Space in Mind: Concepts for Spatial Learning and Education

Abstract

From the Preface: This book is about research on human learning and education that focuses on thinking and reasoning about space and spatiality. The three of us share a professional interest in space and spatiality as central components in understanding the natural and cultural worlds, as well as the abstract or metaphorical worlds of art, literature, and mathematics. Furthermore, we believe that promoting spatial thinking in educational curricula is worthwhile and that intellectual questions about such a profound property of reality—so concrete and pervasive yet so abstract and suited to metaphor—are utterly fascinating.The book started as an interdisciplinary workshop organized by the three of us and held at the tenth biennial Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2011) at Belfast, Maine, USA. The workshop, held on September 12, 2011, was titled “Ontology of spatial thinking and reasoning: Multi-disciplinary reconciliation.” Given our particular interest in spatial learning and education, we further refined the topic and made an open call to solicit chapter proposals, only a subset of which came from those attending the COSIT workshop. The three of us evaluated all chapter proposals independently and accepted a subset of them as appropriate for the book. This has resulted in an edited collection of 13 chapters by scholars from a variety of disciplinary fields, plus an introductory chapter we have written and a two-part epilogue chapter graciously authored by two top scholars of spatial thinking and education, Michael F. Goodchild and Nora S. Newcombe.