An investigation of first year physics students' ability and anxiety the relationship between physics conceptual understanding, geometric thought, spatial reasoning, and related anxieties

Research has shown that spatial ability is important for success in STEM. Spatial ability is closely linked with mathematical ability, and as mathematics and conceptual understanding underpin the study of physics, an analysis of incoming physics students skill sets could show where improvements are needed in these areas. Affective factors of anxiety are also known to affect performance and confidence in these subjects, hence the reason for including these measures. This study presents an investigation of the relationship between physics conceptual understanding, geometric thought and spatial reasoning abilities as measured by the Force Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), the Van Hiele Test, and the Purdue Spatial Visualisation Test: Rotations (PSVT:R) respectively. Measures of math and spatial anxiety are also employed. The tests were administered as part of an in-class session to a cohort of 1^st year physics students. The analysis shows a significant correlation between physics student's spatial ability and Van Hiele levels in this cohort of students. Spatial anxiety has a negative correlation with spatial ability, and it was significantly higher for female students compared to the male students. Math anxiety also has a negative correlation with Van Hiele levels, and was also found to be higher for the female cohort. This study could help to improve our understanding of first year students' abilities and related anxiety levels. This could potentially lead to more effective ways to educate students that fall into the low spatial ability and high anxiety levels, a group over-represented by females. Further research is necessary to make the sample representative.