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HEIndividual fellowship2024–2026

SPATHS · Spatial skills and mathematics, towards a causal understanding of mechanisms

Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2024-10-01 → 2026-09-30
EU contribution
€175,920
Participants
2
Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Spatial skills and mathematics, towards a causal understanding of mechanisms

Difficulties in learning maths usually begin at the start of education and are robust over time. The number of students not reaching basic levels of maths achievement remains a major societal challenge, at a time when societies are increasingly demanding maths skills due to scientific and industrial progress (e.g., growing reliance on AI, robotics, and data-driven decision-making). SPATHS is a research project with the aim to understand the causal mechanisms via which spatial skills impact maths learning. Indeed, research examining the key cognitive foundations for successful maths learning has identified spatial skills as a promising potential contributor to maths development. Nevertheless, how and why SPatial skills contribute to mATHS learning remains elusive. SPATHS will continue to unravel knowledge about the mechanism underlying the spatial-maths association. This is essential for future research into efficient interventions to improve maths and to make spatial training programs more effective. We aim not only to demonstrate that spatial training can improve mathematics, but also to understand the mechanisms that make this possible (e.g., which types of spatial skills, which mathematical domains, and whether context or curriculum plays a role). Therefore, we break spatial skills and mathematical tasks down into different components. This allows us to test whether certain components are driving the effects and whether some mathematical tasks are specifically sensitive to the influence of spatial training. Furthermore, the project compares different conditions to examine whether the association between spatial skills and mathematics remains equally strong across contexts. To do this, we compare educational contexts in more than one country (Belgium and England), as school systems and instructional practices may influence how spatial activities are integrated into the classroom. Other variables we examine relate to demographics or environment, such as potential differences in how boys and girls use spatial skills in mathematics, or how socio-economic background may play a role. By combining all these variables, the SPATHS project aims to clarify how and why spatial skills can support mathematics development, and for whom

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Difficulties in learning maths usually begin at the start of education and are robust over time. The number of students not reaching basic levels of maths achievement remains a major societal challenge, at a time when societies are increasingly demanding maths skills due to scientific and industrial progress. Research examining the key cognitive foundations for successful maths learning has identified spatial skills as a promising potential contributor to maths development. Nevertheless, how and why SPatial skills contribute to mATHS learning remains elusive. SPATHS will therefore develop a new framework that aim to understand the causal mechanisms via which spatial skills impact maths learning. This will be done firstly by using graphical causal models, in particular Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG), to draw causal inferences from observational data. This technique, originally developed for computer science and novel to cognitive and developmental psychology, is a way of visually representing and testing a priori causal assumptions. Various spatial skills and maths abilities will be tested and causal pathways between the different abilities will be estimated in a cross-cultural context, which varies in the extent to which children start formal school (start at 5 vs. start at 6 years) and allows us to generalise findings across different educational contexts. Second, to empirically validate the findings from the causal models, a training experiment will manipulate the learning of spatial skills in 5-and 6-year-olds. SPATHS will unravel long-awaited knowledge about the mechanism underlying the spatial-maths association. This is essential for future research into efficient interventions to improve maths and to make spatial training programs more effective. Moreover, by introducing DAGs to cognitive and developmental psychology, SPATHS will provide the possibility to test causality in natural environments (e.g., schools) in which experimental data are difficult to obtain.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN · LeuvenCoordinatorBelgium
  • THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordUnited Kingdom

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union