What is School-Based Management?

School-based management (SBM) is the decentralization of levels of authority to the school level. Responsibility and decision-making over school operations is transferred to principals, teachers, parents, sometimes students, and other school community members. The school-level actors, however, have to conform to, or operate, within a set of centrally determined policies.

SBM programs take on many different forms, both in terms of who has the power to make decisions as well as the degree of decision-making devolved to the school level. While some programs transfer authority to principals or teachers only, others encourage or mandate parental and community participation, often in school committees (sometimes known as school councils). In general, SBM programs transfer authority over one or more of the following activities: budget allocation, hiring and firing of teachers and other school staff, curriculum development, textbook and other educational material procurement, infrastructure improvement, setting the school calendar to better meet the specific needs of the local community, and monitoring and evaluation of teacher performance and student learning outcomes. SBM also includes school-development plans, school grants, and sometimes information dissemination of educational results (otherwise known as ‘report cards’).

Starting in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, SBM programs have been implemented and are currently being developed in a number of countries, including Hong Kong (China). The majority of the SBM projects in the current World Bank portfolio are in Latin American and South Asian countries, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, and Sri Lanka. There are also two Bank-supported SBM projects in Europe and Central Asia (in FYR Macedonia and in Serbia and Montenegro), and one each in East Asia and the Pacific (the Philippines), the Middle East and North Africa (Lebanon), and Sub-Saharan Africa (Lesotho). Other projects and programs have been introduced more recently in Madagascar, the Gambia, and Senegal.

Why is school-based management important?

Advocates of SBM assert that it should improve educational outcomes for a number of reasons. First, it improves accountability of principals and teachers to students, parents and teachers. Accountability mechanisms that put people at the center of service provision can go a long way in making services work and improving outcomes by facilitating participation in service delivery, as noted in the World Bank’s 2004 World Development Report, Making Services Work for Poor People. Second, it allows local decision-makers to determine the appropriate mix of inputs and education policies adapted to local realities and needs.

Impact of school-based management

Evaluations of SBM programs offer mixed evidence of impacts. Nicaragua’s Autonomous School Program gives school-site councils – comprised of teachers, students and a voting majority of parents – authority to determine how 100 percent of school resources are allocated and authority to hire and fire principals, a privilege that few other school councils in Latin America enjoy. Two evaluations found that the number of decisions made at the school level contributed to better test scores (King and Ozler 1998; Ozler 2001). Mexico’s compensatory education program provides extra resources to disadvantaged rural primary schools and all indigenous schools, thus increasing the supply of education. However, the compensatory package has several components. If one breaks the intervention up in its multiple components, then it is shown that empowering parent associations seems to have a substantial effect in improving educational outcomes, even when controlling for the presence of beneficiaries of Mexico’s large and successful conditional cash transfer program (Oportunidades, formerly Progressa). This is strong evidence of the positive effects of decentralizing education to the lower levels (Gertler, Patrinos and Rubio forthcoming). Various evaluations of SBM programs in the United States have found evidence of decreased dropout and student suspension rates but no impact on test scores.

References:

King, E. and B. Ozler. 1998. “What’s Decentralization Got to do with Learning? The Case of Nicaragua’s School Autonomy Reform.” Working Paper on Impact Evaluation of Education Reforms. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Ozler, B. 2001. “Decentralization and Student Achievement: The Case of Nicaragua’s School Autonomy Reform.” Working Paper on Impact Evaluation of Education Reforms. Washington, DC: World Bank. 

Gertler, P., H.A. Patrinos and M. Rubio-Codina. Forthcoming. “Do Supply-Side-Oriented and Demand-Side-Oriented Education Programs Generate Synergies? The Case of CONAFE Compensatory Program” OPORTUNIDADES Scholarships in Rural Mexico.

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Teaching Mathematics Using Cooperative Learning

Below is an example of using cooperative learning to teach a math lesson based on the three major components of cooperative learning: "lesson preparation," "lesson instruction," and "lesson evaluation." In this example, five students with LD attend a third grade general education classroom for most of the school day and receive special education resource remedial assistance for mathematics skills. The cooperative learning activity in this example is taking place in the general education setting where the general and special education teachers plan and teach cooperative learning math activities collaboratively twice a week.

