Spatial cognition as a gateway to maths and science learning

CEN Associate, Professor Emily Farran, is the Developmental Psychology lead in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey, and director of the Cognition, Genes and Developmental Variability lab (CoGDeV). One of her particular research interests is spatial cognition. In this blog, she introduces the concept and goes on to give heaps of useful pointers for parents and teachers on how to cultivate this foundational skill.cen-blog-emily-501-kb

Spatial ability involves being aware of the location and dimensions of objects and their relationships to one another. It is core to everyday living (e.g., giving directions, or packing a suitcase). Research from my group and others has shown that it is also a strong predictor of a person’s mathematics and science abilities – those who perform well on spatial tasks show strong science and mathematical abilities. Despite the everyday importance of spatial ability, spatial thinking is given little emphasis within the National Curriculum, particularly when compared to the importance placed on literacy skills. However, there are plenty of ways in which parents and teachers can help their children to think spatially. Children who learn to think spatially will reap the benefits in their mathematics and science learning.

Spatial thinking in the classroom

Understanding science and mathematics depends heavily on being able to use, understand and co-ordinate models, read diagrams, rearrange formulae and interpret representations at different scales. Mathematics requires an understanding of shape, symmetry and numerical relationships, all of which require spatial skills, whilst the core problem solving and interpretation skills that are drawn upon in science require visualization, a key spatial skill.

Top tips for parents

Enlighten your child to the spatial aspects of the world by introducing spatial activities during your child’s normal day that will support and encourage their spatial thinking.

  • Help them to order their teddies or toys by size and refer to the toys using size words such as small, medium and large. You can also use hand gestures to teddy-bears-different-sizes-for-emily-blogdemonstrate the difference between small, medium and large. Children will enjoy imitating your gestures during the game. Why? Gesture uses space to supplement the information provided by words. This helps children to learn new spatial words.
  • Books like “Zoom” and many of the “Twirlywoos” books are good for introducing spatial concepts and spatial language to children. Aim to use spatial words such as “in”, “on”, “out”, “between”, “smaller” and “bigger” when discussing the pictures in books with your child. Children love talking about the pictures in books – they will enjoy getting involved in the story telling. Why? Children who hear more spatial language as toddlers have stronger spatial skills when they start school. In turn, stronger spatial language associates with better STEM performance.
  • Point out to your child that they might be able to work out how to fit a jig-saw piece by imagining it rotating in their head. This is harder than trial and error techniques, but children will be delighted with this new skill! Why? This encourages visualisation, which is key to success in science and maths.
  • Spatial thinking does not always have to be formally taught. Block play and jigsaws, as well as computer games like Tetris, encourage the development of spatial ability. Why? These sorts of toys and games, bolster skills such as understanding part/whole relationships, symmetry and measurement.

Top tips for teachers

Because spatial thinking isn’t a recognised part of the curriculum, teachers need to be able to identify opportunities when they can integrate it into their teaching.

  • Terms like “between”, “through” and “separate” are difficult concepts within the primary school years, and the learning of these words can be embedded within mathematics and science teaching. Why? Children with stronger spatial language demonstrate stronger science and maths performance.
  • Equally, teachers can introduce more sophisticated terms such as “slope” or “parallel”, and support their acquisition with gesture to enable children to visualise the concept. Why? Gesture provides an additional representation of the concept. When teachers use gesture, children show a learning benefit over and above teaching using speech alone.
  • Teachers can point out to children when visualisation would be useful (i.e., imagining a process in your head). For example, in physics, ask children to imagine what happens to the push and pull forces of magnets when a magnet is rotated. Why? Children with stronger visualisation skills have stronger science and maths performance.
  • Diagrams are useful tools, but teachers often need to teach children how to use a diagram, for example, helping children to understand the differences in scale of the elements of a life-cycle diagram. When asked to compare diagrams, children need to be taught to view them spatially aligned – it is easier to observe the similarities and differences between two molecules or two quantities if they are aligned. Why? Diagrams use space to show a set of information simultaneously. This contrasts to words, which are sequential in nature. Diagrams can make an otherwise abstract concept more concrete, such as when number lines are used to depict negative numbers.
  • Teachers can encourage children to create their own diagrams in the form of sketches. Why? Sketching helps children to actively learn a concept in a spatial manner.

You can read more about Emily and her colleagues’ work on spatial cognition in these papers – looking at the relevance of spatial skills for science and maths

You can keep up to date with her work via her lab group cogdevlab.weebly.com and by following her on twitter @EKFarran

If you would like to understand more about the basic principles of how the brain works, then why not have a peruse of our new CEN resource howthebrainworks.science

 

Teachers share their thoughts about research

We are delightemrs-megan-dixon-senior-education-consultantd to welcome Megan Dixon to our blog series in which teachers involved in research give us their take on educational neuroscience. Megan is Director of English at the Aspire Educational Trust and Director of Aspirer Research School. Welcome Megan.

What does educational neuroscience mean to you?

