Constructing and storytelling: accommodating different play orientations in learning spatial thinking

Spatial ability is malleable and belongs in the preschool. For preschoolers, many analytical activities with one correct answer such as tangram have been developed. Less is known about employing open-ended design assignments to creatively practice spatial thinking. Little attention has been paid to the mutual qualitative differences between...

Thinking Spatially About Data: A Developing Framework to Understand Children’s Spatial Reasoning in Data Physicalization

Encoding intangible data variables with visual, spatial, and physical properties demands a high level of spatial reasoning. The ability to reason spatially is widely deemed critical to science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) learning. While much research has explored the relationship between learning with...

Cognitive and embodied mapping of data: an examination of children’s spatial thinking in data physicalization

Understanding and effectively using visual representations is important to learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Various techniques to visualize information, such as two- and three-dimensional graphs, diagrams, and models, not only expand our capacity to work with different types of information but also actively...