Spatial thinking and STEM; an interdisciplinary perspective

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD in Psychology. The studentship represents an exciting partnership between the University of Surrey and GL Assessment. The successful candidate will be a member of CoGDeV lab in the School of Psychology, and will be supervised by Prof. Emily Farran, Dr Debbie Gooch and Dr Alireza Behnejad from the University of Surrey. You will also benefit from input from a parallel international project (in collaboration with Prof. Joni Lakin, Dr. Jonathan Wai, Prof. David Uttal) and industry collaboration via the partnership with GL Assessment (Dr Berny Brzyska). 

Spatial ability involves perceiving the location, dimension and properties of objects and their relationships to one another; it is core to everyday living, e.g., reading maps, packing a suitcase. There is a robust body of research showing that children with good spatial abilities are better at maths and science (Atit et al., 2022; Hodgkiss et al., 2021). Relatedly, Spatial ability in childhood predicts adult expertise in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) (Wai et al., 2009). Despite the importance of spatial thinking, educational policy in England has little focus on spatial thinking. This could negatively impact opportunity to reduce attainment gaps and risks decelerating STEM advances.

This interdisciplinary project spans psychology, education and engineering. In collaboration with GL Assessment you will advance theory of the processes that support STEM skills by delivering the largest UK studies (>1 million children) of spatial-mathematics and spatial-science associations. Real-world application will include designing and evaluating a spatial training programme for engineering students. Uniquely, across all studies you will examine how individual differences moderate spatial-STEM associations thus addressing gender and diversity gaps.

Aligned with the recent Royal Society (2024) recommendation for “a stronger focus on spatial reasoning”, the findings of this studentship will advance theory of the processes that support STEM skills. Via a spatial training programme, you will provide evidence that teaching students to think and work spatially is an evidence-based, inclusive route to equipping the next generation to meet the heightened demands for problem-solving and data use. Your findings will inform policy change and address diversity gaps.

Key references

Farran et al. (2025). https://doi/10.1111/mbe.70006

Hawes et al. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001281

Royal Society (2024). https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/maths-futures/mathematical-and-data-education-policy-report.pdf

Open to candidates who pay UK/home rate fees. See UKCISA for further information.

You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our PhD programme.