Lesson preparation

During "preparation" the cooperative learning math activity is designed; a description of "preparation" activities follows.

Establish objectives. In this example, the instructional objective for mathematics is: "Students will solve two-step story problems containing extraneous information with 90% accuracy." The collaborative objective is: "Students will encourage and support teammates and share materials when requested." The objectives are based on (a) school district special education curriculum guides, (b) students' Individualized Education Program goals for mathematics and social skills, (c) curriculum-based assessment of whole number computation, and (d) observations of group behaviors and interactions.

Structure the activity. In whole group instruction, the instructional objective will be addressed by reviewing with all students the steps of a story problem-solving strategy that was learned the previous week. Students will recite the strategy's steps using cue cards. Using the strategy, two story problems will be solved by the teachers who will recite the steps and verbalize their thinking processes as they work through the problems. Then, students will solve two story problems with the teachers. Next, students will review cooperative learning role responsibilities and explain ways to encourage and support each other. Rules about sharing also will be reviewed.

In the cooperative learning group, "numbered heads" will be used as the activity structure. Students will use their strategy cue cards to solve four story problems. Teachers will facilitate group work and interactions. Time will be allowed for group processing and students (when called on by group and number) will explain how their group solved a particular story problem.

Promote the elements of cooperative learning. Student roles will be assigned and bonus points will be distributed intermittently based on each group's demonstration of encouraging and supportive behavior. One strategy cue card will be distributed to each group, thus necessitating sharing of the card. A posttest will be individually administered containing four story problems to determine if students can solve the story problems independently using their cue cards. The reading level of the story problems will be controlled for different ability levels in the classroom.

Identify the roles and groups. Each group will include a timekeeper to monitor the time and keep the group on task, a materials person to manage the cue card, a writer to record the group's problem-solving responses and answers, and a spokesperson to lead the group during group processing time and to share the group's results with the teacher. The groups will consist of four students; only one student with LD will be a member of each group.

Table 2. Questions for Evaluating Mathematical Abilities in Cooperative Learning Groups

1.  Language/Vocabulary      -  Are students using new vocabulary words properly?      -  Do students possess prerequisite vocabulary?      -  Can students provide explanations in their own words for cooperative learning math activities, such as solving word problems and algorithms?

2.  Rules      -  Can Students explain to each other the rules that were taught during direct instruction, which must be applied in the cooperative learning activity?      -  Can students apply the rules to the cooperative learning math activity or do they require teacher assistance?      -  Can students use manipulatives to demonstrate rules?

3.  Strategies and Algorithms      -  Have students learned the strategies and algorithms?      -  Can students explain the strategies and algorithms to each other?      -  Do students require visual cures for remembering the strategies an algorithms?      -  Can students apply strategies and algorithms to a variety of problems?      -  Do students require teacher prompting and questions to help remember the strategies and algorithms?

4.  Connections      -  Can students explain how the new information relates to previously mastered math skills and concepts?      -  How do students explain the relevance of learning new math skills and concepts to everyday life?      -  How do students apply the new knowledge to activities that involve other disciplines (e.g., science, social studies)?      -  Can students depict math information using visuals, graphics, manipulatives, and abstract symbols?      -  Can students make connections between concrete-semi-concrete-abstract representations?

Lesson instruction

Implementation of the math lesson, in this example, requires direct instruction followed by the cooperative learning activity. The instructional steps are described below.

Provide an advance organizer. Explain the purpose of the lesson and the instructional and collaborative objectives. Describe the lesson's activities and the teachers' roles in the lesson. Remind students that they worked on a story problem-solving strategy last week and ask for a definition of a strategy.

Present the lesson. Have students refer to their strategy cue cards and repeat the strategy steps. Ask individual students to recite the steps, then ask students to repeat the steps without referring to the cue card, if possible. Next, model solving a story problem using the strategy cue card and verbalizing the steps. Have students imitate this process solving another problem at their desks. Ask for answers and explanations of how the problem was solved.

