Connecting spatial thinking to STEM learning through visualizations

Spatial thinking relates to interest and success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In this Review, we suggest that visualizations connect spatial and STEM thinking because all STEM disciplines use visualizations, and visualizations use space to meaningfully organize information. We focus on visualizations to show that their ubiquitous use reflects the importance of spatial thinking in STEM. In building to this point, we discuss different ways to think spatially, as spatial thinking is not a unitary process. With this base, we review the cognitive underpinnings of spatial thinking and visualization comprehension, including attention, perception and memory. We then examine how spatial thinking is involved when processing visualizations, across visualization types and STEM fields. We end by discussing future work to further probe the importance of visualizations and their connection to spatial thinking and STEM success. The ability to think spatially is associated with STEM success. In this Review, Taylor and colleagues discuss how visualizations engage spatial thinking and the role of visualizations across STEM fields.