University of Redlands
In almost any discipline, spatial-thinking skills enrich analysis and improve decisions. You'd use them to determine the ideal locations for a tattoo parlor or for a wind turbine, to understand the social interactions of people along a beach or of otters along a coast, to model the flows of religious doctrines across a country or of fuel and oxidizer across a combustion chamber, or even to visualize the interplay of musical themes in a symphony.
Spatial thinking is the use of two- and three-dimensional representations of information to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions. The ability to visualize and interpret location, distance, direction, relationships, movement and change through space is fundamental to content understanding and problem solving. Spatial literacy is a critical skill in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences; indeed, a spatial approach helps to reveal the interdisciplinary, interconnected nature of many problems. Learning to think spatially is a form of learning how to learn.
