finding the spatial - spatial.ucsb.edu · finding the spatial (in order to teach it) ......

Finding the Spatial (in order to teach it)

Karl Grossner, PhD Center for Spatial Studies, UC Santa Barbara

(2012) Stanford University Libraries

NSF-DUE #1043777

Donald G. Janelle

K. Grossner :: UC Santa Barbara ThinkSpatial Brownbag :: 15 Nov 2011

NRC (2006) Conclusions

• Geographers, geoscientists,

psychologists, incl. Golledge, Goodchild, Hegarty

• Spatial thinking a skill, having 3 elements: – Concepts of space

– Representation

– Reasoning processes

• Underpins success in science and math

• Can be taught, improved

• By and large, is not taught explicitly


Spatial thinking in the geosciences, and...

• Describing the shape of an object, rigorously and unambiguously

• Identifying and classifying objects by shape

• Ascribing meaning to shape • Recognizing shapes or patterns

against a noisy background • Visualizing 3-dimensional

structure and processes – and motion of objects -- from one or two dimensional information

• Describing the position or orientation of objects relative to a coordinate system


NRC (2006) Recommendations

• Needed: a “systematic research program” – SILC, 2006 www.spatiallearning.org

• Heightened awareness of its importance

• Highlight within (and/or adjust) the curriculum, leading to increased “spatial literacy”

• Six GIS-specific recommendations – Software/Ed partnerships,

teacher development, etc.


Elements of Spatial Thinking


A Strategy for TeachSpatial

• Immediate objective: a resource portal to teaching resources...but

• If you’re going to teach spatial concepts and principles explicitly, first enumerate them, then define some learning objectives

• First step: identify concepts from various disciplinary perspectives

• Learning objectives could be “demonstrate understanding and practical application of {spatialPrinciple},” so what are the principles?


www.teachspatial.org K. Grossner :: UC Santa Barbara ThinkSpatial Brownbag :: 15 Nov 2011

www.nsdl.org


NSDL PATHWAYS


Enumerating Concepts (1)

• What’s a concept? Please discuss...

• ~180 terms culled from 20 source documents in 8 fields:

– Geography, cognitive psychology, geoscience, math, urban design, science education

• Reduced to ~120, and binned arbitrarily


120 in 9 bins


Spatial Term Density, NSF Abstracts

adjacency, alignment, angle, anisotropic, area (2), areal, arrangement,

attraction, autocorrelation, border, boundary, branching, center, centroid, chaos, chirality, circuit, cluster, cognitive map, coil, collision, compactness, conduit, congruence, connection, container, convex, cube, deformation, dense, density, diffusion, dimension, direction, dispersion, distance,

enclosure, energetics, environment (8), euclidian, flow, fluid, folding, force,

form (9), geography, geometric, geometry, global, gradient, granularity,

gravitation, gravity, grid, imagery, interaction (3), interlock, isomorphism,

isotropic, kinetic, landmark, landscape, length, local (10), location, manifold, map, mental model, microscale, migration, morphology, motion, movement,

navigation, neighbor, network (4), orientation, overlay, packing, part, path, pattern, perimeter, periphery, place, planar, point, polygon, polymorphism,

position, proximity, reference frame, region (7), representation, rotation,

route, rupture, scale (6), section, separation, shape, size, slope, space, space-

time, spatial, spatiotemporal, spatio-temporal, stratum, structure (1),

surface (5), symmetrical, symmetry, topology, transport, visual, void, volume, wave, web


How Spatial Is It?


How Spatial Is It?

Index of Spatiality 0.728 rank

correlation with human judgments

of spatiality


Enumerating Concepts (2) • 129 Culled from NSES and Geography teaching

standards text spatial terms

avg spatial

stdev

Physical Science B-04-2.2 An object's motion can be described by

tracing and measuring its position over time. position, motion, tracing, object, trajectory, path, time, measurement

0.913 0.118

B-04-2.3 The position and motion of objects can be changed by pushing or pulling. The size of the change is related to the strength of the push or pull.

position, motion, pull, push, size, force, direction 0.850 0.191

B-04-2.4 Sound is produced by vibrating objects. The pitch of the sound can be varied by changing the rate of vibration.

vibration, motion 0.463 0.304

Life Science C-58-1.1 Living systems at all levels of organization demonstrate the

complementary nature of structure and function. Important levels of organization for structure and function include cells, organs, tissues, organ systems, whole organisms, and ecosystems.

structure, organization, hierarchy, function, composition, cell, level

0.490 0.351

C-58-1.2 All organisms are composed of cells--the fundamental unit of life. Most organisms are single cells; other organisms, including humans, are multicellular.

composition, cell, unit, multicellular 0.380 0.368

Earth and Space Science D-58-3.2 Most objects in the solar system are in regular and predictable

motion. Those motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year, phases of the moon, and eclipses.

