Spatial thinking underpins many aspects of everyday life, from understanding diagrams and directions to reasoning about quantities and measures. These skills support how we represent and organise information about space, shape and relationships between objects. Children differ in their spatial abilities, and these differences are closely linked to later attainment in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Bee Spatial is a pilot research project funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund, led by University of Surrey researchers in collaboration with White Rose Education and Loughborough University. The project explores how spatial thinking can be embedded within everyday mathematics lessons to support learning in Year 3. Bee Spatial integrates short spatial activities into existing curriculum content, aligned with materials already used by schools.
The project builds on a strong evidence base demonstrating that children who perform well on spatial tasks tend to show stronger mathematics outcomes, that spatial and numerical processing draw on shared cognitive resources, and that many areas of mathematics rely on spatial concepts such as magnitude, measurement, and representation. Bee Spatial draws on this research to examine whether an embedded, teacher-led spatial training programme is both effective and feasible in real classroom settings.
We hope this website provides useful information about the Bee Spatial project. If you have any questions, please contact Emily Farran at e.farran@surrey.ac.uk.
