When engineers and architects tackle complex spatial problems, does all the action take place inside their heads? Not at all, write a team of learning scientists from Northwestern University. Such experts “don’t solve these problems just by manipulating mental models."
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"They solve them through the coordinated manipulation of both internal and external representations”—like sketches, models, and even hand gestures. But the instruction we offer students fails to develop the outside-the-brain thinking skills used by real-world experts.
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“Traditional school mathematics privileges analytic approaches (i.e., formulas and calculations) over spatial ones (i.e., graphs, models, and diagrams)," the Northwestern researchers note in a recent paper.
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Such traditional approaches also evaluate students’ skills "in ways that deprive them of the very tools (e.g., CAD software, coordinate grids) and collaborative structures (e.g., talking and gesturing through spatial ideas)" that would help them learn to think like experts. 4/7
Their solution: incorporate "making activities" into the teaching of math and science. By their very nature, such hands-on projects promote the use of the body, the use of materials in the physical environment, and the use of social supports for thinking and learning.
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"Our analyses show that during making activities, students engaged in frequent and diverse spatial reasoning with a variety of social and material resources," the researchers write of their study, which involved 5th- and 6th-grade students.
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Spatial experts like engineers and architects don't limit themselves to "brainbound" thinking. Why should we expect our students to do so?
Here's the paper, by Kay E. Ramey, Reed Stevens, and David H. Uttal: bit.ly/3rRDf2p
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Here's the paper, by Kay E. Ramey, Reed Stevens, and David H. Uttal: bit.ly/3rRDf2p
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