A survey was done to assess the level of knowledge of elementary geometrical concepts (primarily recognition of basic shapes and knowledge of their properties) among Grade 5 students in upper and lower streams and Grade 9 students in selective and non-selective schools in Kingston, Jamaica. The test instrument was also administered to groups at the same educational levels in West Germany.

Twenty third-year students from two rural teachers’ colleges in Jamaica carried out a co-ordinated set of individual investigations into children’s learning of geometrical concepts during their assignment to schools as intern teachers. All the studies, which covered classes from Grade 2 to Grade 10, included some initial testing of children’s knowledge of a selected topic, the teaching of an experimental unit on that topic, and a post-test to measure what had been learnt; several investigators also interviewed other teachers on their attitudes towards geometry teaching.

Two experiments, involving four mathematics tutors and over 400 prospec­tive primary school teachers, were carried out in a Jamaican teachers' college. The first experiment showed conclusively that students could learn geometry and statistics from individualised units, and the second suggested that students learned approximately the same amount about integers from an individualised unit as they did when taught by the traditional lecture method. Questionnaire responses indicated a wide variety of reactions to the new method.