Welcome and thanks for visiting/viewing this video. I hope you enjoy it. This video outlines research that I have been conducting for more than two decades, primarily with university-aged students, but more recently with 7th graders. I am currently interested in ensuring that all children (including girls and those from low SES groups) have well-developed spatial skills for success in STEM fields. I have the following questions about how to go about doing this. If anyone has any ideas about this, please chime in.

1) What is the best way to inspire/encourage teachers/school administrators/policy makers to consider implementing spatial skills in K-12 classrooms?

2) How do we go about working with teachers who themselves may have poor spatial skills or poor efficacy for spatial activities?

3) What are the best venues for getting the word out about the benefits of spatial skills intervention?

4) Is there anything else about this topic that you think I should know?

Thanks again for watching this video and I hope you have a productive time watching videos at this STEM for All showcase!

Understanding the relationship between 3-d objects, visual representations and math is a critical skill for all learners so it is commendable that you're bringing this project to middle schoolers.  The video shows how students transform a 3-D object into a 2-D representation, but I'm interested in how they might make connections from there to mathematics in particular. Could you say a little bit more about that?

You've presented very interesting information, thanks for sharing!  Similar to your research, we are interested in trying to maintain interest in STEM, particularly femaies (at the middle school level).  Have you found a correlation between helping females with visualizing three dimensions and maintaining or increasing their interest in STEM and STEM-related careers?

Such an important topic.  I teach a structural biology course at the undergraduate level and I have found that students who have a hard time with the material are often those with less developed spacial understanding. Any insights into course activities that appear to have the biggest impact on improving spacial reasoning skills

As an earlier comment alluded to, understanding the relationship between 3D objects and visual representations is very important in lots of STEM areas. From the video, it sounds like you have developed a rich progression of activities to help students develop these skills. As a chemist, I would be very interested in learning more about how you have structured that progression.

Thanks for sharing your work! As an engineering educator, I would be interested in learning more about the correlation between spatial skills and STEM interest and/or success.

As a high school geometry teacher and registered architect, this project speaks directly to a great passion of mine. It is interesting that you cite Wai, Lubinski and Benbow's longitudinal study about the impact of spatial skills. What I have found troubling since switching careers and entering the field of education is what I perceive to be the diminishing of spatial skills, in both boys and girls, generationally. Vast changes to early childhood experiences in and out of the classroom, the design of toys, the rise of screen time, and the demise of such classes as wood shop and sewing, leave many students with few robust 3-D experiences, contributing to weaker spatial visualization skills. You reference your own research now spans 20 years, and I am curious to hear about your own perception of if/how this issue has evolved during that time.

We have not seen a real decrease over the years, but we think it is due to the rising use of 3-D computer games that has somewhat offset the lessening of hands-on activities. We do a lot of hand sketching in our spatial skills course and we think that this is really where the skill development takes place. One problem I have is that many educators and funders want something sexier--they want an app for that. I guess we keep fighting the good fight.

Hi Sheryl,

Thank you for your work in this field! What an amazingly direct way to confront this particular disparity in educational background. The success rates for women sound amazing; and we really need them, and everyone, in STEM fields!!

In response to your questions about working with teachers and getting administrators on board; in my research with the Making Sense of SCIENCE team (from WestEd), I've seen a lot of teacher training succeed well when the teachers themselves get to personally experience the learning they will be bringing to their students. For teachers who are uncomfortable with science (or in your case, 3D modeling/imagining), being presented with adult-level learning challenges using the same curriculum or teaching methods they will later use simultaneously gets them excited about learning/teaching others while teaching them the skills directly. (A video on one current project I've been involved with is featured here: https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentati... "Next Generation Science for Next Generation Kids." It shows some of the active PD and how it interfaces with classroom teaching.)

One thing you don't see in the video I mention above is the work MSS did with administrators during this project. Some administrators (school principals and district administrators) were able to actually participate in the PD sessions, which infected them with the same passion to bring this type of learning into their schools. Another technique which we're analyzing now was to train and support groups of "science leaders" from schools and surrounding communities, who worked together to overcome obstacles to science teaching in the classroom. Some of this work involved communicating with administrators to grow support for these classroom practices.

Thanks again for your work!

Owen--Thanks for your kind words and your insights. We have done PD before with teachers where we help them learn/experience the curriculum they will be teaching. Many are enthusiastic, but some are not. I suspect the ones who are not enthusiastic have weak spatial skills themselves and so they are reluctant to teach something they are not comfortable with. I think for us, too, a problem is the compressed nature of our PD sessions. I think they would be better if they were for an extended period of time, but don't quite know how to manage that logistically. Still working on things. I may be trying a hybrid model in the future to see if a combination of in-person/online will work better for the PD piece of this. I hadn't thought about including administrators in the PD. That's a good idea. I will have to try to figure out how to do that for future projects. Thanks again.

Dr. Sorby, 

Which text did you use for the middle school students? I manage a summer engineering camp and have been looking for a text for the one week mini- camp. I would like a paperback book that they can continue at home after the camp is over. Thanks for the video. 

Dr. Sorby, 

Thank you. I found the texts and the online course for STEM students. I hope to practice myself first and then look at adopting one of the texts this summer as a trial.  Thanks for the video and the work toward supporting student development. Take care.