1. Supporting Spatial Thinking: Translating Research into Practice
Carol J. Ormand, SERC, Carleton College
With thanks to
The National Science Foundation
The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC)
Thomas F. Shipley, Psychology, Temple University
The GET Spatial Learning Network
The Spatial Thinking Workbook team

2. Supporting Spatial Thinking
“Spatial thinking is pervasive: it is vital across a wide range of domains of practical and scientific knowledge; yet it is under-recognized, undervalued, underappreciated, and therefore under-instructed.”
Learning to Think Spatially, National Research Council, 2006
If you could teach your students how to do one spatial thinking task that they struggle with, what would it be?

3. Spatial Thinking Challenges
Reading a map
Identifying locations, coordinate systems
Identifying structures on a geologic map
Weather maps – imagining the atmosphere as a 3D volume, inferring 3D features from a 2D representation
Rotating things into real coordinates – slides, hand samples
Scaling up and scaling down
Extrapolating from the scale of a laboratory experiment to the world
Translating stereographic projections into reality
Translating 2D cross-sections into reality, into 3D
Drawing a map, finding the right locations; thinking in map view
Interpolating data, in real space and in abstract representations
How can two points on the same (rigid) tectonic plate have different velocities?
“Seeing” the 3D in a block diagram, reading depth in a perspective diagram
Seeing the 3rd dimension in field settings
Visualizing change over time

4. Workshop Agenda What is spatial thinking?
What spatial thinking tasks are challenging for our students?
BRIEF overview of spatial thinking research
Strategies & tools that support the development of spatial thinking skills
Examples of curricular materials aligned with cognitive science research, and the strategies and tools they employ
Spatial Thinking Workbook activities
GET Spatial Learning Network activities
Others? as suggested by your interests
BREAK
How to choose a tool / strategy for a given challenge?
Work time / exploration of resources
Wrap up

5. Spatial thinking includes (but is not limited to)…
Mental rotation: imagining rotating an object
In cognitive science research, mental rotation skills have served as a proxy for all spatial thinking until quite recently. Data from many different sources suggest this is insufficient.

6. Spatial thinking includes (but is not limited to)…
Disembedding: attending to one aspect of a complex scene
Perspective taking: imagining looking at an object or scene from a different direction

7. Spatial thinking includes (but is not limited to)…
Volumetric thinking: visualizing a 3D volume, including its interior

8. Spatial thinking includes (but is not limited to)…
Scaling: understanding the scale of objects represented in scaled images
Navigation: finding one’s way through physical space

9. Thinking back to the task you want to help your students with...
Is there a task that doesn’t fit into one or more of those categories? If so, what is it?

10. Workshop Agenda What is spatial thinking?
What spatial thinking tasks are challenging for our students?
BRIEF overview of spatial thinking research
Strategies & tools that support the development of spatial thinking skills
Examples of curricular materials aligned with cognitive science research, and the strategies and tools they employ
Spatial Thinking Workbook activities
GET Spatial Learning Network activities
Others? as suggested by your interests
BREAK
How to choose a tool / strategy for a given challenge?
Work time / exploration of resources
Wrap up

11. Research Findings
Spatial thinking skills are essential in STEM (e.g. Uttal et al., 2013)
Students with stronger spatial thinking skills may be more likely to persist and to succeed in STEM (e.g. Wai et al., 2009; Sorby et al., 2013)

12. Undergraduate geoscience students, including students in upper-level geoscience courses, bring a wide range of spatial skills to the classroom
Distribution of Vandenberg & Kuse (1978) Mental Rotation pre-test scores for students in upper-level courses. Data from Ormand et al.

13. Spatial thinking is not a single skill (nor is it limited to the small selection shown below)
Mental rotation (MRT-A)
Mental slicing: geometric solids (Planes of Reference)
Slicing: minerals
Slicing: geologic block diagrams
Water level

14. Spatial thinking is not a single skill, and these skills correlate with general intelligence and with each other to varying degrees (e.g. Ormand et al., 2014)
Scores on the Geologic Block Cross-sectioning Test vs. the Vandenberg & Kuse Mental Rotation Test (N=142). Although R=0.40, indicating a statistically significant correlation of these two skills, some students who excel at visualizing a cross-section through a geologic block diagram have weak mental rotation skills.

