University Of Glasgow Project: To make STEM disciplines more accessible to everyone, the Turner Kirk Trust is funding an innovative project at the University of Glasgow.
Beginning in August 2023, the STEM Spatial Cognition Enhancement project, or STEM SPACE, will provide primary school students with spatial skills training in an effort to improve their STEM aptitude and confidence.
STEM SPACE is directed by Professor Quintin Cutts at the University of Glasgow and is backed by an advisory council of spatial skills development and cognition specialists. Glasgow City Council and Renfrewshire Council are supporting this endeavour.STEM SPACE’s lead researcher is Jack Parkinson, from the University’s School of Computing Science; Aislinn Burke, from the Glasgow City Council’s Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge team; Ewan Kirk, co-founder and co-chair of the Turner Kirk Trust; and Professor Quintin Cutts, head of the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Computing Science Education and STEM SPACE’s project director.
The project will bring a wealth of scientific research on the relationship between spatial skills — the ability to reason about physical objects and their spatial relationships — and STEM performance into classrooms in the west of Scotland in an effort to improve children’s ability and confidence in STEM subjects.
University Of Glasgow Project To Improve Children’s Performance In Stem Subjects
Children between the ages of eight and nine will be taught a spatialized maths curriculum that combines traditional maths instruction with spatial activities. The ability and accomplishment of children before and after spatial skills training will be analysed to determine the training’s impact on STEM class outcomes.
There are often fewer opportunities for women and those from disadvantaged backgrounds in STEM fields, and their ideas and perspectives are frequently precluded from the creation of innovative STEM-based solutions that are essential to advancing our society, such as medical advancements.
The project seeks to generate the evidence required to address this accessibility issue by enhancing academic performance in STEM subjects and, consequently, the accessibility of jobs in STEM disciplines, regardless of background or birth.
STEM SPACE is based on a similar scheme successfully implemented in Australian schools as part of a research initiative led by the University of Canberra. Materials from that study have been evaluated and adapted for the context of the Curriculum for Excellence in consultation with teachers by researchers from Glasgow.
Presently, twelve schools in the Glasgow City Council area and nine schools in the Renfrewshire Council area will participate in the STEM SPACE pilot, and teachers from these schools have already begun professional development training to help them implement the programme beginning in August of this year. The training’s effect will then be monitored, and findings will be reported in the first quarter of 2024.
Professor’s Statement
Ewan Kirk, co-founder and co-chair of the Turner Kirk Trust, stated, “STEM SPACE is an extraordinary opportunity to develop a transformative and scalable solution to STEM inaccessibility. It is crucial that everyone has the opportunity to study STEM and that these fields are entirely representative of the population, as these disciplines are essential to resolving some of our most difficult problems. We have a unique opportunity to make STEM education and careers accessible to all young people, regardless of their background, through spatial skills training.”
Professor Quintin Cutts is the director of the Centre for Computing Science Education at the University of Glasgow, which is comprised of a multidisciplinary team of academics, researchers, and students who develop new research, practise, and policy.
Professor Cutts stated, “We’re delighted to be collaborating with the Turner Kirk Trust and local councils from across the west of Scotland on this project, which we believe has enormous potential to equip children with the skills they’ll need to master STEM subjects later in their education.”What we’re really aiming to teach is a particular way of thinking – the capacity to visualise complex, frequently abstract shapes, structures, and relationships, and to create mental models.
This is crucial for STEM subjects, where chemists can benefit from the ability to mentally map complex atomic structures and computer scientists can visualise the interaction between hardware, software, and human users when developing a new programme.
STEM SPACE’s principal researcher, Jack Parkinson from the University’s School of Computing Science, stated, “The goal of this project is to help children from all backgrounds develop the foundations for abstract thought as they mature. Collaboration with teachers from institutions throughout the west of Scotland presents a rare opportunity to reach children during a crucial stage of their development.
University Of Glasgow Project
“We are extremely encouraged by how positively our collaborators have received the training thus far. In the coming months, we anticipate seeing how this novel approach will benefit children.”
Aislinn Burke, a former teacher and member of the Glasgow City Council’s Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge team and STEM SPACE steering committee, stated, “One of the most exciting aspects of this programme is that it builds on what is already being taught, adding an emphasis on how those skills can be adapted to help children better comprehend the fundamentals of STEM thinking.
It will also motivate and encourage children to work collaboratively on problem solving, strategy development, and innovative thought. These are skills that are readily transferable to all types of learning, which will aid them as they progress through elementary and secondary school and ultimately make them valuable members of the workforce regardless of the career path they choose.”
Higher spatial reasoning ability correlates universally with improved STEM performance and achievement; individuals with high spatial skills test scores also tend to earn higher grades in STEM courses and are more likely to find employment in STEM disciplines.
