Cultivating students’ spatial reasoning skills through an experiential learning-based virtual reality approach

Spatial Reasoning (SR) skills are crucial for success in STEM fields and many professional careers. While Virtual Reality (VR) technologies offer promising avenues for developing SR skills across educational levels, current research lacks a structured pedagogical framework to integrate VR into school curricula effectively. To address this gap, this study proposed an educational framework combining Experiential Learning (EL) method with VR technologies to cultivate multifaceted SR skills, including Mental Rotation (MR), Spatial Orientation (SO), and Spatial Visualization (SV). Eighty elementary students were divided into EL-VR and traditional groups. The EL-VR group engaged with the creation of historical artifacts through an EL-based VR curriculum, while the traditional group used methods like teacher presentations and physical 3D shape cards. Data were collected through SR standard tests, learning achievement tests, perceptions of experiential activity scales, and semi-structured interviews. Results indicated that the EL-VR group significantly outperformed the traditional group in overall SR skills and in three dimensions: MR, SO, and SV. Furthermore, the EL-VR group demonstrated higher learning achievements and greater perceptions in experiential activities. These findings highlighted the effectiveness of a structured VR-EL framework for enhancing elementary students’ SR skills and suggested its potential for broader curricular integration.