As teachers, I think we need to understand what happens in the brain when children learn; what accelerates and supports learning and what can hinder it. It is also interesting and helpful to understand the challenges pupils might face. Educational Neuroscience helps in a precise way, helping to explain what happens in the brain and support us to be more effective at teaching and learning. It is also helpful when we consider how to support children with special educational needs. Our multi academy trust is an inclusive community and we are passionate about supporting each and every child in our schools.

How do you keep up to date with the latest research?

I run an EEF research school, so I am immersed in the evidence – my particular interest is literacy acquisition and teaching and learning in the early years. Twitter makes it easier to find newly published studies, I often buy books (or borrow them from the library) and will email an author if I can’t get hold of a study I am interested in reading. I subscribe to a number of journals, too – although that can be expensive. I also ask, as part of my performance management, if I can attend a conference each year (rather than attending courses or other training). Last year I attended the Scientific Studies of Reading Conference in Brighton. Although I felt a little out of my depth as a teacher, rather than a researcher, I returned to work with a long list of interesting things to consider and develop with the teachers I support. I often attend teacher conferences, such as Research Ed and Research School conferences too.

Can you give some examples of how neuroscience understanding has helped you and your school?

It has helped with understanding why something works or is important and ensures we continue to make decisions for the right reasons – for example providing breakfast for children in school. This could be seen as an expensive thing to do, but the weight of the evidence, including the EEF Magic Breakfast trial and the neuroscience hit or myth describing the importance of good nutrition helped us understand the importance of maintaining this for our children.

It has also helped us develop principles and practices for teaching and learning that we use across all the schools in the trust. Our understanding of what aids learning, and what hinders – such as how we can support our pupils to learn to read, write and become competent mathematicians is underpinned by a nuanced understanding of the research literature. An example of this is how we ensure children develop their counting skills in the early years and Key Stage 1. The neuroscience suggests it is a complex and challenging task for young children to develop a conceptual, abstract understanding of a number. The child needs to be able to write the digit, recognise the digit, recognise (and count) visual patterns that represent that number – in a group, in a line, in a random collection and when each object has different colours or features. They need to understand where the number comes in relation to every other number and all the language associated with it – for example -bigger, smaller, greater than, less than, one more, one less. We systematically give the children opportunities to understand each aspect of each number, within a wide range of activities. To the untrained eye, it can look like we are simply repeating the same teaching, but without this deep conceptual level of understanding, from the very beginning, the children will find maths extremely difficult. We are always trying to learn more and be more effective in how we teach and adjusting our practices to support each and every child.

How do you get teachers and students involved?

As a Research School, and Teaching School we host a range of opportunities from newsletters to longer CPD programmes to short seminars and information twilights. We often ask researchers to come and share their work with us and we are actively involved in a wide number of research trials. Reading research, reflecting on it and sharing the learning outcomes have become an integral part of our school and trust community. We are always interested in new findings and working to translate them into practice. Over the past 5 years or so, my colleagues and I have worked to build a culture where research and evidence is integral to our practice – it is a habit now for us!

You can follow Megan and her colleagues on Twitter @AspirerTeaching  @AspirerRS

If you would like to understand more about the workings of the brain – what underpins the research mentioned above, do have a look at our new CEN resource How the brain works. We would love to hear what you think. Do let us know on Twitter @UoL_CEN

To eat the marshmallow or not to eat the marshmallow: impulse or choice?

This week Professor Michael Thomas discussed the famous marshmallow experiment and its recent fall from grace.  A new replication study by Watts and colleagues controlling for various social factors such as home environment and socio-economic status has put into doubt the original claims about the importance of impulse control..  But what does this really mean?

 

Professor Thomas explored the real consequences of controlling for correlated variables in statistical analysis and how this can lead to simplistic conclusions about causality.  For more on this read Payne and Sheeran‘s interesting article!

Can children with autism learn more about emotion from robots?

This week Alria Williams from the Centre for Research in Autism and Education at the UCL Institute Of Education presented recent work from the DE-ENIGMA project at the CEN seminar.

The DE-ENIGMA project is a large European project on robotics and autism, funded by Horizon 2020. The project consists of many teams, including UCL, working together to develop activities to teach autistic children about emotions, using a humanoid robot, Zeno pictured below.

zeno

The project was based on the premise that many people with autism have difficulty using and understanding verbal and non-verbal language.  This may make it more difficult to understand others and interact with them.  On the other hand, robots may be easier to comprehend as they are more predictable systems. Previous research suggests that children with autism may perceive a humanoid robot as being less complicated, less threatening, and therefore be more comfortable to communicate with than humans.

Over the past year, the UCL team have conducted studies with children to test the suitability of their learning activities. Yesterday’s talk outlined the numerous studies they have engaged in and discussed the activity design issues that they encountered. During the summer, the DE-ENIGMA team conducted design critique interviews with teachers and presented the key insights and feedback from teachers on suggested ways they could adapt their activity designs to meet the needs of autistic children in the research.

Find out more at the DE-ENIGMA website!

 

How the brain works

Professor Michael Thomas and the CEN team have produced a new free resource which aims to give an overview of the workings of the brain. No small feat in just a few thousand words. The resource is in the form of the website which you can peruse right here.