15. Spatial skills are malleable and / but there is a test-retest effect for many spatial thinking tests
e.g. Sorby, 2009; Uttal et al., 2013; Ormand et al., 2014 and many, many more studies

16. What strategies do we, as geoscientists, use to support and communicate about our own spatial thinking?
Find a partner. While one of you describes what you think the inside of this block looks like, the other will pay attention to what methods the first person uses to convey that information. Then trade roles.

17. Tools / Strategies that Support the Development of Spatial Thinking Skills
PRACTICE!
Gesture
Predictive sketching
Spatial prediction w/ feedback
Analogy
Comparison
Models (physical, computer)
Thinking about what processes could produce the observed 3D configuration
Others?
Interestingly, minor adjustments can make our expert strategies more effective as teaching tools.

18. with immediate spatial feedback
Predictive sketching
with immediate spatial feedback
Laboratory experiments explored the effect of sketching vs. visualizing on students’ ability to visualize object interiors. Sketchers visualize more accurately.
64 undergraduate psychology students (half in each condition)
Pre- and post-test: 7 items from the Geologic Block Cross-sectioning Test
Experimental condition: make predictive sketches, for each of a series of progressive slices through PlayDoh “models” of geologic structures
Control condition: place colored dots where you expect the center of each layer to be, for each of the same series of progressive slices through the same models
Gagnier, Kristin Michod, Kinnari Atit, Carol J. Ormand, and Thomas F. Shipley (2017). Comprehending Diagrams: Sketching to Support Spatial Reasoning. Topics in Cognitive Science, v.9, n. 4, pp. 883–901.

19. Journal of Geoscience Education, 63(1), 66-72.
Gesturing
Laboratory experiments explored the effect of subjects gesturing vs. verbally describing the structures shown in geologic block diagrams on their ability to visualize interiors. Note: it’s not just that better visualizers gesture more accurately. Students who gesture develop the capacity to visualize more accurately. Also, gesturing is more powerful than watching an instructor gesture.
Photo by Tim Shipley
Atit, K., Gagnier, K. M., & Shipley, T. F. (2015). Student gestures aid penetrative thinking. 
Journal of Geoscience Education, 63(1),

20. Visual comparison to identify salient differences
Humans find it much easier to identify salient features when asked to identify the key differences between similar objects.
Gentner, D., and Markman, A.B. (1994). Structural alignment in comparison: No difference without similarity. Psychological Science, v. 5, pp

21. Workshop Agenda What is spatial thinking?
What spatial thinking tasks are challenging for our students?
BRIEF overview of spatial thinking research
Strategies & tools that support the development of spatial thinking skills
Examples of curricular materials aligned with cognitive science research, and the strategies and tools they employ
Spatial Thinking Workbook activities
GET Spatial Learning Network activities
Others? as suggested by your interests
BREAK
How to choose a tool / strategy for a given challenge?
Work time / exploration of resources
Wrap up

22. The Spatial Thinking Workbook: curricular materials informed by cognitive science research
Sketching (esp. predictive) Gesture Analogical reasoning Progressive alignment * X
Mineralogy
Structural Geology
Sedimentology & Stratigraphy
* Progressive alignment is the process of moving from the comparison of very similar to less similar objects, in order to identify salient differences.

23. The Spatial Thinking Workbook: curricular materials informed by cognitive science research

24. The Spatial Thinking Workbook: Instructional Strategies

25. GET Spatial Learning Network: curricular materials informed by cognitive science research

26. GET Spatial Learning Network: curricular materials informed by cognitive science researchX
Physical Geology
Structural Geology
Geophysics
Tectonics
Spatial Feedback Spatial Accommodation

