Yukari Okamoto, Professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, will give the free talk “Spatial reasoning in the early years: Principles, assertions, and speculations” on Wednesday, May 27 at 12 noon in the Don Gevirtz Boardroom ED 4108, 4th Floor, Education Building. The event is sponsored by the Gevirtz School’s CORE (Conversations on Research in Education) Lunch Series. All members of the UCSB community are invited to attend; please bring your lunch – light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to Carla Whitacre if you plan on attending: cwhitacre@education.ucsb.edu.
Over the past several years, “spatial reasoning” has gained renewed prominence among mathematics educators, as spatial skills are proving to be not just essential to mathematical understanding but also strong predictors of future success beyond the classroom in fields such as science, technology, and engineering. Dr. Okamoto has been collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of mathematicians, mathematics educators, and cognitive scientists across North America and Australia in order to understand the role of spatial reasoning in and out of the classroom. The team’s conclusion is that there is a strong need to “spatialize” the mathematics curriculum. Dr. Okamoto will discuss why spatial reasoning is critical while providing examples of spatial activities in the early years classrooms.
Yukari Okamoto is a Professor in the Department of Education who specializes in children’s cognitive development. She is particularly interested in young children’s numerical, scientific, and spatial thinking. Her current projects include: (1) the development of rational number knowledge, (2) preschool children’s biological reasoning, and (3) young children’s geometric and spatial thinking.