Explain the cooperative learning activity, using the "numbered heads" structure. Remind students that they can use a cue card to solve their four story problems. Review students' roles and responsibilities and ask for explanations of how students encourage and support one another. Provide directions for transitioning into cooperative learning groups, set a time, distribute materials, and review the task. Once students are in groups, serve as a facilitator by guiding students with questions (e.g., "What are the steps in the strategy?" "What do you do first?" "How do you determine extraneous information?") or providing further instruction if necessary. Reinforce groups for demonstrating appropriate collaborative behaviors. Provide time for group processing, and call on students by number and group to provide answers to the story problems.

Lesson evaluation

Evaluating the students' mastery of the instructional and collaborative objectives is critical. As mentioned earlier in this article, there are three types of evaluation. In this example, the first evaluation can be done during the cooperative learning activity: note evaluative comments that may assist in planning additional lessons or document individual student difficulty. For instance, evaluation questions like those in Table 1 can be used to determine mastery or potential trouble spots solving story problems. The second evaluation is individual and can be done following the group activity by administering a posttest. This can help teachers determine students' ability to solve story problems on their own and to apply the strategy. Finally, have students evaluate themselves during group processing to determine their abilities with the designated collaborative skills. This evaluation should be shared with the teacher to be sure that teacher and student perceptions of abilities match.

References:

http://www.ldonline.org/article/5932/

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What is a Number?

The concept of number is the most basic and fundamental in the world of science and mathematics. Yet a satisfactory answer to what a number is was attained only in 1884 A.D. by Gottlob Fregé [1], the founder of modern mathematical logic. His answer remained unknown to the world until Bertrand Russell, the English mathematician and logician, in his attempt to base all of mathematics in terms of the concept of sets, rediscovered the concept of number.

The concept of number is associated with the concept of a "set." As of 2005 A.D., mankind possessed two ways of explaining the concept of number. One was the Von Neuman method and the other the Fregé concept.

A "set" is a term like the term "point" is in Geometry where it is not defined but taken as a "primitive" whose meaning is brought out by the axioms. Similarly, a set is described by the axioms of set theory. Informally, set means a collection of definite and separate objects of any kind for which we can decide whether or not a given object belongs. So to exhibit a set, you show all the objects - popularly called elements - in the collection by either exhibiting each individual element in the collection or precisely describing which elements belong. An instance of the former is the set comprised of, say, three names, Bob, Mary, and Marg; the set is exhibited by providing a list of its elements inside two curly brackets thus: {Bob,Mary,Marg}. The order in which the elements are listed inside the brackets is not relevant. When a set contains a very large number of elements, it is inconvenient or impractical to position each element inside the curly brackets and so the second method is used. That is, we describe precisely those elements that belong to the set. We can use ordinary language when that will do - for example, the set of all people on earth. Or, we can also use curly brackets thus: {x | x is a person of the Earth}; where the vertical line means "satisfying the condition that," or simply "such that."

Von Neumann [1923] proposed that all numbers could be bootstrapped out of the empty set by the operations of the mind as follows.

0 = {} (empty set)
1 = {0} = { {} }
2 = {0,1} = { {}, { {} } }
3 = {0,1,2} = {{}, { {} }, { {}, { {} } }}
4 = {0,1,2,3} = { {}, { {} }, { {}, { {} } }, {{}, { {} }, { {}, { {} } }} } ....

This construction is wonderful and simple and shows why, for instance, 1 is less than 2, or in general why given any two distinct numbers a and b, either a < b or a > b. There are many other properties of this scheme. However, the one shortcoming of the scheme is that it is an artifice of construction and does not tell us what a number is except in terms of the construction. For instance, 0 is the empty set, 1 the set consisting of the empty set, 2 is the set whose elements are the empty set and the set consisting of the empty set, and so on.

To understand this scheme, we would have to go to the concept enshrined in it, namely the Theory of Concepts advanced by Fregé. And it would explain why von Neumann chose the empty set to represent zero.