Prof Thomas gives you a little taster of what’s in store below

 

A head teacher’s perspective on why psychology and neuroscience research is more important than ever

This week we enjoyed a highly thought-provoking seminar from Julia Harrington, Head of Queen Anne’s school in Caversham and founder of BrainCanDo. BrainCanDo is committed to the application of psychology and neuroscience research to improve educational and emotional outcomes for children. You can see a short summary video of Julia’s talk here:

Do check out BrainCanDo for lots of information about their research projects. You can also find lots more information including links to research papers in this document braincando-research-output

Does input from multiple senses help children learn?

In yesterday’s seminar, Dr Natasha Kirkham presented her recent research on multimodal learning in primary school children. She writes:

“It is a well-receivednatasha-kirkham idea throughout the world of primary and secondary education that the more information contained in a learning situation, the easier the learning.  For example, instead of using rote repetition learning of the times tables, modern teaching can include songs, videos and even dances that support the maths content.  This has been referred to as “multimodal learning,” and it has been used as the basis for educational programs in literacy and numeracy, dealing with both typically and atypically developing children. Multimodal learning covers a lot of ground, from specific teaching technologies (smart boards) to general teaching philosophies (teaching content using different modalities at the same time). However, as intuitive as this idea seems, there has been very little research into whether multimodal learning is of any real benefit in education. In fact, our findings suggest that children’s age and the type of modalities being used (visual, auditory, touch)  must be taken into consideration. Evidence for the usefulness of multimodal cues on learning is strongest in young children (e.g. 5 to 6 years), and during incidental learning contexts. Other contexts suggest that as you get older, multiple cues are not only less useful, but can be detrimental.”

You can read more about Natasha and her team’s work on incidental learning  (ie learning which happens without specific instruction) here, here and here

You can also follow Natasha on Twitter @NatashaKirkham

For a fun play-along video which shows what our brains do when information from different senses conflict, have a look here at the McGurk effect and for a remarkable example of innovation in the face of an absent sense, enjoy this Blind baseball

Using research in the classroom: executive function and maths

This week we are very pleased to welcome two researchers – Camilla Gilmore from Loughborough and Lucy Cragg from Nottingham University to talk about their research and what it might mean for educators.

What is the camilla-gilmorelucy_craggfocus of your research? 

The focus of our research is understanding which general thinking skills are involved in different aspects of learning and doing maths. Our first project (SUM) had three main aims: The first was to discover how executive function skills (e.g. manipulating information in memory, flexible thinking, ignoring distractions) are involved in knowing maths facts, applying maths procedures and understanding maths concepts. The second was to distinguish between the skills needed for learning new mathematical material and those needed for performing already‐learned mathematical operations. Finally, we explored how the role of executive function skills might change as children grow older and become more proficient in maths.

What led you to this area of research? 

We shared an office while doing our PhDs on mathematical cognition (Camilla) and executive function development (Lucy). At the time, people doing research on the role of executive function skills in mathematics were either experts in mathematical cognition or executive function, but not both. We decided it would be a good idea to join forces and combine our expertise to better understand the complex interactions between these two sets of skills.

Could you summarise your findings?

Some of the main findings from our work are:

1. Different combinations of executive function skills are important for different components of maths. For example, holding and manipulating information in mind (working memory) and ignoring distractions are more important for learning maths facts and procedures than they are for conceptual understanding.

2. While children’s understanding of mathematics develops dramatically through primary and secondary school, they are drawing on the same set of underlying executive function skills from KS2 right through to young adulthood.

3. In children who have just started school, mathematical and executive function skills interact.

4. Children with good procedural skills have better overall mathematics achievement if they also have good conceptual understanding and working memory.

5. Young children with similar levels of overall mathematical achievement can show very different patterns of strengths and weaknesses across the component skills.

What do you think this means for teachers in the classroom?

If a child is having difficulties with maths, it makes sense to look at their strengths and weaknesses in learning maths facts, carrying out procedures and understanding concepts, rather than focusing on their overall performance. It might also be helpful to consider the underlying skills, such as how good they are at storing and manipulating information in mind, ignoring distractions and thinking flexibly. Maths is a complex subject and there are many reasons why children might struggle; sometimes it’s related to general thinking skills, rather than maths-specific skills.

If you could give one tip to teachers based on your work, what would it be?

You might want to consider how the activities you use in the classroom challenge children’s executive function skills, such as the amount of information they need to hold in mind. Sometimes this might be a good thing, but at other times you might want to reduce these demands, by using concrete manipulatives such as hundred squares or number lines for example, so that children have the cognitive resources to focus on a new idea that is being introduced.

 

Increased perceptual capacity in autism – a double-edged sword

In this week’s seminar, Dr Anna Remington talked about her research showing that autistic children and adults can take in more information than their non-autistic counterparts. This can confer distinct advantages in certain processing tasks, but there is also the risk of overload.

You can read more about Anna’s work – and test your own perceptual abilities – in a piece she wrote in The Conversation and in a paper about Deutsche Bank’s internship programme for autistic graduates. If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow Anna @annaremington and CRAE (the Centre for Research into Autism and Education) @CRAE_IoE