Investigating the foundations of spatial thinking in meteorology

McNeal, Peggy; Ellis, Todd; Petcovic, Heather L.

doi:10.1080/10899995.2018.1483119

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…First, students who made greater gains in their PT skill during ThinkSpace were more likely to make greater improvements in their conceptual understanding of lunar phases and seasons. This finding may suggest that improvement in PT skill during the ThinkSpace curricula has the potential to influence students' future conceptual learning gains in areas such as geology, meteorology, and geography (Epler‐Ruths et al, 2020; Liben & Downs, 1993; McNeal et al, 2018). Second, this adds to our understanding that middle school students can improve their spatial skills without separate, generic training in those skills, outside of the context of the discipline (Newcombe, 2016, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Epler‐Ruths et al (2020) found a positive relationship between middle school students' use of PT and what students notice while learning plate tectonics. And, McNeal et al (2018) found that meteorologists self‐report the use of PT skill when interpreting meteorological charts and images. Thus, our investigation into how students improve their PT skill has the potential to contribute to our understanding of how students learn across other STEM domains as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning to think spatially through curricula that embed spatial training

et al. 2022

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Strong spatial skills are foundational in predicting students' performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Decades of research have considered the relationship between thinking spatially and how scientists reason and solve problems. However, few studies have examined the factors that influence improvement in students' spatial thinking during their school science curricula. The present study investigates the ThinkSpace curricula—two middle school astronomy units designed to support students' ability to apply the spatial skill of perspective‐taking (PT) while learning to explain lunar phases (3 days) and the seasons (8 days). U.S. students in 6th and 8th grades (N = 877) across four districts participated in the study, completing assessments before and after the ThinkSpace curricula, along with an additional group of students in 6th and 7th grades (N = 172) who participated as a spatial control group. Data collection included multiple‐choice content assessments, PT skill assessments, and interviews (from a sub‐sample of 96 students), before and after instruction. After participating in ThinkSpace curricula, students demonstrated improved spatial thinking within the domain of astronomy, as measured by improved written content assessments, increased application of PT during conceptual interviews, and a general measurement of PT skill. Higher initial PT skill and higher gain in PT skill predicted greater improvement in students' astronomy understanding, even when accounting for their initial content knowledge. Although ThinkSpace students in all demographic groups improved PT skill post‐instruction, 8th graders (who were in districts with lower SES), and females were predicted to have smaller gains in their PT skill than the 6th graders (who were in districts with higher SES) and male students. These findings suggest that middle school students' spatial thinking in science can be improved during their middle school science curricula, but questions remain concerning how to reduce spatial‐learning gaps that are associated with gender and possibly SES.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to think spatially through curricula that embed spatial training

et al. 2022

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“…The participants in question, described fully by , were primarily White women. In these studies, the variables of interest were weather salience; systemizing, which represents an analytical cognitive style linked previously to meteorological cognition (Bolton, Blumberg et al, 2020;McNeal et al, 2018;McNeal, Petcovic, Bals-Elsholz et al, 2019;McNeal, Petcovic, LaDue et al, 2019); awareness for weather-warning products (Allan et al, 2017); storm-preparation self-efficacy beliefs (Stewart, 2015); storm-safety protective actions (Bolton, Haynie et al, 2022;Krause et al, 2017); interestand deprivation-associated curiosity (Litman & Jimerson, 2004;Lowenstein, 1994;Lowenstein et al, 1992); trait openness (McCrae & Costa, 2008); and interest in learning broad science (Weible & Zimmerman, 2016). For our reanalysis, we selected the following items: "I am curious about why the weather changes; "I feel drawn to learning about weather;" "Weather easily captures my attention;" "I like to search for answers to questions about weather.…”

Section: The Present Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

A Preliminary Report on the Measurement of a “Global” Weather Curiosity: The Brief Epistemic Weather Curiosity Questionnaire (EWCQ-B) and Implications for the Measurement of Weather Curiosity

Bolton¹,

Ault²

2022

Preprint

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Here, we describe archival data analysis from a recent paper (Bolton et al., 2022) on the development of a self-report measure of epistemic, or information-based, weather curiosity (the Epistemic Weather Curiosity Questionnaire, or EWCQ). We find that the 4-item, “global” version of the scale presented here (the EWCQ-B) functions essentially as well as the 11-item version. In a more economical package which could serve to reduce participant burden in large studies and which functions without the need to consider lived experiences of weather events and learning contexts, the EWCQ-B has good convergent validity with measures of weather salience, which is the significance of, and attention paid to, weather; systemizing, an analytical cognitive style; weather-warning awareness; storm-preparation self-efficacy beliefs; interest- and deprivation-based curiosity; trait openness; and curiosity to learn science. Implications for the measurement of epistemic weather curiosity are discussed.

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“…In an attempt to stay true to language used in other sources and avoid unintended characterizations of individuals' capability or potential to perform, we will continue with use of the word "factors" to refer to discrete aspects of human intelligence. identify which spatial skills meteorologists report using in their work (McNeal et al 2018). The results suggested disembedding as worthy of investigation; 72% of the meteorologists in the sample (N = 93) reported using disembedding while interacting with nine meteorological charts and images.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Identifying Significant Cognitive Factors for Practicing and Learning Meteorology

McNeal

Petcovic

LaDue

et al. 2019

J. Operational Meteor.

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Understanding which cognitive factors facilitate meteorology skills is important for meteorology training and education. This study investigated aspects of cognition important to successful completion of meteorology tasks typically provided to student meteorologists. With a sample of 81 participants—spanning the range of experience from undergraduate students to professional meteorologists—we administered two spatial thinking tests, a visuospatial working memory test, a concept inventory, and an experience questionnaire. We compared the resulting scores to performance on a series of novice-level meteorology tasks. An analysis of the data suggests that meteorology knowledge along with disembedding skill (the ability to observe and recognize patterns among nonessential information) positively predicts performance on the meteorological tasks. The relationship among meteorology knowledge, disembedding skill, and performance on the meteorology tasks indicates that disembedding is an important predictor of success at both low and high levels of meteorology knowledge. Thus, our results suggest that individuals with heightened ability to identify patterns embedded in distracting background displays may be at an advantage for completing meteorology tasks of the type that we provided.

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Investigating the foundations of spatial thinking in meteorology

Cited by 8 publications

References 45 publications

Learning to think spatially through curricula that embed spatial training

Learning to think spatially through curricula that embed spatial training

A Preliminary Report on the Measurement of a “Global” Weather Curiosity: The Brief Epistemic Weather Curiosity Questionnaire (EWCQ-B) and Implications for the Measurement of Weather Curiosity

Identifying Significant Cognitive Factors for Practicing and Learning Meteorology

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