Numeral
Numeral is the symbol for the idea called number. Put another way, the number is the idea we think of when we see the numeral or when we see or hear the word for a numeral.

Suppose there is a person named Jim. This person has the name Jim because he was named so. It is very convenient! A numeral is like the name Jim.

Now, if someone says number 3, we know what really is meant. 3 is the numeral for the number the person wishes to communicate to us. Since this is to be always understood, we just say "number 3."

An alien coming to earth might be amused to note that we have given this number the name 3. A computer on earth would have to be told that this number is 11, because 11 is 3 in binary notation. 11 in binary and 3 in decimal notation are called "numerals." As you know, III is the Roman numeral for 3.

On the web page Numeration Systems, we discuss the various systems like the binary, decimal and others for writing numerals.

ORIGINAL SOURCES
[1] Gottlob Fregé, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884)

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Teaching and Learning Strategies

Children in care may struggle to control their emotions more than other children. Assisting them to understand their feelings and develop appropriate responses to emotional situations is a key task for both teachers and carers.

This section explains how teachers can effectively engage with early-year, middle-year and older students.

Early years

Impulse control is a skill many children develop naturally around the age of four, but this may not be the case for children in care. Many will have had poor modelling in their family home, as well as experiences of abuse, that may make controlling their emotions difficult.

Key teaching strategies:

·     ensure children are appropriately challenged intellectually

·     build personal best measures into assessments so students can experience success

·     provide a structure for social interaction (e.g. games or activities at lunchtime).

Middle years

Children begin to develop key communication and social skills in their middle years. At this stage the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of people is crucial for learning. Children in care may exhibit a lack of social skills leading to isolation and anti-social behaviour.

Key teaching strategies:

·     building supportive relationships and a sense of belonging to the school

·     providing skills and opportunities to communicate with a range of peers and adults

·     assisting children to identify and build on their skills and interests

·     encouraging children to learn through the delivery of challenging, engaging curriculum.

Older students

Older students may struggle with more complex learning tasks because they do not have the same basic knowledge as other students.

Key teaching strategies:

·     one-to-one support and the opportunity to ‘check in' with teachers

·     private sessions used to break up tasks into smaller, more manageable sections

·     identifying areas of the curriculum in which they can demonstrate their skills.

Learning mentoring

Identifying an adult who can act as a mentor is an effective teaching strategy for children of all ages.

This person, as well as offering direct support, can assist the child by encouraging them to interact with other people in the school, building a network of support.

For information about the role, how the learning mentor can support young people in Out-of-Home Care, see: Out-of-Home Care

Excursions and extra-curricular activities

Excursions and activities can be an excellent way to engage and build relationships with a child.

Children and young people in care can regularly miss out on these opportunities as they are required to gain consent from their legal guardian.

Legal guardianship of the child may be held by the person or people providing day-to-day care or may rest with the biological parent or the Department of Human Services.

If the carer is not the guardian, it can take several days or longer for a consent form to be returned to the school.

It is important to plan ahead so that children in OOHC do not miss out on these valuable opportunities.

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Two (Optimistic) Predictions for Learning in 2014

T

he beginning of a new year always prompts list-making — resolutions, what went right last year, what can be done better in the next. How will 2013′s trends shape the year ahead? Looking into a crystal ball (and with input from experts), these are just two of many)movements we hope will take shape in classrooms across the country in 2014.

Self-Directed Learning Using Digital Tools Will Take Center Stage

In 2013, we observed the logistical and ideological mistakes of Los Angeles Unified iPad roll-out, as well as the confusion and difficulty with which schools grappled with computer-based testing created to align with the Common Core. But as many educators know, there’s much more to technology use than those stories tell.

Many hope that 2014 will be the time to find that holy grail — using technology to go beyond providing efficiency and management to truly transforming student learning. The schools that will stand out in the year ahead are the ones creating space for multi-modal learning environments, “where open-ended project design rooted in real-world problem solving are capturing the imagination and interest of students,” said Matt Levinson, Head of the Upper School at Marin Country Day School and author of From Fear to Facebook: One School’s Journey.

