SPATIAL THINKING IN THE GEOSCIENCES

Geosciences, at either the expert or learner level, demand frequent and effective spatial thinking. We catalog the range of spatial thinking tasks encountered by geoscientists, and review insights from the cognitive and learning literature about how such thinking occurs and how it might be fostered.

Geoscientific spatial tasks include: (a) rigorously describing the shape of an object (e.g. a crystal, a fossil); (b) classifying an object by its shape; (c) ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object; (d) recognizing a shape or pattern amid a noisy background (e.g. on a seismic reflection profile); (e) visualizing a three dimensional object or structure or process from observations collected in one or two dimensions; (f) describing the position and orientation of objects in the real world relative to a conceptual coordinate system anchored to the Earth (e.g. measuring dip and strike); (g) remembering the location and appearance of previously seen items (e.g. outcrops); (h) envisioning the motion of objects or materials through space in three dimensions (e.g. ocean currents); (i) envisioning the processes by which objects change shape; (k) using spatial thinking to think about time; (l) using spatial thinking to think about 2-, or 3- dimensional systems where the axes are not spatial (e.g. the petrologist's pressure-temperature space).

The psychological literature helps us to isolate the component skills and concepts that are embedded within these applied tasks, and to attend to group and individual differences in performance. For example, task (e) draws on what has been called the "projective spatial concept", the ability to mentally envision a scene or object from another viewpoint, while task (f) draws upon the "Euclidean spatial concept," the ability to use an abstract system of coordinates. It has been reported that males typically outperform females on tasks that involve mental rotation (required in task (j)),whereas females outperform males on tasks that involve remembering locations (task (g)). The psychological literature is less helpful when we look for strategies to improve geoscience students' general spatial ability. Performance on a given spatial task can be improved through practice of that task, but achieving transferrable, generalized improvement in spatial skills has proven difficult.