The Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC) brings together scientists and educators from Temple University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Chicago Public Schools to pursue the overarching goal of understanding spatial learning and using this knowledge to develop programs and technologies that will transform educational practice and support the capability of all children and adolescents to develop the skills required to compete in a global economy. The consortium of researchers includes individuals from cognitive science, psychology, computer science, education, and neuroscience, as well as practicing geoscientists and engineers who are particularly interested in spatial thinking in their fields, and teachers in the Chicago Public Schools.
Spatial thinking is a key theoretical issue in cognitive science, as well as a critically important aspect of problem solving in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Spatial intelligence allows us to encode and transform information about objects and their location, and thus to find our way in the world and perform technical activities such as tool making. It also provides the foundation for a wide range of reasoning and communication skills, as varied as the design of buildings, the solution of mathematics problems, and the use of spatial metaphor in mental models of complex domains. Progress and performance in various STEM disciplines thus requires attention to improving people's ability to reason about spatial configurations and their properties. More generally, an informed citizen in the 21st century must be fluent at processing spatial abstractions including graphs, diagrams, and other visualizations. The SILC research activities are aimed to provide knowledge that can increase levels of spatial functioning, as well as reduce gender and socio-economic differences in spatial functioning.
The broader impacts of SILC include the production of a new sketch understanding system (to be called CogSketch) that can support new modes of teaching, the production of a new assessment battery to assess spatial skills as they develop in preschool and elementary school, the design of curricular enhancements to enrich spatial content in teaching children from 3 to 10 years of age, and the development of more powerful methods for teaching geoscience and engineering that may be broadly applicable to other STEM disciplines. SILC also includes cross-disciplinary training opportunities that span the educational spectrum from high school students to junior scientists; outreach to pre-service and in-service teachers in the form of conferences and summer workshops; interfaces with university teaching in the STEM disciplines; hosting of scientific conferences; visiting scientist programs of international scope; and, partnerships with children's and science museums.
Spatial learning is crucial for addressing the increasing demand for a scientifically and technologically sophisticated workforce. A report from the National Academies, Learning to Think Spatially (2006), made a persuasive case for the importance of spatial thinking and its inclusion in K-12 education.www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11019#toc Spatial learning provides the foundation for a wide range of reasoning skills in STEM-based activities, from solving mathematical problems to designing new products to understanding graphical depictions of complex systems. For example, geoscientists visualize the processes that affect the formation of the Earth, and engineers anticipate how forces will affect the design of a bridge. Physical scientists also use spatial models and diagrams, such as the periodic table, to reflect systematic regularities in the physical world. SILC took up the challenge of the National Academies’ report, and showed that substantial improvement of spatial learning skills is possible and that such improvement matters to STEM success. While there was already support for these ideas when SILC began in 2006, the case has now been strengthened. A meta-analysis by Uttal, Meadow, Tipton, Hand, Alden, Warren and Newcombe (2012), showed malleability of spatial learning skills, and also generalizability and durability of spatial education and training http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/uttal/vittae/documents/meta.pdf Further, the premise of a relation to STEM achievement was supported for young children (Gunderson, Ramirez, Beilock and Levine, 2012. Gunderson et al. (2012) also discovered a possible mechanism for the predictive relationship they observed, namely that understanding the number line (a spatialization of number) mediated the link between early spatial skill and later mathematics achievement. http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Publications/Gunderson%20et%20al%20%282012%29%20-%20Dev%20Psych%20-%20online%20first.pdf SILC researchers developed a set of powerful tools for spatial learning, honing them into effective, deployable educational techniques and practices for STEM learning, including advanced technology (e.g., intelligent educational software), effective curriculum units (e.g., in elementary school mathematics), engaging activities (e.g., in children’s museums), and spatial assessment instruments (e.g., testing children’s spatial skills, testing adults’ STEM-relevant spatial skills). To achieve this end, SILC brought together researchers from multiple lines of work on spatial cognition and education and from a variety of traditional disciplines (e. g., cognitive science, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, education, STEM disciplines), integrating them to achieve new insights. SILC used spatial analogy, gesture, sketching, spatial language, maps, and diagrams to improve learning across development. Recent research has shown that these spatial processes can improve domain learning from preschool mathematics to college-level physics, chemistry and geoscience. For example, spatial analogical comparison allows preschoolers to abstract new relational patterns (Christie & Gentner, 2010). Additionally, spatial analogies improve children’s understanding of a basic engineering principle in a museum setting. http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/gentner/papers/christie&Gentner_2010.pdf By middle and high school, teaching use of graphs and diagrams becomes important, sketching can become a more formal tool, and GIS technology can be utilized. In college students, spatial experience can improve understanding concepts such as angular momentum in physics, and gesturing can improve understanding of stereoisomers in chemistry. This research has led to a set of spatial learning tools that are readily translatable to education in both formal and informal settings; see Newcombe (2010) for an overview for teachers. An advantage of these spatial learning tools is that they can be incorporated into currently existing curricula. www.temple.edu/psychology/newcombe/documents/Newcombe.pdf
