Abstract
Spatial reasoning — the ability to mentally visualize, transform, and recognize symbolic information — is known to predict long-term success in many educational and occupational areas, including in STEM. Despite this, spatial reasoning measures are virtually absent in K-12 tests. Thus, such strengths are not prioritized in gifted identification and talent development. Joni Lakin and Jonathan Wai discuss why spatial reasoning matters for finding and developing talent, services schools might provide for students with these strengths, and how understanding spatial reasoning can help education leaders expand access to gifted education.
Expanding gifted programs to include students with strong spatial reasoning skills can help students from a variety of backgrounds enjoy an appropriately challenging and engaging education.
Who can help but marvel at geniuses who can visualize solutions to complex problems in their minds? Albert Einstein, for example, reimagined the universe while playing the violin (Viney, 2016). And on a more everyday level, architects can imagine soaring skyscrapers and (in collaboration with engineers) translate their visions into blueprints that are used to bring those buildings to life. But are we able to see and support these particular kinds of talent in our classrooms?
In K-12 education, we have long emphasized the development of students’ general, mathematical, and verbal reasoning. However, spatial reasoning — the ability to mentally visualize (Figure 1), rotate (Figure 2), transform, represent, and recognize symbolic information (Lohman, 1996; National Research Council [NRC], 2015) — is just as critical to many kinds of academic and professional accomplishment (Carroll, 1993; Lubinski & Benbow, 2000).
A task requiring visualization skills.
A task requiring visualization skills.
For instance, spatial reasoning (also called spatial thinking, spatial ability, or spatial visualization) has been key to numerous scientific advances, such as the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA (Baenninger & Newcombe, 1989) and the epidemiological research using maps to discover the true source of cholera outbreaks (Newcombe, 2013). It is also essential to many 21st-century careers, particularly in science and engineering (Newcombe, 2010, 2017; Trickett & Trafton, 2007; Uttal & Cohen, 2012; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). Indeed, the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013) include visualization as a core Science and Engineering Practice.
In every school, one can find students who have strengths in spatial reasoning that are much stronger than their skills in general reasoning (Lakin & Wai, 2020). These students reveal themselves in a handful of specific areas, such as reading graphs and maps, understanding certain scientific concepts (such as rotating molecules), planning out detailed construction plans, and in the visual arts (Uttal & Cohen, 2012). However, nearly all K-12 standardized tests prioritize mathematical and verbal reasoning, sometimes leaving out spatial reasoning altogether. And because tests so often guide school curricula, these spatially talented students tend to have few opportunities to exhibit and develop their skills before college (where, if they study engineering and some science fields, such as organic chemistry, those skills will be foundational).
What happens to students who need to wait until college for their abilities to be fully recognized and appreciated (Wai & Worrell, 2016)? The lucky few will find educational opportunities that allow them to use and develop those skills, such as robotics clubs, vocational courses, or a science teacher who brings engineering design into the science classroom (Lubinski, 2010; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). However, many students with gifts in spatial reasoning — especially those lacking strong mathematical and verbal skills — will underachieve, largely because their strengths are neglected at school (Andersen, 2014). Indeed, students scoring in the top 5% nationally in spatial reasoning are significantly more likely than students in the top 5% in verbal or quantitative reasoning to experience lower academic engagement, more behavioral problems, and greater numbers of suspensions in high school (Lakin & Wai, 2020). In short, too many of these students leave school prematurely and never fully realize their potential (Lakin & Wai, 2020; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009).
Supporting students’ spatial reasoning
The first and perhaps most important step to helping more of these students experience academic success is to identify them, in much the same way as we identify students with other talents (e.g., Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011). While there are no commercially available measures of spatial reasoning for younger students, several groups of researchers are working to make this viable.
In a recent study based on 60 years of assessment data related to children’s spatial, mathematical, and verbal reasoning abilities, we estimated that at least 2 million of the roughly 56.6 million students now enrolled in U.S. public schools (or 4-6% of the total) are spatially talented but would not be recognized by typical academic measures (Lakin & Wai, 2020). Further, we found that Black and Latinx students, as well as students from rural and low-income backgrounds, are significantly more likely to score in the top 5% on measures of spatial reasoning than they are on measures of mathematical and verbal reasoning (Wai & Lakin, 2020). In other words, if spatial ability were part of the regular screening process for gifted and talented programs, those programs would be more diverse than they are today (Wai & Worrell, 2016). This would be particularly beneficial to children from low-income backgrounds, who are most likely to rely on the public schools for enrichment programs and extracurricular activities. (By contrast, relatively affluent families can often find and pay for such programs on their own when they recognize a need.)
