Spatial reasoning is the understanding of objects’ locations, movements, and relationships in space [3]. It considers how we navigate through the world, mentally transform and envision images, and create representations [1,2]. Spatial reasoning also helps us to recognize how both static and dynamic objects are organized in space. For instance, we can imagine how different a rectangle would look if we folded it horizontally versus diagonally. When we define and think of spatial reasoning in this way, it fits well with geometric thinking, because it requires us to know how to build and mentally manipulate and transform shapes and objects. As a result, math educators and researchers often position spatial reasoning as a way to learn and identify shapes as both two- and three-dimensional objects (e.g., circles, cylinders, triangles, pyramids). These shapes can then be characterized in ways that geometrically define and describe them [8,9,10,11]. For example, a square has four straight lines and four equal internal angles, while triangles are made up of three sides and three angles.

However, spatial reasoning is more than the ability to mentally transform, decompose, and recompose shapes [12,13]. Spatial reasoning also requires us to examine these objects as they move in space [3,13,14]—how they look when they are rotated, how parts of objects can fit together, how locations of objects relate to one another, and how they are viewed from different perspectives and angles. These dynamic ways of utilizing spatial reasoning skills not only help us to orientate in space, but help us to understand the interactions and relationships between objects and people in our geometric world [3]. They ask us to understand the diversity of interactions, relationships, and dynamic movements between structures, aligning well with STEAM education [2,15].

While spatial reasoning has historically been taken up in mathematics education, there has been a growth in the literature that advocates that spatial reasoning is “in domains that are not, on the surface, obviously spatial” [4] (p. 102). Many scholars have identified spatial reasoning skills, such as perspective-taking and scaling, which are closely tied to everyday practices and professions outside of mathematics [7,14,15]. A notable example of the importance of understanding shapes, size, and orientation was when German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed the continental drift theory by observing how the coastlines of South America and Africa fit together into a supercontinent [16]. There are several more examples of how scientific fields utilize spatial thinking; surgeons visualize areas in the body to plan for a surgical procedure, chemists can use three-dimensional models and illustrations to visually represent molecular structures, and geoscientists not only study other people’s maps and visualizations, but need to recognize and classify shapes and objects in their work [17].

When we think of spatial reasoning in this way, it becomes visible and meaningful in everyday life, existing in a variety of moving figures and objects that make up our geometric world [7,18]. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly making sense of the space around us; from fitting a car seat into vehicles, assembling furniture, planting gardens, and navigating to places [3]. Spatial reasoning is “integral to everyday life. People, natural objects, human-made objects, and human-made structures exist somewhere in space, and the interactions of people and things must be understood in terms of locations, distances, directions, shapes, and patterns” [3] (p. 5).

Thus, not only is spatial thinking about understanding the dynamic interactions between human-made objects and structures, but interactions within nature, and between the human-made and natural world. These dynamic ways of understanding spatial relationships between people and nature not only have potential in STEAM learning, but can also address the need for climate literacy and environmental education [19]. Understanding the patterns of human and natural relations can help us understand environmental issues and how we impact or cause these problems [20]. Therefore, spatial reasoning is not only about being aware of space, but it requires us to consider how we utilize space, impact space, and inform the decisions we make while interacting in both the human and natural world [3,7,21].

As part of recognizing the dynamic nature of spatial reasoning, scholars have argued that spatial thinking instinctively requires the body as an essential tool for understanding spatial organizations and movements [22]. Several studies have already showcased the integral and interwoven relationship between gestures and mathematics [23,24] and have found that learners produce gestures to communicate understanding and meaning [7,22,25]. In science education research, we continue to see the inseparability of learning from the body and multimodal resources such as affect or emotions [26,27]. One of the commonalities across these studies is the iterative and reflective process of embodiment as we think aloud and learn [7,28]. These studies have shown how the body can become a sensemaking resource to experience, question, and reflect on the interactions that make up our world [27,28]. Embodiment is not a static resource, but an everchanging and dynamic part of sensemaking. This body of literature encourages educators and researchers to consider the embodied nature of spatial reasoning, and how these dynamic sensemaking experiences are part of the process of understanding our moving world [29,30].

Drawing has been one of the most common school activities in elementary education, with children’s artwork frequently displayed on classroom walls [31,32]. The research on children’s drawings has not only found art essential in developing fine motor skills, creativity, expressing emotions, and storytelling [33,34], but as a method for assessing development and spatial skills [35]. However, in recent years, several scholars have warned educators and researchers of the danger of examining children’s drawings as isolated assessment tasks, because it can lead us to focus on what children cannot developmentally do, instead of understanding what they can do [29,36]. Children’s drawings, even in early scribbles, are a way for children to think through and communicate what they know about the world [35,37].

Modern research into mathematics furthers this notion, as scholars have embraced embodied approaches to learning, “drawing is not a matter of confirming an external world by fixing it and statically representing it, but a process of ‘thinking’ a world by making information available as part of and through a specific human perceptual experience in the process of becoming” [32] (p. 468). Thom & McGarvey [32] argue that children’s drawings are not only an artifact that reveals spatial knowledge, but are an act or a way of sensemaking as children actively explore and wrestle with early geometric thinking. Their analysis of children’s drawings over time [32] demonstrates the woven nature of embodiment, art, and spatial reasoning.