Spatial-Skills Training Can Improve STEM Retention

Each month this year, AAUW is teaming up with Nature Publishing Group, one of the world’s leading science publishers, to put together an online forum on women in science. The AAUW posts highlight findings from our 2010 research report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, now in its third printing.

Engineering professor Sheryl Sorby has produced striking findings on spatial skills and retention of female engineering students. She found that among the women in her studies who initially failed the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (PSVT-R) and took a spatial-visualization course, 77 percent were still enrolled in or had graduated from the school of engineering. In comparison, only 48 percent of the women who initially failed the test and did not take the course were still enrolled or had graduated from the school of engineering.

Much of Sorby’s analysis is based on nonrandom samples of students since, after the first year students opted to take the course rather than being randomly assigned. Nonetheless, Sorby’s findings were consistent and compelling enough to convince the dean at Michigan Technological University to require the spatial skills course for all students who fail the PSVT:R during orientation, starting in fall 2009. Sorby is working now on understanding the impact of the course alone on retention, separate from students’ motivation, since all students who fail the test are now required to take the course and are no longer self-selected.

Sorby believes that well-developed spatial skills can help retain women in engineering and help attract more girls to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She sees well-developed spatial skills as important for creating confidence in one’s ability to succeed in math and science courses and ultimately in a STEM career, because spatial skills are needed to interpret diagrams and drawings in math and science textbooks as early as elementary school.

In a pilot study, Sorby found that middle school girls who took a spatial-visualization course took more advanced-level math and science courses in high school than did girls who did not take the course. Sorby recommends that spatial skills training happen by middle school or earlier to make a difference in girls’ choices.