Levinson said the trend he sees taking shape is a kind of old-meets-new story in which the constructivist dreams of 100 years ago come to fruition using personalized digital technology. Teachers will play a prominent role, but in a newly defined and conceived role, along the lines of constructivist learning, popularized by John Dewey over a hundred years ago, Levinson said. “Ironically, the technology is enabling learning to take steps back in time, almost to the 15th and 16th century tutorial learning environment that only the royal households were able to employ for the exclusive few,” he said.

Does that mean more schools across the nation will embrace inquiry learning even as they implement Common Core State Standards in 2014? Will that even be possible? In the following year, we hope to chronicle case studies and classrooms where this is happening.

“Opting In” to Authentic Assessment

In 2013, a scrappy group of parents and teachers voiced their concern for high-stakes standardized testing by opting kids out of testing altogether, gaining ground through opt-out evangelists and growing media coverage. Education professor Tim Slekar, a founder of United Opt-Out National, said that he believes 2014 will be a banner year for the movement. “Since March [when the first round of Common Core-aligned tests were issued], we’re adding 100 members a day,” he said. According to Slekar, New York is the state to watch for the biggest push against their latest “test and punish” standards that have put parents, teachers and students on edge. “I feel comfortable making a prediction for 50-60 percent opt-out participation in New York State,” in the spring of 2014, he said, adding that the state’s new standards and testing culture are “the opt-out movement’s best recruiters.”

But even though he has no official numbers of how many students opted out of testing in 2013 (he estimates a roughly 5 percent opt-out rate in his former home state of Pennsylvania), Slekar guesses that Common Core tests administered in the spring of 2014 will add even more members to opt-out’s rolls.

Slekar said that for parents and teachers, opting out of state tests is only the first step to changing the culture. United Opt-Out National plans on unleashing a spring campaign asking parents and teachers to “Opt-In” to authentic assessment. “This [movement] is not a rejection of assessment, or testing. This is a rejection of corporate-imposed test-and-punish accountability,” he said. “We want authentic, valid, personal meaningful assessment to rule the day.”

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10 Ways to Teach Innovation

One overriding challenge is now coming to the fore in public consciousness: We need to reinvent just about everything. Whether scientific advances, technology breakthroughs, new political and economic structures, environmental solutions, or an updated code of ethics for 21st century life, everything is in flux—and everything demands innovative, out of the box thinking.

The burden of reinvention, of course, falls on today’s generation of students. So it follows that education should focus on fostering innovation by putting curiosity, critical thinking, deep understanding, the rules and tools of inquiry, and creative brainstorming at the center of the curriculum.

This is hardly the case, as we know. In fact, innovation and the current classroom model most often operate as antagonists. The system is evolving, but not quickly enough to get young people ready for the new world. But I do believe there are a number of ways that teachers can bypass the system and offer students the tools and experiences that spur an innovative mindset. Here are ten ideas:

Move from projects to Project Based Learning. Most teachers have done projects, but the majority do not use the defined set of methods associated with high-quality PBL. These methods include developing a focused question, using solid, well crafted performance assessments, allowing for multiple solutions, enlisting community resources, and choosing engaging, meaningful themes for projects. PBL offers the best method we have presently for combining inquiry with accountability, and should be part of every teacher’s repertoire. See my website or the Buck Institute for methods.

Teach concepts, not facts. Concept-based instruction overcomes the fact-based, rote-oriented nature of standardized curriculum. If your curriculum is not organized conceptually, use you own knowledge and resources to teach ideas and deep understanding, not test items.

Distinguish concepts from critical information. Preparing students for tests is part of the job. But they need information for a more important reason: To innovate, they need to know something. The craft precedes the art. Find the right blend between open-ended inquiry and direct instruction.

Make skills as important as knowledge. Innovation and 21st century skills are closely related. Choose several 21st century skills, such as collaboration or critical thinking, to focus on throughout the year. Incorporate them into lessons. Use detailed rubrics to assess and grade the skills.

