ABSTRACT
Given the emphasis on national standards, teaching practices, and student achievement, this chapter argues that the need to include skills involving spatial thinking in the school curriculum is urgent for at least two reasons. First, children and adolescents demonstrate strong proclivities toward activities that require the use of their spatial abilities. Second, present and future occupations and professions will undoubtedly depend on students' abilities to physically and mentally manipulate objects or ideas for carrying out various functions related to specific fields. The chapter shows that children's spatial thinking skills are similar to, yet not the same as, those of adults. It then considers case-study methodology to examine three videotaped excerpts of children engaged in constructive free play and demonstrate how each of these individual cases can inform practitioners—teachers and administrators—and researchers about the urgency of spatial thinking skills as a necessary component of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum.
