Spatial skills are important for student success in STEM disciplines at the K-12 educational level. Teachers' spatial skills and feelings about completing spatial tasks influence their teaching as well as their students' spatial learning. However, the relation between teachers' spatial skills and their spatial anxiety is not well understood. Here we investigated if teachers' spatial skills influence two kinds of small-scale spatial anxiety: (a) anxiety for tasks involving visual imagery and (b) anxiety for tasks involving mental manipulations. In addition, we investigated if teachers' spatial skills in conjunction with their small-scale spatial anxiety influence the integration of spatial practices, such as gestures and diagrams, into their teaching. Eighty-two K-12 teachers completed two subscales of small-scale spatial anxiety, a measure of spatial skills, and a teaching activities questionnaire. Results indicate that teachers' spatial skills are negatively associated with their spatial anxiety for mental manipulation tasks, and positively associated with their use of spatial practices. These findings highlight the need to account for teachers' spatial skills when considering how to improve students' spatial learning. Efforts to improve students' educational outcomes have often focused on improving their performance in science,

Spatial skills are critical for student success in K-12 STEM education. Teachers’ spatial skills and feelings about completing spatial tasks influence students’ spatial and STEM learning at both the primary and secondary levels. However, whether spatial skills and spatial anxiety differ or not between these two teacher levels is unknown. Additionally, the relations between teachers’ spatial skills, spatial anxiety, and their use of spatial pedagogical practices in remote learning settings is unknown. Here, we investigated if spatial skills and spatial anxiety differ between teachers working at primary versus secondary levels, and examined the relations between their spatial skills and spatial anxiety while accounting for additional influential factors—general reasoning ability and general anxiety. Lastly, we investigated how teachers’ spatial skills in conjunction with their spatial anxiety relate to their use of spatial teaching practices for online instruction. Sixty-two K-12 teachers completed measures of spatial skills, spatial anxiety, general anxiety, general reasoning, and a teaching activities questionnaire. Results indicate that spatial skills and spatial anxiety may not vary between teachers working at primary versus secondary levels, but that higher spatial skills in teachers are associated with lower spatial anxiety for mental manipulation tasks. Additionally, teachers with weaker spatial skills and lower mental manipulation anxiety reported more frequently using spatial teaching practices when teaching remotely due to COVID-19. These findings may have broad implications for teacher professional development with regards to developing students’ spatial skills during remote learning.