The Study of the Correlation between Pupils' Spatial Performance on Hand-drawing and 3D Design Ability

In response to the rapid changing on information technology, 3D-printing design courses in an experimental manner were taken into elementary school's curriculum for the trend of the times. As pupils' cognitive development is different from adults, the performance of spatial concept varied personally, even believed for the gender difference. Therefore, whether the 3D design course is appropriate to overall elementary-school pupils is worthy to be explored. This study had 6th-grade pupils as research subjects, taking hand-drawing spatial performance and 3D design ability as the research targets, and focused on exploring the correlation between them. The results revealed: 1.The observation aspects as "overlap, non-foldout, varied ground lines, and non-X-ray" of spatial performance on hand-drawing had significant relations with each other and the overall performance, especially the "overlap" item could predict its total ability. 2. The observation aspects of 3D design ability, "merge/subtract/intersect, loft, rotate, align", had significant correlation with each other and the overall ability, and "merge/subtract/intersect, rotate, align" items could predict its total performance. 3. There exists significantly positive relation between students' spatial performance on hand-drawing and their 3D design ability. 4. Gender difference is not the key issue to spatial performance of these two fields. These results provided references for pupils' spatial cognition and spatial expression ability, and expected to benefit on future 3D-printing design curriculum rooted on primary education.