Serving the Silent Minority: The Visual/Spatial Learner

Traditionally, schools are brimming with words; lessons are delivered sequentially, and information is layered on one brick at a time. Education's verbal-sequential orientation originated during industrial age - when uniformity and efficiency were of the highest value.  

Now, originality and creativity are at a premium. Education is poised to make its greatest shift in generations. As we move away from extensive lecture and whole-class textbooks to more personalized and authentic work, there is one group of historically under-served learners who will greatly benefit: the rare and remarkable visual-spatial learner.

Visual-spatial thinkers learn by doing - by building, by experimenting, by manipulating, and by creating. They are systems thinkers who can, according to expert Dr. Linda Keger Silverman, “…orchestrate large amounts of information from different domains, but they often miss the details.” They don’t learn step-by-step, and they don't learn through rote exercises and repetition. Ironically, as these students begin to struggle, the first intervention is often to provide more rote practice and to break ideas down into even smaller and smaller pieces.

The visual-spatial learner's exceptional perceptual reasoning skills are often remarkably disparate from their verbal reasoning skills. This disparity, along with poor organizational and time-management skills, can lead to significant underachievement. Because much of school targets their weaknesses, visual-spatial learners can disengage, lose heart, and even drop out. Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison knew a thing or two about this.

So what can we do about it?  We can target the visual-spatial thinker's STRENGTHS and then use that success to breed more. Like a car that needs gas for a long trip ahead, so too do visual/spatial learners. By providing learning experiences where they EXCELL and LEAD, we are filling their hearts and minds (and tanks!) with self-efficacy, hope, and ambition. How do we do this?

• Design performance tasks which pose big-picture challenges
• Provide students with learning opportunities that will inspire and develop their natural talents (coding, engineering projects, visual arts, Lego League)
• Use the “hardest problem first” strategy, as visual-spatial learners generally do better with complexity than rote
• Provide academic choice so that students can tailor learning experiences to their own strengths and interests

Teaching visual-spatial learners, and developing all students' 21st Century Skills, requires us to let go. When we do so, we allow understanding to grow along non-linear paths. It is messy, and it is so worth it.