motion, object, phase, eclipse 0.817 0.144

D-58-3.3 Gravity is the force that keeps planets in orbit around the sun and governs the rest of the motion in the solar system. Gravity alone holds us to the earth's surface and explains the phenomena of the tides.

surface, orbit, motion, gravity, force, attraction, tides, tide 0.625 0.227


Size corresponds to the number of standards a term appears in multiplied by those standards’ average spatial rating


Thanks to Josh Bader! K. Grossner :: UC Santa Barbara ThinkSpatial Brownbag :: 15 Nov 2011

Teaching Spatial Thinking

• Mary Hegarty (UCSB Psychologist) has one: “Spatial Thinking”; Winter 2012 – The nature of spatial thinking, at object/tabletop scale; in

the environment; metaphorically

• Diana Sinton – Foundations of Spatial Thinking (Fall 2010)

– Spatial Thinking: The Why of Where (Winter 2012)

• Kim Kastens (Columbia) and Michael Passow – Professional Development to Improve the Spatial Thinking

of Earth Science Teachers and Students (NSF #1034994)

– Studying Regents exams to “find the spatial”


Demonstrate understanding of:

• Research on spatial thinking and learning, nature-deficit disorder, and learning in the outside world

• Spatial vocabulary, processes, and skills • The elements of graphicacy • The importance of spatial thinking on science,

technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning

• The relationship between spatial literacy and other literacies

• The role of spatial literacy in curriculum ”

“

Diana Sinton, University of Redlands || Spatial Thinking: The Why of Where


Benchmarks for Spatial Literacy

• What constitutes spatial literacy?

• Being conversant with core spatial concepts and principles...

• And familiar with their application in multiple scientific and humanistic fields??

• Aware of the role of spatial thinking in scientific explanation; and the “habit of mind” to use it

• Knowing that “how long is the coast of California?” is a meaningless question.


watd.wuthering-heights.co.uk

Benjamin Reese Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Psychology University of California at Santa Barbara


A small molecule (ligand) docked to a much larger protein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_(molecular)

Gahegan, M. (2011) Is space—its representation and analysis in computational systems—common ground in the sciences? COSIT Workshop on Spatial Ontology


Benchmarks for Spatial Literacy (1)

• There are multiple ways to consider and analyze space and spatiality – Two distinct spatial perspectives are those of continuous fields and of

discrete objects. – Space-time may be viewed as 3D + 1 (time) or 4D (everything’s an

occurrence).

• Spatial context matters – Natural phenomena—things and happenings—are significantly

impacted by their surroundings (environment or setting), including neighboring things, and any networks or ecosystems they are part of.

– Observations and analyses of phenomena have a frame of reference—spatial, temporal and thematic bounds for what is being considered. This concept is strongly tied to those of scale and granularity. Reference frames may be global or local in absolute or relative terms, and representations may be high-resolution or coarse and highly generalized.



• Spatial dependence and autocorrelation – Attributes of places that are near to each other tend to be more

similar than attributes of places that are far apart (Tobler's First Law of Geography); such similarity leads to assertions of clusters, regions, neighborhoods, and kinds of places.

• Patterns result from, reveal processes; process explains pattern – The arrangement of things-in-the-world is a result of processes—

‘natural’ (i.e. environmental and without agency), man-made, or both.

• Form follows function – The spatial form of natural objects (size, shape, structure, orientation,

texture) is strongly related to function; – The same holds true for utilitarian artifacts (if well-designed) where

function is purposeful.



• Distance decay – The level of interaction between entities at two locations declines as

the distance between them increases.

• Spatial change – A significant proportion of the phenomena scientists (and others)

observe, measure, analyze, and seek to explain concerns spatial change: change of position, form, orientation, and spatial identity (splitting and merging, e.g.). The same holds true for many non-scientific (i.e. humanistic) fields.

– Things move. A great many processes at all scales are fundamentally spatial and dynamic: diffusion, dispersion, transport, migration, erosion, radiation, etc.


A Course Outline?

• Week 1: Space and time – Space v. place – Subjective space/place and

cognitive maps

• Week 2: The nature of spatial thinking – Cognitive abilities

• Week 3: Spatial is special – Form and function; pattern and

process; spatial context, association, dependence, autocorrelation; indexing and integrating information

• Week 4: Scale matters – Spatial information v. spatial reality

• Week 5: Spatial structures (1) – Objects and fields – Measurement and computation

• Week 6: Spatial structures (2) – Neighborhood, Clusters and

Regions – Measurement and computation

• Week 7: Spatial structures (3) – Network I – Measurement and computation

• Week 8: Spatial structures (4) – Network II: Interaction and flow – Measurement and computation

• Week 9: Spatialization – Graphs and surfaces – N-dimension concept spaces


NSF-DUE #1043777

www.teachspatial.org


finding the spatial - spatial.ucsb.edu · finding the spatial (in order to teach it) ......

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