A recent special issue in the journal Gifted Child Today brought together experts to address the importance of spatial thinking in both research and practice. Here we get the perspectives of these experts on spatial skills across four main areas: What is spatial thinking and why does it matter? Why is it important to adequately measure spatial skills? Why does spatial reasoning matter for policy and practice? and Why do spatial skills matter for helping talented kids?
What is spatial thinking and why does it matter?
Danielle Rothschild, Kiley McKee, and David Uttal: Imagine that you are moving across the country and are packing all your belongings in a single truck. Each item varies wildly in both shape and size. To optimize the space that you have, you think about placement of each suitcase, piece of furniture and assorted lamps and how each item will fit together. This mental calculation of how objects fit together in a space is an example of spatial thinking. Spatial thinking broadly involves visualizing the locations of shapes and objects, and how they move and relate to each other (Newcombe, 2010). Spatial thinking is important for a variety of other everyday tasks as well, such as navigating and using a map, assembling furniture, completing a puzzle, or even thinking about how you want to decorate a space.
Spatial thinking is an area of intelligence that many are not aware of, which is distinct from verbal and quantitative intelligence (Atit et al., 2021; Shea et al., 2001). Additionally, spatial skills are often not highlighted in school curricula (Lakin et al., 2024). Decades of research have shown that spatial ability is essential for the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Students with higher spatial ability tend to perform better in STEM fields and are more likely to go on to pursue careers in these fields (Uttal & Cohen, 2012; Wai et al., 2009). This association between STEM and spatial thinking is particularly true for novice STEM learners (Uttal & Cohen, 2012). For example, a chemistry teacher can rely on their years of expertise when discussing the structure of a water molecule, but a high school student taking their first chemistry class will likely have to heavily rely on their own spatial visualization capabilities to picture and understand the molecule and how the hydrogen and oxygen atoms interact with each other. The good news is that research has also shown that spatial skills are malleable, meaning they can be trained and improved (Uttal et al., 2013). Increasing student’s spatial skills, particularly young student’s spatial skills, can open doors to a variety of different STEM-related fields.
Why is it important to adequately measure spatial skills?
Joni Lakin: Sometimes it’s okay to recognize talent based on intuition or informal observation. Parents and family members often notice the strengths that their children demonstrate as they build complex designs from blocks, speak precociously to others, or demonstrate leadership on their sports team. In schools and formal education spaces, it’s harder to recognize talents because there are more students to focus on, more types of talents that may be demonstrated, and cultural differences that may mask talents to an observer from another culture. With spatial reasoning, recognizing talent is even more complex because it is not widely discussed or recognized, and the observers may not have that type of strength or noticed that talent area before.
In these cases, systematic and evidence-based talent identification is essential. Assessments provide more consistent and actionable information about students’ talents that can then inform how we shape these skills in students either through differentiation of instruction, special programs, or opportunities for independent projects.
Assessment doesn’t have to be a multiple-choice test. For spatial thinking, structured observations may work, such as assigning students to design 3D models and observing the variations in their designs. However, any assessment needs to consider the role of experience in performance. Spatial training is often self-selected, such as the types of video games a child prefers or how much time they spend building with blocks. Therefore, some children may not demonstrate a particular strength on an assessment due to lack of experience with the tasks rather than lack of ability. This is why it’s so important to provide exposure to spatial thinking to all students as well as to use evidence-based assessments to recognize spatial talents in schools.
Why does spatial reasoning matter for policy and practice?
Emily K. Farran: One of the top five most in-demand soft skills for technology employers is problem solving. Could training children to use spatial thinking reap long-term gains in problem solving skills and address the STEM workforce shortage? Drawing on my research, one promising avenue for increasing STEM competence is to focus on spatial training for young children. Children who learn to think spatially will reap the benefits in their STEM learning and problem solving. Yet many government policies designed to target STEM skills shortages focus on adolescents and young adults, ignoring the known benefits of targeting the early years.
