Spatial Visualization Skills in Textbook Tasks for the 9th grade of Elementary School

Spatial Visualization Skills (SVS) can be defined as the ability to mentally visualize, manipulate and recognize an object. It is noticed that the SVS are relevant in the context of mathematics education, however there are few studies that relate them to Textbooks (TB). In this sense, this article aims to analyze how the exercises present in TB of Mathematics of the 9th year of Elementary School (ES) that require SVS to be solved. In this way, the object of study was limited to the Spatial Geometry tasks of the five best-selling books approved by the 2020 National Book and Teaching Material Program and the Visualization Actions necessary to solve each task were categorized. Based on the analyses, the analyzed exercises prioritize the calculation of areas and volumes to the detriment of SVS, however, there is still the possibility of articulating them in some activities.