CREATE Research Symposium 2022 Book of Abstracts

This is the book of Abstracts for a recent symposium held by the CREATE research Group in TU Dublin

Constructing spatial situation models during reading comics vs texts

When reading comics, do people monitor the protagonist’s spatial shifts in their mental representations of the depicted environment? To answer that we examined the location effect: the well-documented finding that information about the room in which the protagonist is located is more accessible compared to other rooms. Across three experiments, participants first encoded object locations visually (Experiments 1 and 2) or verbally (Experiment 3), and then, while reading stories, they responded to prompts about whether objects were in the same or different rooms. In Experiment 1, participants read either comics or texts, and were instructed to attend to spatial relations. Consistent with the location effect, participants were faster when objects were located in the room that the protagonist was at the time compared to other rooms. This was the case in both reading conditions, suggesting that there is no difference of how foregrounding operates between texts and comics, at least when people are instructed to attend to spatial information. In Experiment 2 participants read either comics or texts, and they were not given any instructions to attend to spatial relations. Participants exhibited a location effect when reading comics but not when reading texts, suggesting that with comics, instructions are not necessary to support the monitoring of the protagonist’s movement. In Experiment 3, the objects were encoded verbally rather than visually prior to reading a story in comics. There was no location effect suggesting that, in comics, monitoring the protagonist’s spatial shifts takes place only when the environment is encoded visually. Overall, findings suggest that comics can support the construction of situation models and may even be more efficient to foreground spatial shifts than texts

Factors associated with STEM career expectations of Greek 15-year-old students

In this study, we examined the factors that may predict Greek 15-year-old students’ STEM career expectations using data from the 2015 cycle of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Students' responses to the question "What kind of job do you expect to have when you are about 30 years old?" were classified into STEM and non-STEM professions based on two approaches, and differences in the factors predicting career expectations between the two approaches were also examined

Learning from comics versus non-comics material in education: Systematic review and meta-analysis

In this study, we aim to systematically review empirical studies that have investigated the use of comics in education; and to quantitatively explore these effects using a meta-analysis

Fostering spatial ability development in and for authentic STEM learning

Empirical interdisciplinary research has explored the role of spatial ability in STEM learning and achievement. While most of this research indicates that fostering spatial thinking in educational contexts has the potential to positively impact students’ enrollment and performance in STEM subjects, there is less agreement on the best approach to do so. This article provides an overview of various types of effective spatial interventions and practices in formal or informal educational contexts, including targeted training of STEM-relevant spatial skills, spatialized curricula embedded in schools, integrated STEM practices addressing students’ use of spatial skills, and spatial activities in informal STEM education. Gender and socio-economic status of students – two variables that have been found to moderate the relationship between students’ spatial ability and their STEM performance – are also discussed in this article. Drawing on a wide spectrum of perspectives on situating spatial ability research in STEM education contexts, this article underscores the need for further inquiry into opportunities for developing K-12 students’ spatial ability through integrated and informal STEM practices. This article proposes a conjecture that the relationship between developing students’ spatial ability and enhancing their abilities to solve spatially complex STEM problems is bidirectional. Recommendations for future research are made on lingering questions about the effect of interventions, untapped resources for spatial ability training in formal and informal STEM education, and educational strategies for developing students’ spatial ability in authentic learning environments.</p