Collaborative Research: Discipline-Specific Methods to Build Foundational Knowledge About Spatial Skills that are Relevant to Contemporary Engineering Practice

About This Grant

Spatial skills are usually considered to be important for success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). However, the way these skills are currently taught does not always connect with real-world engineering work. Currently, many spatial skills training materials use simple blocks or cubes which are much easier to work with than the complex objects that engineers will encounter on the job. A typical spatial problem might ask a student to rotate a cube shape in their mind. But a civil engineer might need to envision a complex building or a three-dimensional landscape. Research shows that students learn these spatial skills better when the training is connected directly to the specific type of engineering they are studying. However, we currently lack an understanding of the spatial problems that today’s engineers encounter. This project will study how spatial skills are used in two areas of engineering: civil and mechanical engineering. The findings will help us understand what kind of spatial skills are important to each area of engineering. The outcomes of the research will have a direct impact on recruiting and retaining students in engineering who have a range of spatial skills, advancing our understanding of the professional formation of engineers. Rather than continuing to promote the idea that general spatial skills are important for engineering degree attainment, the proposed work utilizes a discipline-specific approach to classify the ways in which engineers represent and communicate spatial information in different work contexts. To address this knowledge gap, we will focus on two disciplines, civil and mechanical engineering, and will 1) use ethnographic methods to identify spatial problems embedded in practice, 2) verify the ethnographic findings through interviews of practicing engineers nationwide, and 3) use data from 1) and 2) to identify which spatial skills are important in contemporary engineering practice in civil and mechanical engineering. This project will yield rich descriptions of the spatial problems that engineers encounter in practice and identify the resulting spatial skills needed to solve those spatial problems. The research approach is informed by prior research that indicates that real-world spatial skills are discipline-specific and answers the call for a deeper understanding of discipline-specific spatial problems and skills. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.