Research Colloquia: Research tools for collectivity: Tracking mathematics classes

Spatial reasoning in context: bridging cognitive and educational perspectives of spatial-mathematics relations

“…Early work in mathematics education relating to spatial reasoning was largely based on work by psychologists such as Thurstone (1938), Smith (1964), Piaget and Inhelder (1967), McGee (1979), Bishop (1980), Woolcott et al (2020), andThom et al (2021). Gutiérrez (1996) argued that although much of the published work around spatial reasoning throughout the 20th century was in psychology, visualization has always formed an intrinsic part of mathematics, and in particular geometry.…”

“…One of the key discrepancies between the fields of mathematics education research and cognitive psychology concerns the attention paid to spatial skills in geometry. Mathematics education researchers argue that geometry is inherently spatial, and without spatial skills it is near impossible to perform the transformations required for geometric problem-solving (Clements and Battista, 1992;Mulligan, 2015;Battista et al, 2018;Downton and Livy, 2021;Thom et al, 2021). In fact, some mathematics education researchers go so far as to use the terms geometric reasoning and spatial reasoning interchangeably (Gutiérrez, 1996;Downton and Livy, 2021).…”

“…When considering the growing field of spatial interventions, larger mathematics training effects have been found in spatial training studies that were closely aligned (i.e., between spatial transformation training [visualization] and geometric transformations; Hawes et al, 2023). Although there are still links between less overtly spatial elements of mathematics, content areas such as geometry provide an opportunity to integrate spatial learning into mathematics classrooms without increasing teacher load Thom et al, 2021;Harris et al, 2023;Hawes et al, 2023).…”