Form teams, not groups. Innovation now emerges from teams and networks—and we can teach students to work collectively and become better collective thinkers. Group work is common, but team work is rare. Some tips: Use specific methods to form teams; assess teamwork and work ethic; facilitate high quality interaction through protocols and critique; teach the cycle of revision; and expect students to reflect critically on both ongoing work and final products. For peer collaboration rubrics, see these free PBL Tools.

Use thinking tools. Hundreds of interesting, thought provoking tools exist for thinking through problems, sharing insights, finding solutions, and encouraging divergent solutions. Use Big Think tools or the Visible Thinking Routines developed at Harvard’s Project Zero.

Use creativity tools. Industry uses a set of cutting edge tools to stimulate creativity and innovation. As described in books such as Gamestorming or Beyond Words, the tools include playful games and visual exercises that can easily be used in the classroom.

Reward discovery. Innovation is mightily discouraged by our system of assessment, which rewards the mastery of known information. Step up the reward system by using rubrics with a blank column to acknowledge and reward innovation and creativity. I call it the Breakthrough column. All of the rubrics on the PBL Tools section of my website have a breakthrough column.

Make reflection part of the lesson. Because of the coverage imperative, the tendency is to move on quickly from the last chapter and begin the next chapter. But reflection is necessary to anchor learning and stimulate deeper thinking and understanding. There is no innovation without rumination.

Be innovative yourself. This is the kicker, because innovation requires the willingness to fail, a focus on fuzzy outcomes rather than standardized measures, and the bravery to resist the system’s emphasis on strict accountability. But the reward is a kind of liberating creativity that makes teaching exciting and fun, engages students, and—most critical—helps students find the passion and resources necessary to design a better life for themselves and others.

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Why We Need To Value Students’ Spatial Creativity

At 16, Albert Einstein wrote his first scientific paper titled “The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields.”  This was the result of his famous gedanken experiment in which he visually imagined chasing after a light beam. The insights he gained from this thought experiment led to the development of his theory of special relativity.

At 5, Nikola Tesla informed his father that he would harness the power of water.  What resulted was his creation of a water-powered egg beater. Tesla, who invented the basis of alternating current (AC) power systems, had the unusual talent to imagine his inventions entirely in his mind before building them. He was apparently able to visualize and operate an entire engine in his mind, testing each part to see which one would break first.

Thomas Edison—famous for developing the light bulb and more than 1,000 patents—was fascinated with mechanical objects at an early age.  He once said: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”  He wasn’t joking. In his lab he wanted to have on hand “a stock of almost every conceivable material.”  According to an 1887 news article, his lab was stocked with chemicals, screws, needles, cords, wires, hair, silk, cocoons, hoofs, shark’s teeth, deer horns, cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, amber, rubber, ores, minerals, and numerous other things.

Einstein imagined with his mind. Tesla imagined with his mind and built with his hands. Edison imagined with both. They all had extraordinary spatial talent—“the ability to generate, retain, retrieve, and transform well-structured visual images.”

Spatial thinking “finds meaning in the shape, size, orientation, location, direction or trajectory, of objects,” and their relative positions, and “uses the properties of space as a vehicle for structuring problems, for finding answers, and for expressing solutions.” Spatial skill can be measured through reliable and valid paper-and-pencil tests—primarily ones that assess three dimensional mental visualization and rotation. Read more about examples of items that measure spatial skill here.

But despite the value of these kinds of skills, spatially talented students are, by and large, neglected. Nearly a century ago, a talent search conducted by Lewis Terman used the highly verbal Stanford-Binet in an attempt to discover the brightest kids in California. This test identified a boy named Richard Nixon who would eventually become the U.S. president, but two others would miss the cut likely because the Stanford-Binet did not include a spatial test: William Shockley and Luis Alvarez, who would go on to become famous physicists and win the Nobel Prize.

