In-FUSE-ing STEAM learning with spatial reasoning: Distributed spatial sensemaking in school-based making activities

Kay E. Ramey*, Reed Stevens, David H. Uttal

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study examines the role of spatial reasoning in learning among 5th and 6th grade students participating in a set of in-school, technology-enhanced, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) making activities. We focus our analysis on a particular type of reasoning: spatial reasoning. Prior research has shown that spatial reasoning is relevant for problem-solving, participation, and achievement in STEAM disciplines. However, the literature on spatial reasoning lacks qualitative analyses of the processes through which spatial reasoning is learned, enacted, and leads to problemsolving insights, particularly in everyday learning contexts. Spatial reasoning is also underemphasized and undervalued in our schools. And although increasingly popular, hands-on, making activities have the potential to cultivate spatial skills, spatial reasoning has been largely ignored in the literature on learning through making. Informed by a distributed cognitive perspective and using a combination of qualitative categorical coding and interaction analysis, this study provides a qualitative analysis of the relation between spatial reasoning and learning through making. Our analyses show that during making activities, students engaged in frequent and diverse spatial reasoning with a variety of social and material resources and that the social and material contexts of different making activities facilitated different types of spatial reasoning. Our analyses also show how spatial reasoning developed over time and led to learning.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)466-493
Number of pages28
JournalJournal of Educational Psychology
Volume112
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2020

Funding

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, under NSF Grants DRL-1348800 and DRL-1433724. However, any opinions, findings, conclusions, and/or recommendations are those of the investigators and do not reflect the views of NSF. We thank Jaakko Hilppö and Dionne Champion for their help with data collection for this project, Kemi Jona for his thoughtful feedback on this work, Henry Mann and the rest of the FUSE design team for their help in designing and supporting the program, and the teachers and students in our focal classrooms who graciously contributed their time and insights to this research.

Keywords

  • Distributed cognition
  • Making
  • Qualitative methods
  • STEAM learning
  • Spatial reasoning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology

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