Spatial visualization skills present in items of the Brazilian high school national exam

Abstract

This article aims to analyze, categorize, and quantify the Brazilian high school national exam (ENEM) questions that require spatial visualization skills (SVS) for their resolution. This is a documentary research with a qualitative-quantitative approach whose corpus of analysis is ENEM exams carried out from 2009 to 2022, in the subject of mathematics and its technologies. There are four main results of this research: (1) spatial geometry (SG) questions that require SVS for their resolution (39.7%) are proportionally more frequent in ENEM than in four most used textbooks in Brazil (<20.0%), (2) some categories of SVS are much more frequent than others in ENEM questions, (3) the proportion of geometry questions in ENEM mathematics exam (23.0%) is considerably higher than the corresponding proportion of geometry-related skills in ENEM skills framework (13.0%), and (4) approximately half of ENEM geometry questions address SG.