27. GET Spatial Learning Network: examples of spatial clicker questions

28. Workshop Agenda What is spatial thinking?
What spatial thinking tasks are challenging for our students?
BRIEF overview of spatial thinking research
Strategies & tools that support the development of spatial thinking skills
Examples of curricular materials aligned with cognitive science research, and the strategies and tools they employ
Spatial Thinking Workbook activities
GET Spatial Learning Network activities
Others? as suggested by your interests
BREAK
How to choose a tool / strategy for a given challenge?
Work time / exploration of resources
Wrap up

29. Selected References
Atit, K., Gagnier, K. M., & Shipley, T. F. (2015). Student gestures aid penetrative thinking. Journal of Geoscience Education, 63(1), Gagnier, Kristin Michod, Kinnari Atit, Carol J. Ormand, and Thomas F. Shipley (2017). Comprehending Diagrams: Sketching to Support Spatial Reasoning. Topics in Cognitive Science, v.9, n. 4, pp. 883–901. Gagnier, Kristin Michod, Thomas F. Shipley, Basil Tikoff, Carol J. Ormand, Kinnari Atit, Ilyse Resnick, and Bridget Garnier (2016). Training Spatial Skills in Geosciences: A Review of Tests and Tools. AAPG Memoir 111: 3-D Structural Interpretation: Earth, Mind, and Machine. Gentner, D., and Markman, A.B. (1994). Structural alignment in comparison: No difference without similarity. Psychological Science, v. 5, pp Gold, Anne U., Philip M. Pendergast, Carol J. Ormand, David A. Budd, and Karl J. Mueller. Improving Spatial Thinking Skills among Undergraduate Geology Students through short online Training Exercises. Submitted to the International Journal of Science Education; accepted pending revisions. Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Learning through gesture. WIREs (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews): Cognitive Science, v. 2, n. 6, pp Jee, Benjamin D., David Uttal, Dedre Gentner, Cathryn Manduca, Thomas Shipley, Brad Sageman, Carol J. Ormand, & Basil Tikoff (2010). Analogical thinking in geoscience education: Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 58, n. 1, pp LaDue, N. D., & Shipley, T. F. (2018). Click-On-Diagram Questions: a New Tool to Study Conceptions Using Classroom Response Systems. Journal of Science Education and Technology, National Research Council (2006). Learning to think spatially—GIS as a support system in the K-12 curriculum. Washington DC: National Academies Press. 313 pp. Ormand, Carol J., Cathryn A. Manduca, Thomas F. Shipley, Basil Tikoff, Cara L. Harwood, Kinnari Atit, and Alexander P. Boone (2014). Evaluating Geoscience Students' Spatial Thinking Skills in a Multi-Institutional Classroom Study: Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 62, n. 1, pp JGE Paper of the Year. Ormand, Carol J., Thomas F. Shipley, Basil Tikoff, Barbara Dutrow, Laurel Goodwin, Thomas A. Hickson, Kinnari Atit, Kristin Michod Gagnier, and Ilyse Resnick (2017). The Spatial Thinking Workbook: A Research-Validated Spatial Skills Curriculum for Geology Majors. Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 65, n. 4, pp Resnick, I., Davatzes, A., Newcombe, N. S., & Shipley, T. F. (2017). Using analogy to learn about phenomena at scales outside of human perception. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2:21, Sinton, D.S., Bednarz, S., Gersmehl, P., Kolvoord, R. and Uttal, D. (2013). The People’s Guide to Spatial Thinking: National Council for Geographic Education. 81 pp. Sorby, S. (2009). Educational Research in Developing 3-D Spatial Skills for Engineering Students: International Journal of Science Education, v. 31, n. 3, pp Sorby, S., Casey, B., Veurink, N., & Dulaney, A. (2013). The role of spatial training in improving spatial and calculus performance in engineering students. Learning and Individual Differences, 26, Uttal, D.H., Meadow, N.G., Tipton, E., Hand, L.L., Warren, C., and Newcombe, N.S The malleability of spatial skills: A meta-analysis of training studies. Psychological Bulletin, 139: Vandenberg, S.G., and Kuse, A.R. (1978). Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47, 599 – 604. Wai, J., Lubinski, D., & Benbow, C. P. (2009). Spatial ability for STEM domains: Aligning over 50 years of cumulative psychological knowledge solidifies its importance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(4), 817.