What is Spatial Reasoning?
Spatial Reasoning - which we associate with spatial cognition, spatial thinking or spatial skills - involves being able to perceive and internalise spatial concepts, then reason about and manipulate them. This can include tasks like being able to extract patterns or shapes from complex or obscuring environments, imagine what a piece of paper might turn into when it is folded up, or visualise what a 3D object may look like when it is rotated or cut in half.
Why is Spatial Reasoning Important?
Research indicates a correlation between good spatial reasoning skills and success in many areas of study, including maths, computer science, physics, chemistry and engineering. Students with better spatial skills are more likely to succeed, an association which can be determined and predicted as early as high school.
Additionally, spatial skills can be trained. They have been discovered to be moderately malleable and can be improved through many different means, including spatial development courses, integrated spatial learning, construction activities and games.
Furthermore, improving spatial skills has been observed to lead to improved outcomes in STEM learning in primary school and university contexts. Therefore, it appears that considering spatial skill development should be an area of interest for those seeking to improve STEM learning outcomes across many age groups.
Who has good Spatial Reasoning Skills?
When looking at society as a whole, the people who get the best opportunities to develop spatial reasoning skills - and therefore, the people who have better spatial skills on average - are from wealthier backgrounds and are typically men. This appears to be due to the socialisation of and opportunity barriers to activities which involve (and, therefore, develop) spatial reasoning. Such activities as team sports, video games and construction toys are more likely to lead to improves spatial reasoning skills, but are often either prohibitively expensive, represented as male coded, or both.
Understanding this disparity and addressing it is important, because it is possible that individuals who don't get the opportunities to develop their spatial reasoning skills are not being able to reach their potential in STEM study, leading to unfair exclusion and higher drop-out rates.