I remember an old computer game (called Tetris) by a Russian programmer, where the player had to rotate and move objects with straight edges (squares, rectangles, and more complex ones) that were falling down to build a solid row at the bottom of the box. That helped in two-dimensional thinking, I suppose.
With the capability of spatial reasoning we can create and manipulate virtual images in our mind in 3D. This is an indispensible prerequisite for medical professionals, engineers and physicists, to mention a few.
How can we teach spatial reasoning? What are your experiences and thoughts?
Of course, I agree that architecture (as part of engineering and other fields) needs a sound basis of spatial reasoning (SR) together with knowledge about social, biological and environmental aspects. On a much lower level, how can we help young students to develop SR skills? Use blocks (e.g. Lego), animations? Or, are we born with the ability of spatial reasoning, so there wouldn't be the need to teach it?
Sheryl Sorby has done some of the best work on this and she has a text book and software to teach spatial reasoning to engineering students, although I have used some of the easier exercises with kindergarteners. The text is called Introduction to 3D Spatial Visualization and she has published some good articles.
Many thanks, Beth, for sharing this source. I'll try to get hold of this.
I agree with Beth's suggestion above, and would add a couple of other ones:
Cheryl Ann Cohen and Mary Hegarty trained spatial visualization using interactive imagery techniques (see article linked).
In addition, Mary Hegarty has looked at increasing spatial representational skills in Organic Chemistry. Diane Halpern has also done some spatial training work, such as the linked article.
For a meta-analysis of the efficacy of spatial training programs, you might wish to check out the 2013 paper by David Uttal and colleagues "The malleability of spatial skills: A meta-analysis of training studies" (linked)
Hope this helps!
http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/uttal/people/documents/MillerHalpern-inpressfinal-Spatialtraining.pdf
Article Spatial visualization training using interactive animation
Article The Malleability of Spatial Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Train...
There is a nice game Block Out II, aka 3D variation of Tetris. The game is a free adaptation of the original BlockOut® DOS game edited by California Dreams in 1989. It is available for both Windows and Linux at:
http://www.blockout.net/blockout2/
I believe how this game at least helps to improve spatial reasoning...
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