Spatial Learning Research: Evidence for Mathematics, STEM and Full-Scale Teaching

Spatial skills can improve with instruction, and spatial training can also improve mathematics performance. Research supports giving students purposeful practice with spatial relationships, representations and problems. For educators using floor plans, the opportunity is to connect a drawing with measurable space—and then ask students to calculate, explain and apply what they have learned.

This Big Floor Plans evidence brief brings together research syntheses, classroom studies and instructional-design guidance. It explains the educational rationale for full-scale floor-plan activities and helps teachers, curriculum leaders and school administrators build a cited case for a classroom pilot.

Published by Big Floor Plans. Updated September 17, 2026. Big Floor Plans supplies full-scale printed plans and publishes free teaching resources. Independent research findings, BFP teaching applications and customer experience are identified separately throughout this brief.

What Does Research Say About Spatial Learning?

The research supports three useful conclusions for schools:

Spatial ability is trainable. Uttal and colleagues’ meta-analysis examined 217 studies and found that spatial training improved spatial performance.
Some spatial training transfers to mathematics. Hawes, Gilligan-Lee and Mix synthesized 29 controlled studies involving 3,765 participants and found a positive average mathematics effect.
Classroom instruction matters. Lowrie and colleagues demonstrated that teachers could improve students’ spatial reasoning through a structured program embedded in mathematics learning.

These findings support a practical teaching approach: connect experience, spatial language, drawings and mathematical reasoning. They establish a rationale for instruction; the cited studies did not evaluate academic outcomes from purchasing a Big Floor Plans print. Read the primary sources: Uttal et al. (2013), Hawes et al. (2022) and Lowrie et al. (2018).

What Is Spatial Reasoning in Education?

Spatial reasoning is the ability to interpret and reason about positions, shapes, dimensions, orientation and relationships in space. Classroom examples include reading a plan view, predicting how a shape changes, comparing lengths and translating between a drawing and the space it represents.

The National Research Council’s Learning to Think Spatially (2006) describes spatial thinking through concepts of space, tools of representation and reasoning processes. A floor plan can bring those elements together: students interpret a representation, investigate dimensions and use the information to answer a question.

For the broader teaching system and physical product, visit Big Floor Plans Education. This page focuses on the research and its instructional implications.

Key Studies: Findings, Context and Teaching Implications

Spatial Skills Can Be Developed Through Training

Uttal et al. (2013), Psychological Bulletin. The Malleability of Spatial Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Training Studies synthesized 217 studies. The average training effect was approximately Hedges’s g = 0.47 after outlier removal. The review found evidence that gains could persist and transfer to other spatial tasks.

Teaching implication: spatial reasoning deserves deliberate practice. Interpreting orientation, comparing representations and checking spatial predictions are teachable activities. The average effect describes the reviewed training literature, not an expected gain from one floor-plan lesson.

Spatial Training Can Support Mathematics Learning

Hawes, Gilligan-Lee and Mix (2022), Developmental Psychology. Effects of Spatial Training on Mathematics Performance: A Meta-Analysis included 29 controlled pre/post studies and 3,765 participants. It reported an average mathematics effect of approximately g = 0.28. Interventions using concrete materials showed stronger mathematics transfer in moderator analyses.

Teaching implication: connect physical materials to a specific mathematical relationship. Measuring a boundary becomes more useful when students also draw it, calculate its length and explain the units. The moderator result does not establish that physical materials always outperform digital instruction.

Teachers Can Integrate Spatial Instruction Into Mathematics

Lowrie, Logan, Harris and Hegarty (2018), Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. This classroom intervention study involved 337 students in 15 classrooms across six schools. A 10-week, teacher-delivered program improved spatial reasoning relative to standard mathematics instruction in grades 3–6.

The program used the Experience–Language–Pictorial–Symbolic–Application framework, or ELPSA. Teaching implication: help students move between an experience, the words used to describe it, a picture, mathematical symbols and a new application. The evidence concerns a structured teaching program rather than a standalone classroom material.

Transfer Can Be Stronger in Particular Mathematics Domains

Adams, Resnick and Lowrie (2023; published online in 2022), Mathematics Education Research Journal. Supporting Senior High-School Students’ Measurement and Geometry Performance randomly assigned 73 Year 11 students to spatial instruction or a control condition. Spatial reasoning and measurement/geometry performance improved; number/algebra performance did not.

Teaching implication: target the skills that fit the activity and assess them directly. Dimensions, scale and geometric relationships provide clear connections between floor-plan work and mathematics. This result should not be generalized into a promise of improvement across every mathematics domain.

Spatialized Curricula Have Been Studied in Additional Settings

Winarti, Patahuddin and Lowrie (2024), Educational Studies in Mathematics. Unleashing the Potential: Spatializing Middle School Mathematics for Enhanced Learning studied 407 eighth-grade students in an underprivileged Indonesian community. The publisher’s abstract reports improvements in spatial visualization and mathematics compared with standard instruction, with differences by student ability.