Today talent searches often use the SAT and ACT which include math, verbal, and writing sections, but do not include a spatial measure. All of the physicists described above (and Tesla who could do integral calculus in his head) would likely qualify today at least on the math section, and Edison would likely have qualified on the verbal section due to his early love of reading.  However, there are many students who have high spatial talent but relatively lower math and verbal talent who are likely missed by modern talent searches and therefore fail to have their talent developed to the extent it could.  Also, because colleges use the SAT and ACT for selecting students, many high spatial students likely do not make it onto college campuses.

Nearly every standardized test given to students today is heavily verbal and mathematical.  Students who have the high spatial and lower math/verbal profile are therefore missed in nearly every school test and their talent likely goes missed, and thus under-developed. What’s more, spatially talented people are often less verbally fluent, and unlikely to be very vocal. Finally, teachers are unlikely to have a high spatial profile themselves (and typically have the inverted profile of high verbal and lower math/spatial), and although they probably do not intend to, they’re more likely to miss seeing talent in students who are not very much like themselves.

So what does the research tell us?  In a study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, my colleagues and I used longitudinal data from multiple data sets across 50 years to show that spatial talent (in addition to math and verbal talent) is important for success in STEM domains. The data came from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), Project Talent, and the GRE. Of those students in the top 1 percent of spatial talent, roughly 70 percent were not in the top 1 percent in either math or verbal talent—showing a large fraction of students having the high spatial but lower math/verbal profile.

Now a new study by Harrison Kell, David Lubinski, Camilla Benbow, and James Steiger published in Psychological Science has made the connection between early spatial talent and creativity in adult life even stronger. The study, based on SMPY data, showed that spatial skill had an increment of prediction over and above math and verbal skills (assessed at age 13) when looking at scholarly publications and patents—even those in STEM.

Can We Enhance Spatial Skill?

So, can enhancing spatial thinking improve outcomes in STEM?  A new study by David Uttal, David Miller, and Nora Newcombe published in Current Directions in Psychological Science notes that “a recent quantitative synthesis of 206 spatial training studies found an average training improvement of 0.47 standard deviations.”  The authors suggest that including spatial thinking in STEM curricula would “enhance the number of Americans with the requisite cognitive skills to enter STEM careers.”

The research is clear that spatial skill is important for STEM careers, and perhaps we can even enhance spatial skill to help more people join the STEM fields. What we need is research directed at understanding the best ways to develop the talent of students who are high spatial, but relatively lower math/verbal. Perhaps spatial video games and online learning coupled with hands on interventions might help these students.

This is what’s so great about the Maker Movement and “Why Kids Need to Tinker to Learn”: It will help encourage all students to tinker, invent, and to use their hands to make things again. Certainly the skills encouraged by the makers might be helpful to students who go on to pursue STEM careers. But the movement probably will be most effective for spatially talented students who have been neglected in our school systems.

One student who felt neglected in the school system was researcher Matthew Peterson. As a child, Peterson felt that he was drowning in words and numbers. And in many ways he was, as he was identified as dyslexic—similar to Einstein and Edison. This bothered him so much that today he has developed a way to teach math in an entirely visual manner called ST Math.

Ultimately we need to have the individual skill profile of each student matched to individualized instruction tailored to them. We need to experiment in the laboratory and classroom and conduct rigorous evaluations to find out what actually works.

Redefining and Valuing a Different Kind of Creativity

Today we idolize creative actors, dancers, artists, musicians, and writers. But when was the last time someone raved to you about a creative engineer or mathematician? Why isn’t STEM considered creative or cool? Longitudinal research has made a solid link between early spatial talent and later creativity. Yet for whatever reason, we don’t appreciate the highly creative nature of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

It would seem impossible to argue that the theory of relativity, alternating current, or the light bulb were not creative innovations.  And yet it is easy to forget that these advances fall squarely in the STEM disciplines. Consider the device you are reading this article from right now. Spatially talented people imagined it in their minds eye and then they built it.  Not everyone is going to be an Einstein, Tesla, or Edison, but if we identify the many spatially talented students who have been neglected in our school systems we might discover many brilliant kids who are just waiting to develop their creative potential. We need to help them. After all, we will ultimately depend on their visions to help create our future.

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