Collaborative research: Neural and cognitive strengthening of conceptual knowledge and reasoning in classroom-based spatial education

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Spatial thinking is a powerful driver of success in the STEM classroom and spatial thinking is a major predictor of future STEM success in the workforce. The brain systems that support spatial thinking have been well mapped by neuroscience to allow clear interpretation of new brain-imaging data. Recent advances in tools used to analyze brain activity allow detection of changes in the brains of students that signify accurate learning of STEM concepts. This advance may open a window onto biomarkers of precisely the type of learning that is the goal of educators. Using these new brain analysis methods, this project, a collaboration involving researchers from James Madison University, Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and Dartmouth College, will investigate how changes in the spatial thinking network support learning of specific STEM concepts, and how changes in the classroom can facilitate changes in the brain related to spatial thinking. This cross-disciplinary project brings together experts in geoscience classroom education, spatial cognition, and the neural bases of learning and reasoning. This team is committed to bridging the conspicuous gap between the laboratory and the high school classroom. A confluence of advances in neuroimaging, and the research team's partnership with Virginia school systems make this effort timely and tractable. Identifying possible effects of sex and STEM-related anxieties on conceptual learning in the brain, and testing the effectiveness of spatial education for reducing disparities, this research will point to critical targets for intervention. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning.This project seeks to understand the neural mechanisms of spatial learning, to advance of spatial education, and to identify factors that affect disparities in STEM learning and participation. The research team will collect functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral data from students before and after learning in a high school geoscience course that uses a novel spatially-based curriculum to teach STEM concepts and spatial reasoning. Pilot data on this spatial curriculum have begun to characterize the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms at work, and show promising effects of transfer to STEM problem solving and core measures of spatial ability. Consistent with methods that have demonstrated success in the lab (but not yet the classroom), the research team will use multivariate neural representations of a group of highly experienced and specially trained teachers as an expert standard to determine neural markers of students? conceptual knowledge and spatial reasoning. Leveraging recent multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) and machine-learning advances in brain imaging, the team will compare the neural patterns of students before and after learning to test for a trajectory that moves students closer to expert representations. This project will also test, for the first time, whether it is possible to compare different curricula based on how much they strengthen the representation of a concept in the brain. Similarly, this work will test whether spatial education leads students to engage spatial brain resources for STEM-related reasoning, and seek to compare curricula on this basis. The project will test whether neural data add predictive value to traditional testing (e.g. conventional unit tests) for subsequent retention of conceptual knowledge and spatial reasoning. Assessments of STEM-related anxieties (e.g., math and spatial anxiety) and analyses of sex-related effects on cognitive and neural outcomes will newly characterize factors that influence disparities in STEM learning and participation.