ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1582737
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Sources and Mitigation Strategies for Science Anxiety in Educational ContextsView all 3 articles
Bolstering Spatial Learning in the Primary Classroom: Identifying the Factors Underlying Primary Teachers' Spatial Pedagogical Practices
Provisionally accepted
- University of California, Riverside, Riverside, United States
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Teachers' cognition and affect can influence their pedagogical choices, which in turn can shape the development of their students' spatial skills. Here we examined the relations between primary teachers' spatial cognition, affect, and their inclination for choosing teaching practices, such as models and diagrams, that engage and facilitate spatial learning. Seventy-seven K-6 teachers completed measures of spatial skills, spatial anxiety, spatial habits of mind, and a measure of preferences for spatial pedagogy. Additionally, we assessed and controlled for their general reasoning and general anxiety. Results revealed primary teachers' spatial skills were positively associated with their spatial habits of mind and their preference for using spatial strategies for teaching science content. Yet, their pedagogical preferences for teaching math content varied with their teaching experience. Teachers' spatial skills and spatial anxiety were not related. These findings have implications for how to leverage teacher education programs to bolster primary STEM learning and outcomes.
Keywords: Teacher cognition, Spatial skills, Spatial anxiety, spatial habits of mind, Primary education
Received: 28 Feb 2025; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rocha, Lussier and Atit. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kinnari Atit, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, United States
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