A second priority is to build teachers’ awareness of spatial abilities and deepen their understanding of how to help students develop their skills (Geographical Sciences Committee, 2006; Newcombe, 2010; Swamidass & Schnittka, 2017; Uttal & Cohen, 2012). At present, spatial reasoning does not appear to be a strong suit for the teaching profession overall. For instance, students entering education programs in college tend to have particularly low average spatial scores — around 0.5 standard deviations (SD) below their verbal ability scores (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). (By contrast, engineering students tend to have spatial scores around 0.5 standard deviations greater than their verbal scores.) Many teachers, then, may find it particularly challenging even to recognize these talents in their students, much less to know how to support them (see Atit et al., 2018).
Indeed, when working with preservice and in-service K-12 teachers, we’ve found that many teachers did not even know spatial reasoning existed, and certainly did not recognize its importance, even though many of these teachers were themselves quite capable of using spatial thinking in the classroom by, for example, using sketching in science, reading graphs and maps, and creating spatial organizers such as concept maps and time lines. Indeed, modifications to the classroom such as using graphic organizers and challenging students to use spatial strategies can be valuable. For example, a student could create a multilayer time line of events for a history project or parse a difficult reading assignment using concept maps to organize the plot spatially.
One positive trend for spatially talented students is the increase in engineering content in the K-12 curriculum, particularly as part of the Next Generation Science Standards and curricula such as Project Lead the Way, which is bringing engineering out of career and technical education and into the general education curriculum. The increasing popularity of robotics through competitions and integration into early education is also a positive development. Spatially talented students will excel at visualizing a design before building, using graphical interface systems (GIS), and navigating a 3D competition space. We have preliminary evidence that spatially talented students excel at flying drones through an obstacle course. For younger students with spatial strengths, the use of “block”-based coding systems, such as Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), can be particularly useful.
Researchers from cognitive and experimental psychology backgrounds are also making efforts to translate their research into the classroom (Gagnier & Fisher, 2020; Newcombe, 2013, 2017; Sorby et al., 2013). These interventions are important because they often focus on students with spatial weaknesses and ensure that no students are left out of engineering opportunities because their spatial skills are too weak.
Expanding our conception of giftedness
With more than 2 million spatially gifted students, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and losing out on tailored, advanced instruction (Lakin & Wai, 2020), it’s clear that schools need to reconsider how they determine eligibility for programs meant to challenge and support children who have specific talents. As described elsewhere in this issue (e.g., see Robert Kim’s Under the Law column), one option is to expand the pool by reducing or removing the test score requirements for admission. For example, in New York City, reducing the weight given to the specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT), which is focused on mathematical and verbal reasoning, may help diversify the students selected into the city’s eight specialized high schools (though, note critics, this may also lower the overall academic readiness of incoming students). Another option would be to include a spatial reasoning measure to both increase the diversity of students served and broaden the range of talents served. Both approaches have merit, and which one to choose would depend upon the goal of a specific program. We would caution that, because teachers tend to have weaker spatial ability, they are unlikely to know how to recognize spatial talents if there are no assessments to highlight these skills. We believe it would be a positive step to consider spatial reasoning in the context of such decisions.
Students with spatial skills might not be the same students who thrive in the AP, IB, and other high-level courses of study that exist (Finn & Scanlan, 2019). At present, though, few schools recognize this at all, much less provide them with appropriate learning opportunities. It’s time for public education to make serious efforts to assess spatial reasoning, support teachers in learning how to teach to these strengths, and develop relevant curricula and advanced coursework, such as by introducing engineering courses, implementing early computer science education, and encouraging students’ hands-on skills through makerspaces. Large numbers of these students are waiting for the kinds of academic challenges they deserve, and that would allow them to develop their potential to make important contributions to society, well into the future (Kell et al., 2013).