Understanding how external media such as maps and diagrams influence spatial learning and reasoning is crucial to improving spatial learning and to education. Maps and charts highlight spatial relations that can be difficult, and at times impossible, to perceive on the basis of direct experience. For example, by looking at a map, one could easily see the relative spatial position of several cities across the United States. This information would be very difficult to acquire directly from travel or to describe in words. The unique perspective and scale of maps make perceptible, and cognitively tractable, spatial relations that might otherwise remain opaque. Thus maps can affect cognition and contribute to its development.
Furthermore, maps, charts, and diagrams are critically important to STEM education. Learning in
geoscience, for example, depends on students’ ability to understand and use complex maps that represent three-dimensional topography. To facilitate students' learning, we need to understand the challenges of learning from maps and other spatial representations.
The overall aims of the Maps and Diagrams Working Group are:
To understand how the use of maps, charts, and diagrams contribute to spatial cognition and its development.
To shed light on the process of understanding and learning from maps, using SILC's theoretical
perspective and methodological tools, including gesture, analogy, and CogSketch.
To determine how research on the spatial cognition and malleability contribute to understanding and enhancing the use of maps and diagrams in STEM education.
NEW RELEASE: CogSketch v1.19 (3/10/2010) (download here)
Read our latest updates and incoming news below or for SILC in the press go to our Press Room (click on PRESS ROOM icon above).
3/4/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Hilary Barth, Sue Becker, Nathan Greenauer, Toru Ishikawa, Shaun P. Vecera, Tom verguts and Christoph Weidemann.
3/1/2010 Our March Showcase is on-line: The Role of Parent Gesture In Children's Spatial Language Development [Erica Cartmill, Shannon M. Pruden Dick, Susan C. Levine, Susan Goldin-Meadow].
2/18/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Kevin Mulqueeny.
2/12/2010 Job opening for a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, University of Chicago.
2/12/2010 New publication by our SILC Members: Jee, B. D., Uttal, D. H., Gentner, D., Manduca, C., Shipley, T., Sageman, B., Ormand, C. J., & Tikoff, B. (2010). Analogical thinking in geoscience education.
2/10/2010 Note: Full paper submission deadline [in Calls section on Meetings page] for Spatial Cognition 2010 has been changed to: February 21, 2010.
2/9/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Ed Golob and Kelly McCormick.
2/5/2010 Please, note that we will soon be implementing a database for the Bibliography page. Due to this we are only up-dating the database.
2/5/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Michael Brown.
2/1/2010 Our February Showcase is on-line: Playful Learning: Exploring the Role of Dialogic Inquiry and Exploration in Children's Developing Shape Concepts [Kelly R. Fisher, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and Nora Newcombe].
1/27/2010 Read the current Press on SILC-generated research: Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement by Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez and Susan C. Levine.
1/7/2010 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Member: Roy Ruddle.
1/6/2010 The January SILC Showcase is now on-line: Facilitation of spatial skills necessary in performing geologic transformations [Ilyse Resnick, Temple University; Thomas Shipley, Temple University; Cathryn Manduca, Carleton College; and Nora Newcombe, Temple University].
12/21/2009 Links were fixed under the sketch inquiry, Help Us Gather Sketches, on our homepage. Please, note that if you ever encounter a link that does not work, please send it to the attention of Jenn Stedillie, webmaster for this site:
12/21/2009 Please, welcome our new Spatial Network Members: Elena Andonova, Kirsten Butcher, Liz Chrastil, Lisa Douglas & Ian Fogarty.
12/02/2009 The December SILC Showcase is now on-line: Spatial categories across languages [Naveen Khetarpal, University of Chicago; Asifa Majid, Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen; Terry Regier, University of California, Berkeley].
