Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Experiences w/ Van Hiele assessment/scale?

According to some of the research using Van Hiele, part of the problem stems from students at too low (for geometric proofs) Van Hiele level, teachers at too low (for geometric proofs) Van Hiele levels, and teachers not teaching at the correct level so that students can learn the material.

The reason why you couldn't beg a why out of a teacher in school may have been a reflection of their low geometric reasoning skills. There was a recent dissertation I read which indicated that many of the teachers themselves tested too low on the Van Hiele assessment to be teaching the course.

Interestingly, the Van Hiele level 5 questions are more logic than geometry.

What is the Van Hiele scale?

The Van Hiele scale was developed by a pair of Dutch researchers in the 1950's to assess the level of geometric reasoning ability. The original Van Hiele scale was 0 to 4 but a scale of 1 to 5 is more commonly used today so that a 0 could be used to describe young children who were below the original 0 level. The Van Hiele assessment with which I am familiar and that is commonly used in this country was developed by a team in 1980 as part of a comprehensive study. The results of the study, including a copy of the test can be found through the link below.

http://ucsmp.uchicago.edu/resources/van_hiele_levels.pdf

At least one other team of researchers (Taiwan) developed another test more recently.