Spatial skills: Envisioning a third dimension in test-based accountability

Abstract

This article introduces the dimension of spatial skills—being able to visualize and rotate images and figures in one’s mind’s eye—as a missing aspect and third-dimension in test-based educational accountability, even though it is a well-established cognitive construct (which many scholars consider malleable) in addition to math and verbal achievement that has been linked to long-term outcomes in engineering, robotics, and other areas. In numerous K-12 and higher education standardized tests, in addition to international comparison tests, spatial skills are simply missing. Introducing this dimension would help attention be directed to students with spatial rather than verbal and mathematical reasoning strengths, and may even help expand dimensions of schooling that might be relevant to this current period of digital transformation in the era of data science, AI, and robotics.