A lot of “learning style” preference research has shown that having different learning styles is at most weakly supported by research. Instead, most people learn best when taught well using multiple learning approaches. It is the interaction of these different activities that is most effective.
My gut has always told me similar constructs on thinking styles, like learning styles, is a bit bunk. That is, “visual-spatial learners” versus “auditory-sequential thinkers” are not clearly different entities. Worse, when I find descriptions online comparing the two, I nod along reading the VS column until I get to descriptors I find rather judgmental. I’m starting to think more in shades of grey, and what’s more, it’s starting to dawn on me why my kids struggle so much with their writing instruction. So instead, let’s take the approach that these are skills more than a construct of how the brain functions. Skills can be taught.
When I was in college, I took a physics class that required I be able to visualize motions in 3 dimensions. I was hopeless. I did finally get through the class with a lot of extra work, a special office hour set aside by the professor just for me, and yes, some tears. In the end, I did decently well in the class, but ultimately I got through it by being able to write down any situation mathematically. I had failed to develop any spatial intuition for the material. Fast forward 20 years, and I recently encountered a problem I needed to solve that could have easily been a final exam question for the class. I began to sweat, and yes, I avoided the problem for a few days. When I finally dragged the book and those old notes out with sweaty palms and a racing heart, I drew out the problem and looked at it. I realized I could visualize exactly what was needed, and I wrote down the solution. I think it took 5 minutes.
In January, I attended a conference on undergraduate education in my STEM field. A dean from an engineering school spoke about how they pretest all their incoming freshman for 3D thinking skills, and those that fail are sent to take a 3D thinking boot camp. They find that this boosts success rates tremendously. Since then, I’ve read several papers on 3D thinking and teaching of 3D thinking skills, and lo and behold, not only can it be taught and learned, but it molds the thinking and cognitive development of the student. I realize now that a consequence of the research I took up as a postdoc, learned to think more fluidly in three dimensions. I have also realized since reading these papers that I’ve been teaching these skills in my classes.
This sort of thinking and teaching has gotten a fair amount of play in debates about gender and ability. Indeed, the gender differences in spatial thinking skills are quite possibly a difference in how the two genders tend to spend their time growing up, with the stereotypical boy playing cars and Legos, while the stereotypical girl engaging in more “story telling” and social play.
So the upshot of this is that I am learning that we can mold brains that don’t as naturally think spatially to do so. Google “teaching spatial thinking” and you get >50,000 results. Those of us in the STEM fields recognize quite keenly the importance of such spatial thinking. The top hits are from universities, professional organizations, and peer reviewed books. We teach it explicitly and implicitly.
But what’s the significance of sequential thinking? In my mind, at least, that would be any sort of skill in which putting things in order so as to make sense of them. This is a lot of what communication is. You need to start with the big picture, and put details and event into an order such that your listener can understand the message. In short, this is the sort of skill that we struggle with in our house, be it retelling a story for a reading assessment or writing a description of an event in a school journal. Such skills will also necessarily be involved in writing logical instructions, be it a computer program or an algebraic solution.
Hence, the skills of being able to think about space and think about time and sequence are both necessary. As thinking skills, some children will need more encouragement and practice in some more than in others.
Now google “teaching sequential thinking” and you will find 900 results, which google helpfully pairs down to just 6 pages of results. Some come from educational resources, but This then begs the question – can we do the same for spatial thinkers to mold then into sequential thinkers? Surely this is possible. Is there any research? Either it's not there, or it's called something different. I'm not a psychologist for sure!
Next up, thinking aloud about elementary school writing instruction, sequential thinking, and advocating for a child with weak sequential thinking skills.
My gut has always told me similar constructs on thinking styles, like learning styles, is a bit bunk. That is, “visual-spatial learners” versus “auditory-sequential thinkers” are not clearly different entities. Worse, when I find descriptions online comparing the two, I nod along reading the VS column until I get to descriptors I find rather judgmental. I’m starting to think more in shades of grey, and what’s more, it’s starting to dawn on me why my kids struggle so much with their writing instruction. So instead, let’s take the approach that these are skills more than a construct of how the brain functions. Skills can be taught.
When I was in college, I took a physics class that required I be able to visualize motions in 3 dimensions. I was hopeless. I did finally get through the class with a lot of extra work, a special office hour set aside by the professor just for me, and yes, some tears. In the end, I did decently well in the class, but ultimately I got through it by being able to write down any situation mathematically. I had failed to develop any spatial intuition for the material. Fast forward 20 years, and I recently encountered a problem I needed to solve that could have easily been a final exam question for the class. I began to sweat, and yes, I avoided the problem for a few days. When I finally dragged the book and those old notes out with sweaty palms and a racing heart, I drew out the problem and looked at it. I realized I could visualize exactly what was needed, and I wrote down the solution. I think it took 5 minutes.
In January, I attended a conference on undergraduate education in my STEM field. A dean from an engineering school spoke about how they pretest all their incoming freshman for 3D thinking skills, and those that fail are sent to take a 3D thinking boot camp. They find that this boosts success rates tremendously. Since then, I’ve read several papers on 3D thinking and teaching of 3D thinking skills, and lo and behold, not only can it be taught and learned, but it molds the thinking and cognitive development of the student. I realize now that a consequence of the research I took up as a postdoc, learned to think more fluidly in three dimensions. I have also realized since reading these papers that I’ve been teaching these skills in my classes.
This sort of thinking and teaching has gotten a fair amount of play in debates about gender and ability. Indeed, the gender differences in spatial thinking skills are quite possibly a difference in how the two genders tend to spend their time growing up, with the stereotypical boy playing cars and Legos, while the stereotypical girl engaging in more “story telling” and social play.
So the upshot of this is that I am learning that we can mold brains that don’t as naturally think spatially to do so. Google “teaching spatial thinking” and you get >50,000 results. Those of us in the STEM fields recognize quite keenly the importance of such spatial thinking. The top hits are from universities, professional organizations, and peer reviewed books. We teach it explicitly and implicitly.
But what’s the significance of sequential thinking? In my mind, at least, that would be any sort of skill in which putting things in order so as to make sense of them. This is a lot of what communication is. You need to start with the big picture, and put details and event into an order such that your listener can understand the message. In short, this is the sort of skill that we struggle with in our house, be it retelling a story for a reading assessment or writing a description of an event in a school journal. Such skills will also necessarily be involved in writing logical instructions, be it a computer program or an algebraic solution.
Hence, the skills of being able to think about space and think about time and sequence are both necessary. As thinking skills, some children will need more encouragement and practice in some more than in others.
Now google “teaching sequential thinking” and you will find 900 results, which google helpfully pairs down to just 6 pages of results. Some come from educational resources, but This then begs the question – can we do the same for spatial thinkers to mold then into sequential thinkers? Surely this is possible. Is there any research? Either it's not there, or it's called something different. I'm not a psychologist for sure!
Next up, thinking aloud about elementary school writing instruction, sequential thinking, and advocating for a child with weak sequential thinking skills.