القدرة المكانية وعلاقتها بحل المشكلات الهندسية في الرياضيات لدى تلاميذ السنة أولى متوسط من العاديين وذوي صعوبات الإنتباه
The present study aimed at investigating spatial ability and its relationship to solving engineering problems in mathematics, for first-year middle school normal students alongside those with attention difficulties, in addition to unraveling the differences between the genders (females and males), in regard to both; spatial ability and solving engineering problems in mathematics in each category and in between the two categories, through the formulation of eight hypotheses. In pursuance of these objectives, we adopted the descriptive analytical approach, in which the study tools were: First, the successive matrices test of John Raven, which we adopted as a test of spatial ability, secondly, the diagnostic estimation scale for attention difficulties, which is one of the sub-scales of the Zayat battery, and the third tool was a test for solving Engineering problems in mathematics, which was designed by the researcher based on the specification table and what was stated in the mathematics curriculum for the selected sample. Moreover, these tests were conducted on a sample of (323) male and female students both normal and with attention difficulties. The sample was selected intentionally in accordance with the objectives of the study. After analyzing the data statistically by means of correlation coefficients to study the relationship, linear regression analysis to predict the ability to solve engineering problems in mathematics through spatial ability, and t-test for two independent samples in order to study the differences, the analysis resulted in a statistically significant correlation at the level of significance (0.001) between the spatial ability and the solution of engineering problems in mathematics for normal first-year middle school students ordinary, and also among those with attention difficulties, in addition to the possibility of predicting the solution of engineering problems in mathematics through the spatial ability, whether among normal students or among those with attention difficulties. The results also indicated that there were statistically significant differences in spatial ability and also in solving engineering problems in mathematics due to the category variable (normal and those with attention difficulties) and in favor of the ordinary. As for the gender variable (females and males), the results indicated that there were no differences in solving engineering problems in mathematics between females and ordinary males, and the presence of statistically significant differences in spatial ability in favor of ordinary males, while no differences were recorded between the two genders with attention difficulties in both spatial ability or engineering problem solving in mathematics. (Author’s abstract)