Teaching implication: spatial tasks can be integrated into a mathematics curriculum. The setting and intervention matter when judging applicability to another school. This summary is based on the publisher’s abstract, not a full-text appraisal.

Embodied Activity Should Represent the Learning Goal

DeSutter and Stieff (2017), Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Teaching Students to Think Spatially Through Embodied Actions proposes design principles for connecting physical actions with spatial-thinking objectives in STEM.

Teaching implication: the action should make a relationship easier to reason about. Tracing a perimeter, marking equal areas or comparing routes can be followed by a drawing and explanation. This source is an instructional-design framework, not a controlled evaluation of BFP lessons.

How Should Educators Interpret the Effect Sizes?

An effect size is a standardized comparison between groups or conditions. It is not a percentage increase, a grade-level gain or a guaranteed number of months of learning. The g = 0.47 spatial result and g = 0.28 mathematics result above come from different research syntheses and measure different outcomes.

When evaluating a study, check who participated, what instruction they received, the comparison condition, the length of the intervention and the assessment used. A pooled average cannot predict the outcome of an individual classroom activity or equipment purchase.

Why Use a Full-Scale Floor Plan as a Teaching Resource?

A full-scale floor plan supplies a shared reference for dimensions and spatial relationships. Students can compare a drawing with actual-size distances, test a prediction and return to a diagram or calculation to explain the result. The educational value comes from that connection and the teacher’s questions, feedback and assessment.

BFP’s instructional application is: predict → measure or compare → represent → explain → apply to a new task. For example, students might predict a wall length from a scale drawing, check the corresponding distance and then solve a new scale problem on paper. That final task helps the teacher assess understanding beyond familiarity with one physical layout.

The same drawing can support different age-appropriate questions across a school. Whole-school use describes the breadth of possible applications; it does not mean one activity addresses every outcome or suits every learner.

For complete teaching instructions, use the 75 free lesson plans. For focused applications, explore scale drawings, blueprint reading and the construction-trades pathway.

Do Physical Activities Work Better Than Digital Activities?

The evidence does not support a universal ranking of formats. Judd and Klingberg’s 2021 study in Nature Human Behaviour examined 17,648 children aged 6–8 during seven weeks of digital training and found that the type of spatial cognitive training influenced mathematics learning.

A drawing, digital activity, tabletop model and full-scale layout can serve different instructional purposes. Select the representation that makes the target relationship accessible, then assess whether students can use the idea in another representation or problem.

How Can a School Evaluate Its Own Pilot?

Choose a specific learning objective before selecting the activity. Use a short baseline task, teach the lesson, and assess a comparable new task with the same criteria. A later check can examine retention; a paper or tabletop task can examine transfer away from the floor.

Useful evidence includes correct interpretation, measurement and units, calculation or representation, and the student’s explanation. Record prompting, accommodations and changes to instruction so the results can be interpreted fairly. Provide seated, tabletop, partner or verbal-response options where appropriate; academic understanding should be assessed independently of mobility.

A classroom pilot can show feasibility and changes in student work. A simple before-and-after comparison cannot isolate the effect of the printed plan from teaching, practice and other influences. Stronger causal evaluation requires a suitable comparison design.

School Experience: Marathon Area School District

Marathon Area School District in Wisconsin used a BFP sample house plan in its gymnasium. Its STEM Department Head described the experience as “incredibly effective giving the students a full scale perspective.” This is a first-party customer account of school use and perceived value, rather than a controlled study of academic achievement. Read the school testimonial.

Build a Cited School Evidence Brief

The tool above opens with whole school / K–12 + CTE and all learning outcomes — overview. Educators can narrow the scope and download a PDF or editable School Evidence Brief containing selected research, teaching applications, a pilot outline and a learning check.

Use the brief to start a discussion with colleagues or school leaders. Continue with the resource that answers your next question:

Curriculum fit: use the Lesson Plans by Standard finder and confirm the locally adopted requirements.
A drawing to teach from: choose a free sample teaching plan.
Possible funding: review Education Funding resources with your program administrator.
An internal purchase request: adapt the Education Purchase Justification Letter.
A reusable full-scale print: use the print cost calculator or request a school quote.

About the Sources and This Brief

Big Floor Plans publishes this selected research summary to explain the rationale for spatial instruction and its potential application to floor-plan teaching. Research was selected for relevance to spatial trainability, mathematics transfer, classroom implementation and instructional design. This is a selected evidence brief, not a systematic review, independently reviewed academic paper or product efficacy trial.

DOI and publisher links identify the underlying sources. Findings are attributed to the studies; floor-plan applications are BFP’s interpretations. Source access varies, and abstract-based summaries are identified. The school account is separately attributed to the customer. Big Floor Plans has a commercial interest in full-scale printing; access to this brief and the linked free teaching resources does not require a purchase.

Publisher and editorial contact: Big Floor Plans . Send source corrections or questions to estimating@bigfloorplans.com.

Suggested citation: Big Floor Plans. (2026, September 17). Spatial Learning Research: Evidence for Mathematics, STEM and Full-Scale Teaching. Education Evidence.