What do I mean by spatial reasoning? Spatial reasoning is the ability to understand spatial relationships, and the spatial properties of objects such as their size and location, as well as the ability to visualise objects and problems in the mind. We use spatial reasoning everyday—you used it to navigate to where you are now, and to pack your bag this morning. Children are using it all the time when they hide objects in the sand, take their position on the carpet and during block play.
For mathematics specifically, there is compelling evidence that children with good spatial reasoning skills are also better at number and maths, and that spatial training leads not only to improved spatial reasoning, but to improved mathematics competence. For example, recent research has shown that teaching children to think spatially can increase their achievement in mathematics by the equivalent of half the annual gain in mathematics. Spatial training is particularly helpful in closing attainment gaps. This is likely because children from disadvantaged backgrounds typically have lower spatial skills and lower spatial language—they have the biggest room for growth. Including spatial reasoning in the curriculum has the potential to reinvigorate the way we teach children. What’s more—and particularly important for maths’ sometimes dull image—spatial activities are enjoyable and can improve attitudes to maths.
With the exception of some countries (e.g., Australia, parts of Canada, Finland), the school curriculum makes little reference to spatial reasoning. This limits practitioners’ freedom to include spatial activities in their teaching and curbs opportunities for professional learning on the importance of spatial thinking. Our work with nursery practitioners and early years teachers confirms that, due to this lack of emphasis, practitioners have low confidence in what spatial reasoning is and have limited training or subject knowledge in spatial thinking. We need curriculum reform, to include more explicit reference to spatial thinking in mathematics curriculum, with associated goals. For example, in England, I recommend bringing back the early learning goal of shape, space and measure. Furthermore, aligned with the curriculum, practitioners need professional development to be confident in teaching children to think and work spatially.
Even if curricula change, the question remains as to how practitioners can embed spatial reasoning into educational practice. It is widely recognized that the translation of research to practice is challenging in education. Research papers are not always accessible to practitioners, and practitioners do not always have the time to reflect on research findings. Similarly, researchers face difficulties in translating lab-based training to the classroom whilst maintaining effectiveness. Bi-directional communication between researchers and practitioners is needed to maximise the impact and utility of research findings for practical use in the classroom. Contributing to this conversation, we have produced the Spatial Reasoning Toolkit (SRT). The SRT is a set of resources for practitioners with the goal of ensuring that practitioners are equipped to spatialise their curricula, and that children are taught spatial abilities as a route to improving their mathematical skills. The SRT includes videos, keyrings, book lists, posters, a summary of research evidence and a developmental trajectory of spatial abilities. To-date there have been over 35,000 views of the SRT resources online and practitioners rate the SRT as very useful. Teachers say: “I have found your trajectories really specific and easy to use.” and “I think [my pupils are] coming out with better spatial reasoning than [the cohort] two years ago.” The SRT is just one effort to remove barriers to embedding spatial thinking into curricula. We hope that this is the beginning of a long and fruitful dialogue between researchers, policymakers and practitioners on the importance of spatial thinking.
Why do spatial skills matter for helping talented kids?
Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Susan Corwith: Spatial thinking frequently shows up in daily life, is an asset to problem solving, and is important to many fields—including surgery, dentistry, physics, geology, and engineering—as documented by researchers. Schools, however, focus primarily on developing mathematical reasoning skills and verbal skills important for writing, reading, and communicating effectively.
While schools regularly assess skills in verbal and quantitative areas, they do not regularly assess spatial skills or spatial reasoning. This is unfortunate because there are many students with spatial reasoning strengths who do not have commensurate verbal or math reasoning strengths. Paying more deliberate attention to students’ spatial ability can have a significant impact on individual talent development and help society benefit from more students’ creativity and innovation. Because spatial reasoning is less correlated with family income than math and verbal reasoning, identifying spatial talent offers the opportunity to find talented children from low-income backgrounds.
The good news is that research also demonstrates that spatial skills are malleable and can be developed with inexpensive and easy to implement activities. By infusing opportunities such as block play and construction activities, design and maker activities, more use of graphs and visuals, or the use of spatial language, teachers can both support the development of basic spatial skills and highlight spatial strengths as students demonstrate them. Spatial ability can be developed through informal play and with intention in many types of courses as well (e.g., mathematics, architecture, engineering).
