items) were further investigated. Sixty-four senior high school students were surveyed of those difficulty test items to understand which steps of problem solving process were difficult for students to fail the test item.
Some conclusions are made in this study. First, generally speaking, the test items of 2012-2016 GSAT and AST in Taiwan both have high enough original density and the highest ratio in high level spatial thinking. Second, difficult test items fall into 4 types of questions: "Where", "Direction", "Relief" and "Dissolve". Among the four types, the most difficult type is “Where” questions. It can be observed that test items do not directly inquire “where is some geographic feature?” However, the “where” question is implied in the item descriptions. Therefore, this does not mean that students need not to know where some geographic features are. Instead, the act of recitation of the location of mountains or rivers, which may be people''s stereotypes of geography, changes from “the answer to the question" to “the clue to the question". The reason of this change is to use the “where” information to deal with questions with higher cognitive levels. Suggestions are proposed in this study to enhance the teaching in education of Geography by the analysis of test items in view of spatial thinking and difficulties during problem solving process.
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