Models, implementation, and reported outcomes of social prescribing interventions: a scoping review.

Individuals’ ability to interpret objects, shapes, and spatial structures in their environment relies on a set of higher-order cognitive processes, including mental representation, transformation, and flexible reorganization of spatial information. Beyond the mere mental construction of a shape, the ability to consider alternative positions and orientations and to express these representations through drawing requires complex cognitive and perceptual processing. In the psychological literature, such processes are conceptualized within the framework of spatial ability, reflecting an individual’s capacity to encode, manipulate, and utilize spatial information effectively. Within educational contexts, spatial ability has long been assessed predominantly through performance-based measurement instruments. These assessments capture the extent to which individuals can accurately and efficiently perform two- and three-dimensional spatial tasks. However, performance in spatial tasks is not solely determined by cognitive capacity; it is also closely associated with individuals’ self-efficacy perceptions regarding their ability to successfully perform such tasks. Self-efficacy perceptions influence task selection, effort expenditure, and persistence in the face of difficulties, thereby playing a critical role in shaping actual performance. In the literature, spatial ability has been examined within the framework of various variables such as age and grade level, gender, mathematics achievement, socioeconomic context, and instructional experiences. Previous research has demonstrated that spatial skills are significantly associated with both developmental patterns and academic performance (; ; ; ; ). However, studies that directly investigate the relationship between individuals’ self-efficacy perceptions regarding spatial ability and their actual visualization performance remain limited. Yet, in spatial tasks, individuals’ self-efficacy perceptions about their capability to perform these tasks may be as critical as their actual level of success, particularly in terms of performance emergence and persistence. This issue becomes especially salient for preservice teachers, for whom not only accurate execution of spatial tasks but also strong self-efficacy perceptions in their ability to successfully perform such tasks can directly shape the problem-solving approaches they employ in instruction and the learning experiences they design for students. Therefore, examining the relationship between spatial ability self-efficacy and visualization performance has the potential to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of spatial thinking within the context of teacher education.