Spatial Ability for STEM Domains: Aligning Over 50 Years of Cumulative Psychological Knowledge Solidifies Its Importance

Spatial Ability for STEM Domains: Aligning Over 50 Years of Cumulative Psychological Knowledge Solidifies Its Importance
Jonathan Wai, David Lubinski, and Camilla P. Benbow; 2009
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Wai2009SpatialAbility1.pdf


Abstract

The importance of spatial ability in educational pursuits and the world of work was examined, with particular attention devoted to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) domains. Participants were drawn from a stratified random sample of U.S. high schools (Grades 9 –12, N = 400,000) and were tracked for 11+ years; their longitudinal findings were aligned with pre-1957 findings and with contemporary data from the Graduate Record Examination and the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth. For decades, spatial ability assessed during adolescence has surfaced as a salient psychological attribute among those adolescents who subsequently go on to achieve advanced educational credentials and occupations in STEM. Results solidify the generalization that spatial ability plays a critical role in developing expertise in STEM and suggest, among other things, that including spatial ability in modern talent searches would identify many adolescents with potential for STEM who are currently being missed.



[Siehe auch den Beitrag / das lesenswerte Kommentar von Christian Schmidt: Räumliches Denken als Voraussetzung für die Naturwissenschaften]

Women in Science and Technology:

>Although women’s representation in many scientific fields is lower than that of men, it is not uniformly low. Rather, it varies widely from field to field. It is a reasonably accurate generalization to say that the ‘softer’ the scientific field, the higher the frequency of women. In the U.S., for example, women in 2002 earned 16 per cent of physics doctorates, 18 per cent in engineering, 29 per cent in mathematics, 34 per cent in chemistry, 45 per cent in biology, and 67 per cent in psychology (National Science Foundation, 2003). In the social sciences, women are relatively scarce in economics but abundant in anthropology and sociology. Even within fields, there is marked differentiation by subfield.Women earn relatively few doctorates in mining/mineral engineering, biophysics, and psychometrics, but considerably more in bioengineering, nutritional sciences, and developmental and child psychology.

... The fields in which women are scarce tend to have the lowest social dimension, while those attracting larger numbers of women tend to have a higher social dimension. Lubinski, Benbow, and Morelock (2000) have characterized this distinction as being between the ‘organic’ and the ‘inorganic.’ The fields avoided by women tend also to be the most mathematically and spatially demanding. Given the relative positions of the sexes on the ‘people-things’ dimension and the abundance of men at the highest levels of mathematical ability, it would be surprising not to find differing sex ratios in these widely differing fields, at least if people sort into occupations based upon their interests and abilities.<

K. R. Browne, Evolved sex differences and occupational segregation, 2006
http://faculty.law.wayne.edu/browne/Documents/Articles/Evolved%20Sex%20Differences%20and%20Occupational%20Segregation_Browne.pdf