Spatial learning is important.

The early connections between spatial thinking and STEM learning were mainly anecdotal—researchers envisioned the three-dimensional structure of DNA with the help of Rosalind Franklin’s flat x-ray diffraction images, or John Snow looked at the spatial distribution of cholera outbreaks on a map to identify contaminated water supply as the cause of London’s 1953 cholera epidemic.

A decade of NSF funding of SILC and other researchers now supports the conclusion that spatial thinking and STEM learning relate to each other both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In addition, spatial thinking is malleable.

SILC engaged a broad range of experts to probe the processes and mechanisms that underlie spatial learning and the factors that influence spatial learning. These experts included researchers in gesture, analogy, spatial language, sketching and effective use of diagrams and graphs, and embodied cognition (physical activity that instantiates scientific or mathematical principles).

Five Crosscutting Themes

1

Although space itself is continuous, human representations of space are often qualitative, organized into distinct categories; these qualitative spatial representations are crucial to STEM education.

2

Spatial skills vary by whether representations and processes apply to the intrinsic properties of objects or the extrinsic relations between objects (and/or external reference systems), and by whether these properties are statically represented or dynamically transformed.

3

Learning and using spatial language, diagrams and maps is a major route by which we form articulated representations of space, including the qualitative distinctions needed for STEM learning.

4

Spatial analogies can reveal common spatial patterns that apply across spatial situations, and can highlight specific differences between them. Analogical processes are also instrumental in applying spatial representations to nonspatial domains, as in the use of a spatial diagram to capture causal information.

5

Human representations of objects and actions are often grounded in sensorimotor interactions with the world. These embodied representations remain potent even among STEM experts.

Six Tools for Spatial Learning

Analogical Reasoning

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Language

All languages contain words that convey spatial relations (e.g., in, on, under, through). These words impose categories on what are, in fact, continuous dimensions. Learning and using these words is likely to affect how spatial relations categorized and thus has the potential to facilitate (or hinder) spatial thinking. Second, syntax organizes words into frames. If we say the cat is on the mat, we focus attention on the cat, in relation to the ground, mat. If we say the mat is under the cat, we focus attention on the mat as figure, and situates it in relation to the cat as ground. Thus, language organizes space in a particular way, which could serve as a tool for spatial thinking.

Gesture

Gesture is inherently spatial – we gesture in space. Gesture can capture the imagistic and continuous aspects of space that are often lost when a spatial situation is described in language (e.g., saying turn right indicates the direction the listener should take but does not convey whether the turn is a hard or soft right, information that can easily be conveyed in gesture). Gesture can thus add continuous information to the categorical information in language. Moreover, when learners are encouraged to gesture while explaining their solutions to a math problem, they are subsequently more likely to profit from a lesson in how to solve the problem.

Sketching

Sketching is also inherently spatial, and, like gesture, can easily capture continuous information. Sketching, however, leaves a permanent trace, allowing students and t eachers to externalize and communicate ideas naturally within an intrinsically spatial format. Indeed, teachers in STEM disciplines often use sketches in instruction, and state that students’ sketches are deeply revealing of their degree of understanding. Yet scoring sketches is extremely time-consuming for instructors, and the time course of drawing is lost when people use pencil and paper to sketch. Consequently, we created CogSketch, which can serve both as a cognitive science research instrument and to support STEM education.

Maps

These symbolizations are also inherently spatial. However, as with language, maps also have systematized conventions that, once understood, can facilitate learning. Maps highlight spatial relations that can be difficult or even impossible to perceive from direct experience. For example, by looking at a map, one can easily see the relative spatial position of several cities across the United States. The unique perspective and scale of maps make spatial relations that are not directly perceptible cognitively tractable. Maps can also convey non-spatial information as a function of locations in space (e.g., precipitation as a function of location).

Diagrams

Diagrams are conventionalized and well-rendered sketches, made with the reader in mind. They allow us to display any type of information in a spatial format. Understanding the spatial conventions needed to interpret diagrams is essential to becoming proficient in the STEM disciplines.