Are Punnett Squares Just a Science-Specific Spatial Reasoning Task? Middle School Students See it Differently

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Abstract

Spatial reasoning is critical for success in STEM. While spatial skills are often measured in domain-general ways, they are seldom integrated into practical and educational (domain-specific) contexts. It's important to explore how domain-general spatial skills translate to STEM education. The current study investigated the relation between cognitive strategies and domain-specificity in spatial reasoning. Middle school students (N = 56) completed two visuospatial reasoning tasks: one domain-general and one science-specific. Participants had their eye movements tracked while completing the spatial reasoning problems for the measurement of cognitive strategy use. Results showed that students' cognitive strategy use is sensitive to domain specificity. This highlights the importance of integrating spatial tasks into STEM settings to better understand spatial reasoning in education.

Authors

• Jazelle Pilato, University of Pittsburgh

• Emily Grossnickle Peterson, American University